Coco Schiffer: 5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Successful App or SaaS
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Stay in your lane and know your target market. Only add features that will continue to drive success for your target market and prioritize those feature requests over fun new ideas to expand the product into different categories.
As a part of our series about the “5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Successful App or SaaS”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Coco Schiffer, Senior Director · Shine Talent Group and The Thread.
Coco Schifer, 27, is the Senior Director of Shine Talent Group and VP of The Thread. The Thread, spearheaded by Schiffer, was launched in November 2023 and is the first management platform for Talent Agencies. Coco lives in NYC and splits time between roles, with a true passion for the Influencer ecosystem.
Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I went to school in Los Angeles and was surrounded by friends who were just starting careers in influencing. Overnight, followings sky-rocketed, and they were being cast for different paid and unpaid partnerships. I offered to help manage these brand collaborations, but quickly realized I didn’t know what I was doing. I luckily found Shine Talent Group and was hired as a Talent Manager in September of 2019, and just over four years later, now the Senior Director.
We saw a significant boom in talent looking for representation during the pandemic and quickly scaled the business — adding 30+ team members essentially overnight. We realized the tech infrastructure to manage a large volume of talent and campaigns was not conducive to our growth. So, I spearheaded building a platform to solve all our problems — meet The Thread.
Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey? Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard?
The Thread was (and still is) a massive undertaking. The sheer amount of data that is collected, analyzed and stored on a minute-by-minute basis is incredibly high, and it needs to run effectively and efficiently. This created a lot of weight as we have huge stakeholders in our team and talent. I never considered giving up — it wasn’t an option. I understand the pain of manual data entry — the human/user error is unavoidable, and the constant feeling of never working fast enough is soul-crushing. I wanted to be at the forefront of the industry creating tech solutions for the people behind the magic you see on your screens — the commonly overlooked talent managers (or puppeteers) working tirelessly to make the talent industry what it is today.
So, how are things going today? How did your grit and resilience lead to your eventual success?
Great question. Things are better than ever! We’re virtual firefighters — there are constantly little fires everywhere, and it’s all a matter of staying calm under pressure, putting things into perspective and pushing forward. I try to handle one little thing at a time, and the things that were once ‘Level 10’ issues, now are a piece of cake. But overall, I love our product, and couldn’t dream up a better team.
It has been said that our mistakes are our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?
During my career in talent management, without proper solutions like The Thread, there was so much information to juggle at any given time and it was only a matter of time before things slipped. One time, I didn’t properly make note of an exclusivity clause in a contract with a water company, and simultaneously signed another contract for a sports-drink company. The talent was set to go live with both collaborations in a one-week time frame, and it was a total disaster. I definitely learned that there had to be a better way to track collaborations so these little things don’t slip through the cracks.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
We constantly hear from talent and prospective team members that there’s just something about our company culture that’s different from the rest. We like to call it the “Shine Vibe.” Our co-founders, Jess Hunichen and Emily Ward, set the tone from day one of collaboration over competition, and that has become the backbone of our company. We may be burned by people who try to ‘get-ahead’ or use us for our kindness, but that does not stop us from being incredibly successful.
Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?
Your motivation for waking up and doing this job every day is more important than anything. If you are not motivated by the outcome and have a very specific thing you’re trying to solve for, you will burn out. There needs to be a motivating factor driving you to get through the hard stuff — your “why.”
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
I’m forever grateful for Jess + Emily taking a chance on me. I was born confident in myself, but it takes very specific co-founders to trust and feel confident in their employees, to let them do their job. I don’t work well with micro-managing, and they saw that in me from day one, and allowed me to take this role and run with it. I put my hand up to spearhead The Thread and since that day, they have trusted my judgment, leadership and vision to make the product what it is today.
Ok, thank you for all that. Now let’s shift to the main focus of this interview. Approximately how many users or subscribers does your app or software currently have? Can you share with our readers three of the main steps you’ve taken to build such a large community?
We currently have 80+ talent managers and 150+ talent using the platform on a day-to-day basis. We only launched to market just under a month ago and have 5 new agencies in the pipeline to sign on early next year. Three main steps include:
- Beta is crucial — test, retest, have your parents learn and test… the works.
- It will take twice the amount of time and twice the amount of money but don’t rush.
- You will create a “first of its kind” product, and there will be competition. Put your focus on collaboration over competition — if you believe in the product, there will be a consumer out there for you.
What is your monetization model? How do you monetize your community of users? Have you considered other monetization options? Why did you not use those?
Our users are able to pay on a monthly or yearly basis for a reduced cost. Companies pay by user and are not penalized for interns or finance team members. We went back and forth about a million times on the best way to incentivize companies to invest in this software, understanding the value of having a product like The Thread and efficiency it will provide to the organization as a whole, without blowing them out of the water.
Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things one should know in order to create a very successful app or a SaaS?
- Your team matters more than you know. If you have a gut feeling someone you hired is not working out, cut them loose as soon as possible — the longer you wait, the harder it will be in the long run.
- Good developers are hard to find — the good ones are expensive, but worth it. Spend the majority of your budget on developers, one front end and one back end, to expedite the process. The cheaper the developer, the longer it will take to get your product to market.
- Don’t sweat the competition. There will be others who go to market before you, after you, at the same time, but it doesn’t matter — there’s room for everyone!
- Your energy matters — if you walk into work feeling upset or defeated, your team will follow. Take time for yourself, reposition your motivation and continue to press on, remembering to remember your “why”.
- Stay in your lane and know your target market. Only add features that will continue to drive success for your target market and prioritize those feature requests over fun new ideas to expand the product into different categories.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
The power of wellness walks to refocus energy and attention. On the days when I’m overwhelmed or feel like everything is going wrong, I force myself to put on my sneakers and venture outside — even if it’s just for 5 minutes. 100% of the time, I come back with a different perspective or attitude, and it makes all the difference.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
@cocoschiffer, @shinetalentgroup and @thethread on Instagram!
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
