Without Their Permission: How the 21st Century Will Be Made, Not Managed

by Alexis Ohanian

  The barometer for investors is your startup’s growth rate. Keep in mind that the ideal growth rate is measured in revenue, but the alternative metric of active users is typically a good enough proxy. Until you’ve built something that has traction, you should be checking this rate regularly, probably every week. Don’t just count how many new customers you signed up in the last seven days—calculate how many more you signed up this week than last week. Y Combinator says that the ideal growth rate is 5–7 percent per week in the early stages. If you’re doing that or better, you’re onto something. If not, it’s time to reconsider your approach. Until you’ve found an idea that can generate this kind of growth, raising funding is going to be a feat. So stay cheap (now you know where the phrase “ramen profitable” comes from). Once you’ve got something that’s a proven model and can be turned into an easily replicable (scalable) business, it’s time to raise funding and use it to grow the company. In most cases, this involves hiring talent, but in other cases it also entails experimenting with methods of user acquisition (everything from advertising to content creation).

  This switch from conservation to investment mode occurs when a startup has found “product market fit” (another bit of jargon, I know, but there’s real meat beneath the surface). That’s when the magic can happen, because you know you’re finally onto something. It certainly doesn’t mean your job is done, but it means you’ve found something that works: you have built a product that people want in a market that’s big enough to support it. Common themes emerge when you notice the kinds of founders who get here.

  It starts with borderline obsession, both with the problem itself and with the quality of the solution you’re building. Plenty of great ideas have been dismissed as awful or crazy or both before the market validated them. Warning: just because your idea has been called awful or crazy or both doesn’t mean that it’s going to be validated. It means people’s opinions won’t matter in the face of data showing your idea has genuine traction.

  Traction

  I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man.

  Jay-Z2

  You need everyone to believe that what you’ve made is worth their time. Your mom is the only person who’ll blindly think that what you’ve done is great. The rest of us have a million other things on our minds more important than what you want us to care about, so you’ve got to show us why we should give a damn. Just don’t spam us. Everyone hates spammers. If you’ve done everything I’ve suggested in part 1 to build a product people will want to not only use but also talk about, you’ve built the necessary foundation. I cannot stress this enough: do not take meetings for the sake of taking meetings. Your job is first and foremost to build a business, not to go on coffee dates. The only reason those afore-and soon-to-be-mentioned coffees were so fruitful was because we had already built something people wanted. As a founder, you will always be the face of the company to one degree or another—do it right.

  I believe in startup karma. Skeptical? Imagine a reputation score floating above your head. If that’s a little too surreal for you, just know that social currency is something you can spend by asking for favors and earn by doing them. Now, even if people aren’t actually keeping score (some probably are, but they’re the kind of people you should probably avoid), you should always try to keep a positive balance, just as you do in your bank account.

  Being the kind of person who’s always asking for favors and hustling others is a reputation that not only gets around, it sticks. It’ll work in the short term, and perhaps there are some exceptions to the rule who have made it work in the long term, but being someone who’s always asking for favors makes the already difficult job of starting something new immeasurably harder.

  Instead, look at every meeting as a chance to do someone a solid. This especially matters when dealing with representatives of the media, because just buying them a coffee doesn’t mean you’re getting a front-page story. Look at every meeting as a long-term investment. She’s not writing about your startup? That’s okay!

  Be helpful. What’s she thinking about right now? Some kind of trend is going on in X that’s not been covered yet, and she’s looking for a founder doing Y. If you can connect the dots, make the introduction for her. You’ve just helped two people with one e-mail. Cha-ching. More good karma.

  Over the years, you can build a reputation as a connector in your field. Connectors are a journalist’s trump card when they need to get a lead on an unreported idea, or when they need an introduction in order to land a useful interview. This is a valuable position for you to be in, because it means you’re going to stay at the tops of their minds. When your journalist friends are writing about something in your field, whom do you think they’re going to reach out to first?

  Never Turn Down Cannoli

  In between bites of cannolo (yep, that’s the singular form of cannoli), I was explaining to Rachel Metz, freelance reporter for Wired, why reddit.com was going to become the front page of the Internet. She seemed interested, but she could’ve just been enjoying her cannolo.

  I’d taken the Fung Wah bus down from Boston to meet with her in downtown Manhattan because a few weeks earlier, I’d met a friend of hers named Jennifer 8. Lee. Jenny had attended a Halloween party that Steve and I had thrown at our Somerville home and office, and we hit it off. We discussed the subject of her book proposal, which happened to be, of all things, Chinese food. I managed to impress Jenny with my knowledge of Chinese cuisine, so we got to talking that night and that led to her introduction to Rachel.

