Social Impact Tech: Andrew Horn of Tribute On How Their Technology Will Make An Important Positive Impact

Tribute is the global leader in helping people to create group video montages that can be given as gifts. To date, we have helped our customers to share more than 5,000,000 messages of appreciation, love and gratitude with their friends, family and coworkers.

In recent years, Big Tech has gotten a bad rep. But of course many tech companies are doing important work making monumental positive changes to society, health, and the environment. To highlight these, we started a new interview series about “Technology Making An Important Positive Social Impact”. We are interviewing leaders of tech companies who are creating or have created a tech product that is helping to make a positive change in people’s lives or the environment. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Andrew Horn.

Andrew Horn, co-founder and CEO of Tribute.co, a personalized group video platform, is a social entrepreneur, speaker, writer and communication expert. Prior to founding Tribute, Andrew founded two non-profits, Dreams for Kids D.C.and AbilityList, launched The Intrigue Agency and contributed to media outlets like Mind Body Green and The Big Think. Andrew is a TEDx speaker and has spoken at conferences at the United Nations, for universities like NYU and Fortune 500 brands.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory and how you grew up?

Thanks so much for having me! I was born and raised in Hawaii. My time there really shaped who I am and how I want to contribute in the world as an entrepreneur.

I had the really unique experience of receiving a lot of racial discrimination and bullying for being a white kid, or “haole” as the locals would say. It ultimately led to a lot of loneliness and feeling like an outsider.

The loneliness that I experienced led me to focus on my studies and extracurricular activities like sports to fit in and find some semblance of belonging, which I never really felt until I moved away from Hawaii to Washington D.C. for high school.

This challenging experience molded my passion for human connection and helping people. The pain of not having deep friendships and community has informed pretty much everything I have done professionally. If you look at my businesses, writing and speaking, it is mostly focused on helping people to feel confident, start conversations and connect with ease.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

The most interesting would probably be how my company tribute.co managed to 20X our revenue and become an INC500 company 6 years into running the company.

On March 5th 2020, our company had 7 full time employees, By the end of July, we had nearly 100 people working for the company full time.

This INC article shared the story in depth — https://www.inc.com/emily-canal/tribute-weddings-birthdays-coronavirus-pandemic.html

The whole experience was an important lesson in a few things.

1. Do something you really care about. A sense of purpose is the most sustainable source of motivation that we have. Without it, it will be hard to navigate the trials and tribulations that are required to hit your inflection moment. That was certainly true for me and Tribute.
2. It takes 5 years to be an overnight success. Don’t compare yourself to others, take small, consistent actions in the right direction and have faith that things will come together in good time. Learn to enjoy the process and you’ll never have regrets.

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 about that?

My first real mentor was a coach named Stever Robins. Stever was the first person who really asked me deep questions about my passions and purpose.

He gave me the space to realize that I didn’t really know what I cared about, what my values were or what I wanted from life.

This led me to start asking bigger questions which allowed me to gain a deeper understanding of who I was and what types of careers would likely be fulfilling to me.

That led to me becoming a social entrepreneur and starting my first organization in my free-time at the ripe age of 22 :)

Big lesson here…don’t tell people what to do, ask them big questions that let them figure out what to do for themselves.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“Ultimately, people will do the things that align with who they think they are.”

To live a fulfilling life and find the energy we need to accomplish what is most meaningful for us, the most important thing we can do is understand who we are.

The way we do that is by defining our values, passions and how we want to contribute in the world.

Here are three questions that I believe will help you to move closer to discovering purpose in your own life:

Goals — What do I want to achieve that is tangible?

This relates to what you want to accomplish. It could be running a marathon, buying a house or getting a dream job. When we are focused on achievement, it is vital that we pair that with an understanding of why we want it. This will make sure that we truly want what we say we want. Oftentimes, things we think we want are actually the dreams or desires of other people or society at large.

Passion — What brings me energy and lights me up?

