Wisdom Shared From

16 min readOct 20, 2014

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78 Tech Trailblazers

Three weeks ago I graduated from the growth track at Tradecraft. It’s a three month program that prepares individuals for traction roles at high growth startups. (See my post How Twitter Changed My Life on my decision to join Tradecraft.)

One of my favorite aspects of the program was the five mentor sessions each week. I love meeting new people, learning about their backgrounds, and the decisions they’ve made that led to where they are today.

I also sent out cold emails to people with backgrounds I’d like to emulate. These cold emails resulted in over 50 coffee meetings. I also met dozens of people through attending the Brit + Co Re:Make Conference and Women 2.0 Conference.

My lack of fear sending cold emails stems from my background of journalism at Convent of the Sacred Heart High School. My teacher required we have three different sources for every story, meaning that I’d have to speak with dozens of people to get my quotes.

Since I’ve learned so much over the past three months from people I’ve met, I wanted to share a few takeaways. Here’s the outline:

On Growth (Josh Elman, Sean Ellis, Brian Balfour, Gustaf Alstromer, Zack Onisko, Melody McCloskey, Laura Klein, Ada Chen Rekhi, Ryan Delk, Arjun Naskar, Katelyn Watson, Aarthi Ramamurthy, Danny Moy, and Jordan Koene)
Share Feedback (Maya Grinberg, Cathy Vigrass, Randi Zuckerberg, and Krithika Muthukumar)
On Networking & Friendships (Brit Morin, Dave Morin, Julia Hartz, Hiten Shah, Alexander Tibbets, Amanda Pouchot, Perri Blake Gorman, and Frederik Hermann)
On Leadership (Xochi Birch, Dave Morin, Doug Landis, Sean Sheppard, Misha Chellam, Lisa Falzone, James Proud, Raz Roman, Tristan Pollock, and Erica Brescia)
On Investing & Fundraising (Dave Morin, Hunter Walk, Crystal McKellar, Victoria Ransom, Pascal Levy-Garboua, Amit Kumar, Jessica Mah, and Thomas Korte)
How to Approach Learning (Kathy Savitt, Irene Au, Xochi Birch, LJ Kwak, Graham Hunter, John Barrows, Jenna White, Sofia Pessanha, and Shawn Plunkett)
How Startups Evolve (Danielle Morrill, Roy Bahat, Gagan Biyani, Jack Mardack, Jocelyn Goldfein, Jenny Morrill, Lisa Falzone, John Eagan, Arjun Naskar, and Elena Grewal)
Advice on Finding a Job (Sam Shank, Jared Fliesler, Sheana O’Sullivan, Russell Klusas, Matt Ellsworth, Elli Sharef, and Lauren Vingiano)
Be Creative (Cathy Vigrass, Camille Ricketts, and David Nihill)
On Personal Development (Jared Fliesler, Libby Leffler, Chris Kim, Joshua Scott, Andrea Soto, and Santiago Merea)
On Being a Woman in Tech (Sheryl Sandberg, Lauren Kay, Mona Sabet, and Sofia Pessanha)

“If you’re offered a seat on a rocketship, don’t ask what seat.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

On Growth

The most valuable growth tactic at Twitter was calling people. We asked why they signed up, why they left, and what they are using it for now.
Find out what the people that keep returning are doing. A reverend started tweeting, and then the congregants felt closer to the church. A clown was using Twitter as a contact management system.
Tweet this

I ask users, would they be able to live without this product?
Tweet this

Focus, in any respect — whether it’s a growth strategy, product strategy, or life strategy. Pick something, work on it for a substantial period of time, and reflect on it.
I am always asking why, why, why.
Tweet this
Best practices can be disproven at any time, and need to be changed.