  A few days later, Rachel would confess to me that while she initially wanted to write a story about reddit, she felt we’d become friends and that it wouldn’t be professional for her to pursue the story. That was fine by me. No Wired story came from that, but I got a new friend in Rachel, one who happened to mention reddit to her editor at Wired, Kristen Philipkoski. Kristen, the wife of Kourosh Karimkhany, was doing business development for Condé Nast and heard from Rachel about a pair of plucky founders in Boston working on something interesting called reddit.

  And then one day (February 22, 2006, to be precise) this e-mail popped up in my in-box:

  I’m a friend of Rachel Metz. I’m also the director of biz dev for CondéNet, the internet arm of Condé Nast, which, as I’m sure you know, publishes magazines like Wired, GQ, Vogue, New Yorker, Vanity Fair, etc. I’m intrigued with your technology and was hoping to set up a time to talk about possibly working together. I’m open the rest of the day today and Thursday, but will be traveling for a week starting Friday. Do you have time for a phone call? Also, are you based in Boston?

  Little did we know that exactly one year after that fateful party on Halloween, Steve and I would be celebrating the acquisition of our company. As if you needed more reasons to throw a Halloween party. Or eat cannoli.

  Everyone Is the Media

  The traditional public-relations industry model is broken. Good riddance.

  The only time I ever wrote a press release was when Condé Nast made me do it for the announcement of our acquisition, and I wasn’t about to argue with the company that had just bought my company. But the truth is, I’m not certain that press releases are as relevant as they were in the twentieth century.

  These days, everyone you meet is part of the media. Every relationship you enter into, whether it’s with a customer or a writer at The Wall Street Journal, is a long-term investment. No self-respecting journalist wants to feel like all she does is publish press releases as “news,” although some do. The idea that a press release is magically going to compel someone to talk about what you’re working on is absurd. At a time when none of us have enough time to pay attention to all the content the Internet produces, you can be sure the professionals who are pitched every minute of the day certainly don’t have the spare cycles. This means you’re going to have to make yourself known. Here are some things to keep in mind as you do that.

  Be Helpful

  When you’re meeting with a b
usiness contact, especially someone who could do you a favor, take the time to learn about that person—even if only to learn how you can be helpful. You won’t have any trouble finding the online record of whomever you’re looking to pitch—see what she’s been writing about and what she’s interested in. It could be a commonality that’s totally unrelated to your business (“You’re also a ’Skins fan, eh? Haven’t missed a home game in years, unless I was out of the country”) or evidence that she’s been following a trend your startup also rides. Just don’t you dare make shit up.

  If you’ve been doing your job as a founder, by now you should be an expert in your industry (and maybe even in a few others as well). Use that to your advantage when talking to the media. It gives you insights on bigger trends that are valuable to journalists, so be helpful—even if it’s not directly helping you or your company, it is actually still helping you and your company. Anything you can do to help someone else do his or her job better is going to win you that valuable startup karma. Noticing a trend in X meets Y, offer an introduction to some other experts in X meets Y. Be helpful!

  While you’re at it, you may also be collecting or analyzing a lot of data in your march to expertise. These data are valuable. More and more journalism is trending toward data visualization (think bigger than just infographics), and as we get bombarded with more and more data the ability to separate signal from noise and present it in a compelling, easy-to-digest way becomes ever more valuable. Remember the RentHop team from chapter 4? While Lee Lin was getting his broker’s license, he found himself noticing trends. He validated that hunch when he and his co-founder, Lawrence Zhou, started mining mountains of New York rental-price data that revealed everything from how much more people are willing to pay for a doorman to how much less an apartment is worth for every block it sits away from a subway stop. At first, they had no plans to publish any of what they’d learned. Once Lee started promoting RentHop, however, he realized that these data were a tremendous resource. Whether it was a blog post he wrote charting the optimal time of day to search for rentals in New York (spoiler: between 9:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m.)3 or a statistic a journalist could cite for an article, it was a piece of added value that bolstered his company’s reputation as experts in apartment rentals.

  Pitch the Right Journalists the Right Way (by Not Pitching)

  Okay, you’ve found them. Warm introductions to mutual acquaintances from people who know you both well always help, but there’s nothing wrong with a cold pitch. Just be concise. I try to write e-mails in fewer than five sentences. Precision with impact is one of the most effective writing skills one can have. The best way to get coverage is to not pitch your product. Journalists are human beings. Whether they write for [insert your favorite, most venerable news organization here] or they just launched their first blog yesterday, they do not exist just to write about you or your big idea. Sorry, but it’s better you hear it from me now. In order to earn their attention (and their goodwill), you’re going to have to give them something. Pitch by not pitching—be helpful. You know what they’re into, so send them a link to a breaking yet underreported story you think they’d appreciate. If you can introduce them to a fellow founder who’s working in a sector they’re covering, offer it to them. Know they love futuristic watches? Let them know when NOOKA is having a sale. When and if the time comes to make a pitch (you’ll know it when it happens), then do it well.