To identify your passions, I always encourage people to think of the Three C’s: Causes — what are the causes that you care about (i.e. environmental, social justice, education etc.); Curiosity — What are the things that you enjoy learning about in your free time?; Communities — Who are the groups of people that you are called to support? This could be a fraternity or sorority, your country, or your hometown. When you have identified these things, give as much of your free time and energy to them as possible. You don’t need it to be your job to build a career in your desired space. You can volunteer, mentor, intern for someone who inspires you. There are plenty of ways to break through. But most people don’t figure it out because it requires a lot of hard work.

Skills — What skills do I want to hone and get really good at?

This is all about the skills that you find it meaningful and rewarding to develop: athletic, musical, professional, etc. For me, it is speaking, facilitation, experience design and leadership / coaching. When we hone our skills, we are more valuable to the market and we increase our ability to impact the world and organizations we work with. It can also be purely recreational and fun for you.

When we are clear on those things, it becomes much easier to take action that is moving us towards the living that is intrinsically rewarding and fulfilling for us.

This awareness became clear to me after I graduated from college

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

Resourcefulness — This is the ability to figure out problems that don’t have direct instructions attached to them. At my first company, we had a policy called GTS, it literally stood for “Google That Shit” and we encouraged everyone to GTS before they asked anyone a question. It worked incredibly well.

Curiosity — If you are genuinely curious, you can find something to say in any room. Harnessing my curiosity allowed me to get over the self-consciousness that I felt as a young entrepreneur and helped me to create deeper, longer lasting relationships that helped my businesses and community to thrive. Practice the golden rule of questions, ask people questions you would want to be asked yourself.

Seek to serve — Remember that famous line in Glengarry Glen Ross “ABC, always be closing!” Fuck that. The saying should be “ABC, always be contributing.” In any conversation or connection, come with a mindset of wanting to be helpful. Even when I was young and didn't have a lot to offer in terms of resources or connections, I would always ask the question and offer my time to support people who were more successful than me. This intention was authentic and deeply felt and it opened up a lot of doors and opportunities for my young businesses.

Outside of doing this because you’ll likely be more successful, helping others is the quickest way to feel good about yourself, it just makes sense if you want to be happy.

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about the tech tools that you are helping to create that can make a positive social impact on our society. To begin, what problems are you aiming to solve?

Today’s internet, and the way society interacts with it, leaves us more connected to each other than ever before. Yet, we don’t feel connected. Despite these endless opportunities for connection, people feel lonelier than ever before. More than 50% of millennials identify as consistently lonely in a recent Cigna study.

I think one of the biggest problems our society faces is that we lack the skills and opportunities to have meaningful conversation. Meaningful conversation lays the foundation for feelings of connection and greater understanding, which isn’t always shared with the people in our lives. I Co-founded Tribute as a way to help solve this problem and give people a platform to easily share appreciation and gratitude with their loved ones. Sharing appreciation is just one aspect of meaningful conversation, but it is one of the most accessible and impactful that we know of.

When people know what they mean to us, it is easier to reciprocate that appreciation and feel safe in the relationship. This safety begets trust, which leads to meaningful human connection.

How do you think your technology can address this?

Tribute is the global leader in helping people to create group video montages that can be given as gifts. To date, we have helped our customers to share more than 5,000,000 messages of appreciation, love and gratitude with their friends, family and coworkers.

Our platform provides the container for meaningful digital conversation. We don’t just invite Tribute users to say happy birthday or thank you, each of our Tribe montages encourages users to answer meaningful prompts like…

- What are your favorite things about x?

- What is your favorite memory with x?

- What do you love most about x?

We had a 20x spike in users when the pandemic hit since Tribute helps individuals to stay connected virtually on a much deeper level — especially during a time in which we needed it most. We’ve been so pleased to see consistent growth since March of 2020 as we’ve begun to reach more users that see just how inspiring gifting meaningful and personalized videos like this can be.