**Gustaf Alstromer**
Airbnb, Growth Product Manager

It is better to have 100 users that love you, instead of 1,000 users who kind of love you. If you find people who love you, you can work backwards and find out why they love you.
Think of your product in terms of problems. It is easy to improve things that are already working than to start new things.
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**Zack Onisko**
Autodesk, Head of Growth & Marketing

What is going to move the needle the most in the shortest amount of time?
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**Melody McCloskey**
StyleSeat, Co-founder & CEO

Advice from mentor Travis Kalanick, Uber CEO: When I was thinking about my first year of business, he asked about year two and three. How could we cut months to execute the vision?
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**Laura Klein**
Hint Health, VP of Product

Watch people use your product over and over again.
People focus heavily on quant. Know where people are coming out of the funnel, and also why.
Tweet this

**Ada Chen Rekhi**
Survey Monkey, Product & Online Marketing

For growth connoisseurs, sign up for a bunch of startups and do nothing. See what happens and how the startups respond.
Tweet this

Before when Gumroad sellers made over $1,000, I’d write them a handwritten “thank you” card. Now we send “thank you” baskets when sellers hit sales

amounts. Referrals are because people love Gumroad.
Tweet this

Detroit is a loss for Uber. They keep it because people expect to use Uber when traveling.
Tweet this
If you can afford to expand a company, do it. If not, find a way.
Tweet this

Tweet at newspapers about a great article they wrote about your company. They’ll retweet it because it was their article. Then your page views will increase!
Tweet this

**Aarthi Ramamurthy**
Lumoid, Founder & CEO

Without the customer, there is no product. Tweet this
Make a few micro changes at the same time to compare different customer responses.

**Danny Moy**
King, VP Partnerships & Business Operations

Specialize your product to the local market.
Tweet this

**Jordan Koene**
Searchmetrics, Chief Evangelist

The smartest person in the room says, instead of developing new content, let’s remove content.
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Share Feedback

**Maya Grinberg**
Wealthfront, Director of Marketing

Maya was an early Wealthfront user (and joined when it was called KaChing). She loved the service, and would often send ideas. One day they reached out to her about joining the team.

**Cathy Vigrass**
Sosh, Business Development

Engage in conversations on Twitter with people you want to work with. Then they’ll recognize your name, and hopefully a coffee meetup will be next! Tweet this
Cathy tweeted at the Sosh founders a few times (without the aim for a job). One time she tweeted a photo of her wearing a Jawbone and a Misfit wearable device, and the CEO of Sosh responded about meeting up.

**Randi Zuckerberg**
Zuckerberg Media, CEO
DotComplicated, Editor
SiriusXM, Radio Host

Tell your boss if your work isn’t challenging. At Randi’s first job after Harvard, she primarily made photocopies for a year. She finally spoke with her boss, who never realized that she wasn’t being challenged enough.
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**Krithika Muthukumar**
Stripe, Product Marketing

Stripe is transparent. They -cc a list on every email. This allows them to get input faster and work evolves faster. Advice: get input often and early.
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On Networking & Friendships

The people who are tweeting at me, I see their faces and we’re building a relationship. Tweeting at people is the new cold call.
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**Dave Morin**
Path, Co-founder & CEO
Investor

While working at Apple, Dave would go into Steve Jobs’s office to chat. No one else would.
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**Julia Hartz**
Eventbrite, Co-founder & President

Humans need to connect offline to live a fulfilling life. Live experiences have increased in value.
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**Hiten Shah**
KISSmetrics, Co-founder
Crazy Egg, Co-founder

Networking is not about researching a person's background. It's about seeing what they are into now — on Twitter, blogs, etc.
Tweet this

Be a luncher. Networking helps with recruiting, building partnerships, getting VC funding, and having a network also means that you have people to go to when you have questions.
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**Amanda Pouchot**
Levo League, Co-founder

Amanda stressed the importance of having a supporter. She had two great supporters while working at McKinsey, who made intros for some of Levo League’s initial funding. The investors trusted Amanda’s supporters, and knew that she must be amazing since she had their support.
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**Perri Blake Gorman**
Archively, Founder & CEO

Introductions are great. Social proof is better.
Tweet this
Front load all relationships.
Study who you want to be like.
If you don’t have something to offer a person, you can pay attention.
Tweet this
Don’t apply for jobs on job boards. Use your network.

**Frederik Hermann**
Jawbone, Director of Growth

Build a brand identity around yourself. You are not attached to a company. Build your identity around your full name. Use the same picture across social media so people can recognize you.
Tweet this

On Leadership

**Xochi Birch**
The Battery, Co-founder
Monkey Inferno, Co-founder
Bebo, Co-founder

Xochi was happy she didn’t reach success until her early 30s. By then she had already developed as a person, and the money didn’t go to her head. The day after she and Michael sold Bebo,
they saw Forgetting Sarah Marshall in the middle of the day!