  Tell Stories Around a “Peg”

  Pardon the jargon, but it’s helpful to know how journalists think. Big trends, things that people are talking about, are “pegs” that you ideally want to anchor to your pitch. It could be as blatant as the Olympics, or it could be more subtle. During the famed billion-dollar acquisition of Instagram by Facebook, Michael Seibel, CEO of SocialCam, a mobile video-sharing app and portfolio company, rode the wave of media attention surrounding the acquisition. It was no surprise that over the next few days, articles buzzed about who would be “Instagram for video.” It didn’t surprise me one bit when SocialCam was there in every discussion.

  Over time you’ll develop an eye for it. If you’re reading about a particular idea that’s got everyone’s attention, find a way to connect your own story to it. If you don’t get written up, or quoted, or appear to have gotten anything in return for your time, don’t fret (and remember what I said about these people not existing to do you a favor). There’s always value in taking the time to meet someone. You shouldn’t always be pitching, anyway. Build long-term relationships and they’ll pay long-term dividends.

  Don’t Forget to Document Your Startup

  Take photos around the office, screenshots of early builds, et cetera. No matter how things turn out, you’ll appreciate having these memories later. In the meantime, it’ll be useful in a blog post or tweet. And if things turn out really well, people will come to really value those behind-the-scenes photos or embarrassing early builds.

  For instance, here’s a photo of Steve and me from just days after we’d launched reddit.

  Photo courtesy of Trevor Blackwell

  Please, please have a decent high-resolution photo of your founders readily available. I’ve had to arrange last-minute photo shoots for founders who were about to land some great press but didn’t have a single decent photo to send. Your smartphone won’t cut it. Borrow the nicest digital camera you can find from your nicest friend and take some photos. If nothing else, you can send them to your mom.

  For good measure, record the stages of your product, too, even if it’s only so you can look back on them with a hearty laugh. No matter how your company turns out, you’ll appreciate having a record of its evolution. I use this first version of reddit as an example of just how embarrassed you should be by your first version.

  Attentive readers will notice I managed to get–1 karma, because Steve is a jerk.

  Once You Get Press, Make a Note of It, Then Get Rid of It

  This has been my policy since the day we finally got a taste of attention from the mainstream media. It was a different Internet back then, and it took me months of hustling to finally get someone to write about us. Oddly enough, it was a British newspaper, The Guardian, that wrote the first story—six months after we’d launched. It was great to see the increase in our traffic when a digital publication would write about us, but there’s something to be said for that palpable version of the news. The Guardian kindly sent us a few print copies. I reread the article, imagining better quotes I could’ve used, and brought it with me on my next trip back home. My parents had hoarded just about everything I did since I was a little kid (only child, remember), and my mom was thrilled to see her son’s name in print (I couldn’t tell her that it was less exciting than digital, which would have enabled us to actually get click-throughs to our site).

  This started a tradition I continue to this day. Even though Mom is gone, I personally send my dad all the press I ever get, because I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to think about it for more than a day. It’s a twenty-four-hour rule. I think I heard a football coach talk about this once in an interview. Feel good about the win for twenty-four hours, and then get your mind off it and think about next week. Same goes for losses, too. But I especially don’t want to dwell on past accomplishments, and I recommend the same for my portfolio companies.

  Complacency, especially in this industry, is toxic. Remember what I said about your milk shake—forget that kindergarten advice and don’t share it.

  Spreadsheets Are Your Friends

  As a startup founder, you’re a cheerleader. You should always have a recent e-mail, or tweet, or quote from one of your users who love you readily at hand. Go a step further and keep a mailing list of those superfans who love you so much they’ve said they’d be willing to be interviewed about your business. List those people on a spreadsheet that you share among your team, and when you encounter a superfan, ask her if she’d be willing to be contacted by the press at some point and have a testimonial on record.

  Each supe
rfan should have his or her own row on your spreadsheet. Establish columns for a favorable quote, home address, occupation, and e-mail address. Always respect a person’s privacy and explain why these tidbits are so helpful; years later, when this list gets long and you’re trying to help a journalist who’s writing about graduate students in the Bronx using [insert your type of product or service here], you can get him connected to the perfect person.

  Keep another spreadsheet for press hits, designating columns for important sort criteria like name, e-mail, publication, a pull quote from the piece, and the URL. This becomes your press contacts list. PR people will brag about the size of these as though they were in a locker room, but, as always, it’s not about size—it’s about how you use it. You’re building relationships. It does not matter how many people you have on this list if none of them give a damn about what you have to say.

  Start small. As I said earlier, it took six months before any mainstream media wrote an article about us, and until then I was reaching out to anyone who had a blog in tech or media. As you grow beyond your niche, you’re going to be forced to connect your idea to bigger trends and find ways to humanize it with real people telling real stories.

  Traction starts with a product people want; as word spreads, you’ll start seeing the week-over-week and month-over-month growth that gets investors pulling out their checkbooks and briefcases full of money.4