It is time for technologists and the architects of our digital universe to align our success metrics around contributing real value to our end users, not just our ability to make money. When we focus on aligning our values with those of our users, technology can be a powerful force for meaningful human connection and Tribute is just one shining example of that. Check out the Center for Human Tech (of which we are a member) for more.

Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?

We founded Tribute in 2013 after my then girlfriend, now wife, Miki compiled a video montage for my birthday with 20 of my closest friends and family telling me how I’ve impacted their lives. It was the most meaningful gift I had ever received. After learning how difficult it was for Miki to make the video, we had the idea to create a web platform that easily allowed users to compile, create and share personalized videos. We took a process that took her 15 hours, and turned it into one that takes 15-minutes.

I’d always been passionate about meaningful conversation and connecting people — so when I received the video montage, I had a very easy “lightbulb” moment and I knew this was something I wanted to share with the world.

How do you think this might change the world?

I think we got the idea of the “eulogy” wrong. Why do we wait until the end of someone’s life to tell them how much they mean to us?

Tribute is normalizing the idea that every special occasion, from birthdays, to weddings to anniversaries are important opportunities to share our appreciation with the people we care about. We are showing that sharing our appreciation is one of the easiest and most effective ways to connect more deeply with friends, family and coworkers.

Here’s our Manifesto…

Growing up, we were always told, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all.”

What if we turned that on its head? What if we taught this instead?

If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all

If you have anything nice to say, say it all.

If you’ve learned from someone, let them know.

If someone helps you, thank them.

If someone makes you smile, say so.

If you love someone, tell them why.

Something magical happens when we tell the people in our lives exactly what they mean to us.

In an instant, they feel they matter, that they are enough.

Yet, we don’t do it enough. We forget or tell ourselves we’ll do it someday.

And all too often that day never comes.

We can change this.

We can share our gratitude and celebrate those who make life worth living.

We can do it every day.

We will never regret the appreciation we give, only the stuff we’ve left unsaid.

Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?

No — We have an ethical pay per use model, don’t sell our user’s data and are deeply committed to providing a service that our customers and users love. As of today, 82% of our customers cry tears of joy, that’s an actual stat. 99% of Tribute users say they feel more connected to their community after using Tribute.

Here is the main question for our discussion. Based on your experience and success, can you please share “Five things you need to know to successfully create technology that can make a positive social impact”? (Please share a story or an example, for each.)

1. Answer the question “why does the world need this?”

Make it bigger than what YOU want to do. Get real and see whether or not this is something that the world really needs.

Is anyone else doing it?

If everything goes right, how will the world be better off for it?

2. What is your unique value proposition?

Copy cat companies don’t change the world. If you want to succeed, you need to be crystal clear on how you are different/better than your competitors and anyone else in your market.

3. How does this sustainably make money? Charity is not sustainable

One of the frequent shortfalls of social entrepreneurs is they take the charity model into the business world. When your bottom line is tied to social impact, making money is a good thing for all involved and it is vital that you are crystal clear about knowing what your product or service is worth and gleefully selling it to the world.

If your impact is truly important, you owe it to your mission to nail your business model up front.

4. Talk to your customers and make sure the problem you are solving is important to them.

A little bit of research goes a very long way. Talk to your customers early and ask them what they think about what you are doing.

Does it make sense?

Do they want it?

If not, what do they want?

How much will they pay for it etc.

5. Focus

If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?

Before I committed my life to service I was lost, I felt unworth and like I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.

What I learned early on is that if I could help one person, I knew my life had value, that I mattered.

If you want to know that your life matters, that you are here for a reason, commit yourself to supporting the people, communities and causes that are important to you.

You will never regret the time that you spend committed in the service of something greater than yourself. If you want to feel good, help someone else to feel good.

Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :-)

At the moment, I’d have to say Lex Friedman. For no other reason other than I appreciate really smart people who care a lot about love and that seems to be his modus operandi. Would love to talk to him about human connection and how we can communicate online and off to connect more deeply.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Check out our website, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. I also share updates on my personal social channels, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter.

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success in your important work.