You’ve achieved success when you can deal with a challenge quickly.
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**Doug Landis**
Box, VP of Sales and Productivity

Give a meeting schedule, otherwise management will take it over. Provide a recap, purpose, plan, and outcome.
Tweet this

**Sean Sheppard**
Tradecraft, Sales & BD Instructor

It’s Not About You. Your success is measured by the success of your people. Tweet this
MBWA (Management By Walking Around). Tweet this

**Misha Chellam**
Tradecraft, Co-founder

On time arrival — it matters.
Tweet this

**Lisa Falzone**
Revel Systems, Co-founder & CEO

Read books about others who you want to emulate.
Tweet this

Be skeptical about everything.
Tweet this
Delegate tasks.

No one knows your company better than you do.
Tweet this

**Tristan Pollock**
Storefront, Co-founder & COO

I’m constantly taking on and pulling off layers — just like a rattlesnake. I’m shifting responsibilities.
Tweet this

**Erica Brescia**
BitNami, Co-founder & COO

Outsource anything that is not imperative to the business.
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On Investing & Fundraising

Tell everyone about what you’re interested in. Dave really likes drones, so he often tweets about them — and gets many inbound offers about investing in drone companies.
Tweet this

It’s a seed period, not a seed round. Tweet this
Set a timeline for fundraising, just like a product or feature.
Tweet this
Capital is a lagging indicator. Talent is a leading indicator.
Tweet this

**Crystal McKellar**
Mithril Capital, Managing Director

When you raise a round, make sure you ask for the amount that you truly need so that you’re not back in the market seeking additional funding every six months. To be successful, CEO’s need to be focused on product and growing their businesses, not on raising money.

**Victoria Ransom**
Google, Director of Product
Wildfire Interactive, Founder & CEO (acquired by Google)

Before, Victoria advised entrepreneurs to bootstrap. In the current environment, she encourages to raise as much, as fast as you can — or else your competitors will!

**Pascal Levy-Garboua**
SixDoors, Co-founder & CEO

I invest in what I know. My goal is to learn more about something I like.
Tweet this

**Amit Kumar**
Cardspring, Co-founder (acquired by Twitter)

Fundraising is necessary, but not important. Fundraising is oxygen. You need it to live, but that’s not the point of living.
Tweet this
The day you get money from the guy who doesn’t owe you anything is the day you know you have something. Tweet this

**Jessica Mah**
inDinero, Co-founder & CEO

Use a whiteboard to generate ways to make money. Ideas don’t just come to you.
Tweet this

If an investor says it sounds interesting — they absolutely hate you!
Tweet this

How to Approach Learning

Never refuse knowledge. Someone is giving you a free gift. Few things in life are free. They are giving you the truth that’s important enough to waste their breath. Tweet this
Don’t hand over your mental real estate. Kathy would ask Marissa Mayer what she thinks about article X about herself. Her response: “I don’t read them. Margaret Thatcher said it put her off balance so she never read them.”

**Irene Au**
Khosla Ventures, Operating Partner

What are you curious about? As long as you are growing and learning, you will be thriving. The kiss of death is when you are no longer learning.
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You learn more from mistakes than you do from successes.
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Sales is a science, not an art.
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**LJ Kwak**
Director of Sales & Product at Getting More Inc.

My big requirement is to work with someone worldclass, so I’ll really learn a lot.
During LJ’s last semester of business school, she took Wharton’s most desired course — negotiation with Stuart Diamond. Now she’s working with him.

**Graham Hunter**
Tradecraft, Growth Instructor

(Graham’s response when asking him a question) I don’t know — you tell me!
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**Jenna White**
HotelTonight, Florida General Manager

Have direction on what you want to learn in a position.

**Sofia Pessanha**
Unbabel, Co-founder & CMO

Learning is what you get when you don’t get what you want.
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**Shawn Plunkett**
Tradecraft, Personal Development Coach

Appreciative inquiry process: Identify what works well right now. Imagine where you want yourself and team to be in the future. Innovate a way to get to what you imagine.

How Startups Evolve

**Danielle Morrill**
Mattermark, Co-founder & CEO

I wanted to call BS on what's BS. It's fun to make everyone angry, because then you find out what's important to them.
You can’t write about rumors and gossip — but you can write about data.
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Process is like salt. A little bit goes a long way. I say, have as little process as necessary and then add more. You want the process to emerge with the complexity of a company.
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**Gagan Biyani**
Sprig, Co-founder & CEO

Sprig started with ordering through Eventbrite, a physical map to pinpoint orders, and manually texting customers and drivers about orders.
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**Jack Mardack**
Chartcube, Head of Growth

Jack was Eventbrite’s first Head of Marketing. He noticed events being indexed, which led to the creation of the directory. They allowed custom vanity URLs.

**Jocelyn Goldfein**
Former Facebook Engineering Director

The Facebook web to mobile transition took a year. It wasn’t a coding issue, it was challenging because of the culture change.
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**Jenny Morrill**
Move Loot, Co-founder & CMO

Prioritize. Jenny wishes they improved upon some of the more basic tasks at the beginning, such as having high quality photos.

Interviewing people is a way to get an idea. Don’t just wait for an idea to come — go after it.
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**John Eagan**
Pinterest, Growth Engineer

Pinterest tried to re-engage non-active users with a sound notification. Surprisingly, it had no effect.
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NYC was the fifth city Homejoy expanded to. Their cleaning caddies fit through San Francisco's BART, but we learned the hard way that they didn’t fit through NYC’s subway!
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People are afraid about writing anything negative, so Airbnb recently launched double blind reviews, to test if people would submit more reviews. You can only read your guest/host’s review after you have written yours. As a result of the change, review rates have skyrocketed because people wanted to know what other people wrote about them.

Advice on Finding a Job

**Sam Shank**
Hotel Tonight, Co-founder & CEO

Take a risk, even in a downturn in the economy.
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**Jared Fliesler**
General Partner, Matrix Partners

It doesn’t matter if a company is hiring. If you want to work there, reach out to the founders and CEO. Offer to clean the floor or help in any capacity.
Tweet this
Be visible. Work on what the CEO cares about. Your job is to make your boss’s job easier. Tweet this

**Sheana O’Sullivan**
Tile, Head of Business Development

When you are no longer learning from those who you are working with, it is time to change roles.
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**Russell Klusas**
Tradecraft, Co-founder

If you want to be an expert at growth, you need to study under a growth expert.
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**Matt Ellsworth**
Former Storefront, VP of Growth

Create content around a subject area where you want to work.
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Do not focus on the specific job, company, title, or salary. They don’t matter. What matters is who will teach you when you start learning. Interview your boss. Tweet this

**Lauren Vingiano**
Product/Business Development at Canary

If you find someone and you believe in their mission — it doesn’t matter what your role is. I followed that advice, and it’s been fabulous.
Tweet this

Be Creative

Cathy waited in line for the opening of Apple in London, and her photo was in the papers. So when she sent her thank you card after interviewing at Apple, she included the image!

**Camille Ricketts**
First Round Capital, Editor

The most effective pieces of marketing shows you how life could be.
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Add comedy to presentations to make them more memorable.
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On Personal Development

If you’re not drowning, you’re not working hard enough. You just have to know when to get out of the pool.
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**Libby Leffler**
Facebook, Strategic Partnerships Manager

People have to know you well to give you good/useful advice.
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Always ask for feedback.
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Don’t think of those above or below you too much. It is so easy for success to come and go.
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Be humble, do your best, and go the extra mile to support the people who hired you.
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**Andrea Soto**
Mastercard, Chief of Staff,
President of Operations & Technology

Every time I would fail, it made me competitive. It made me valuable. It made me successful.
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**Santiago Merea**
The Orange Chef Co., Founder & CEO

Keep a journal. It will be fun to look back on after a year.
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On Being a Woman in Tech

**Lauren Kay**
The Dating Ring, Founder & CEO

There was a study done that showed it is easiest for attractive men to get funding, then unattractive men, then unattractive women, and lastly, attractive women.

Most investors are male, and not all — but some — do treat female founders differently from male founders. When most seed fundraising is based on initial gut instincts, these subconscious biases against women can make fundraising a lot harder.

Lauren had to turn down funding because of inappropriate behavior.

Women get more and better promotions within three years if they are active in 2–3 women’s groups. Tweet this
But if women aren’t active in any groups, or if they are involved in ten groups — then it’s not likely they’ll be promoted.

The problem isn’t about men vs. women — it’s about business vs. tech.
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Thank you to everyone who answered my cold emails, and met with me to share your stories and answer my questions. The list goes on for people I’d like to meet, but unfortunately time is limited.

Feel free to reach out on Twitter: @inaherlihy.