We get by with a little help from our friends
From one rocket ship to another
“There are no strangers, only friends you have not met yet.”
Flashback to August 11, 2010: SendGrid was celebrating its first anniversary of being a real company. To commemorate that momentous occasion, I decided to write something on the internet. I published that writing as my first contribution to the SendGrid blog.
Fast forward to August 15, 2014: That’s today, aka one-thousand four-hundred and sixty-five (1,465) days later. And today, it is with a healthy mixture of exhilaration and sadness that I publish my final contribution.
Going forward, you will not find my name on the SendGrid org chart, but I’ll always consider myself part of the team. Because of the breadth and magnitude of emotions that accompany this milestone, I’ve taken some time to reflect upon the last five years and share with you some of the thoughts that made themselves most noticeable between the synapses of my grey matter.
While I’m selfishly motivated to write this as a form of “closure” for my own peace of mind, I hope the message is valuable to our readers, and just maybe it will be received by some in the same heartfelt manner in which it was composed.
Good People
I met the founders of SMTPAPI.com in May, 2009. Isaac, Jose, and Tim Jenkins had been accepted into Techstars and moved two-thirds of the company to Boulder, CO. I had just finished my first year of graduate school, and decided to take an unpaid internship and forfeit my first sunny Colorado summer, in lieu of hanging out in the basement of an ugly building in downtown Boulder — emerging from “the Bunker” occasionally for a Salvaggio’s sandwich and a dose of vitamin D.
Isaac told me very soon after I met him that he wanted to build a team of people with whom he could always work — not only at SendGrid, but at the next company and the company after that. That resonated with me, and it made me want to work with him. The founders of this company are good people.
It dawned on me recently, after evangelising SendGrid for 4+ years, that one doesn’t solely evangelize a product or a company; we evangelize the people behind the company; the humans who design, build, support, and distribute the product. Our product solves our customers’ problems. Our people make our customers happy.
Those happy customers are part of the most important group of people in this story: our community. It’s composed of people who care about what we’re doing, support us unwaveringly, and make our jobs more fun. I’ve made friends with customers, investors, partners, hackers, hustlers, and hipsters. We’re very lucky to be working with all of you good people.
Plus Strong Relationships
Back in the day, I had just added the word “startup” to my vocabulary, I’d never tweeted a tweet, and SMTP could’ve just as easily stood for Send Mail To People.
Today, I’ve mentored hundreds of startups from 25 countries and 45+ cities; tweeted 8,600 tweets (a few of them meaningful); and learned more than I ever imagined I’d know about email (what’s that? SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol?!)
I attribute all my learning within this chapter of life to the relationships I’ve built and that others have built with me. From classmates, to mentors, to coworkers, to community members — you’ve all imparted some piece of knowledge or wisdom to help me be better than I was when I started.
SendGrid got it’s start at Techstars, which is a mentorship-driven model dependent on relationships. SendGrid acquired many of its early customers and partners, like Foursquare, SlideShare, and Heroku, despite being a small startup with no track record. We were able to do so thanks to relationships with people who would vouch for us. The entire developer relations program that we’ve created at SendGrid has centered around the idea that
relationships > leads
clicks < hugs
It’s become inarguably clear to me that everything in business — and in life for that matter — is driven by relationships. If you make friends by helping good people, those good people will help you back.
Equals Fun…
My five-year journey through the world of email has been nothing less than incredible. It started as a casual jaunt down a side street of my career, just to see what was happening in this neighborhood we call the interwebs. That took a sharp turn up-and-to-the-right, launching me/us down a jet-fueled path around the globe and back again…and again. In fact, we’ve flown the equatorial circumference of Earth 70 times, all in the name of helping developers, entrepreneurs, and community leaders achieve more.
It’s a lot of fun to see the world. But what’s more fun is to connect with people, to empower the developers and entrepreneurs with whom we interact, and to be part of delivering almost 300 billion emails. And it’s fun to know that the invaluable relationships forged over years past will continue to drive SendGrid and our community toward continued success in the foreseeable future.
Comma Success
In June 2011, we set out to foster a community. Today I’m happy to say that we achieved that goal. The credit for our success does not belong to me, but to all the people who’ve been bound together through all those relationships. I’m honored to have worked with some of the most inspiring and uplifting humans I could ever hope to call friends and colleagues. Together, we’ve assembled and matured into one of the most respected and appreciated Developer Relations teams in the world. And we’ve done so by helping hundreds of thousands of people and putting tens of thousands of SendGrid-blue t-shirts on the backs of women and men of 40+ nationalities.
What had just become a real company in 2009 has now grown to employ nearly 250 people that band together every day to send 2% of the world’s wanted email. I couldn’t feel more comfortable with this move, because the baton is squarely situated in the fully capable hands that brought about all this goodness in the first place.
So, why go and what’s next?
My team is like family — and that’s no exaggeration. My company has given me the world — a regular paycheck, a sense of purpose, an open ended travel-voucher, benefits out the wazoo, and a path to personal professional growth.
Any partially sane person might consider this a dream job. Why then would I walk away?
The answer is pretty simple: PEOPLE.
As amazing as one person or group of people may be, there are so many amazing humans in the world with whom to build relationships and become friends and coworkers. The great thing about relationships is that strong ones can span time and distance. I couldn’t have built a stronger bond with the people at SendGrid, and I know with 100% confidence that we’ll continue to work together in some capacity. With that in mind, it’s much easier to leap into a less certain scenario, where new relationships must be built in order to reach the same level of contentedness.
Next month, after a bit of rest and some time off-the-grid, I’ll be back at it — just wearing a different t-shirt. The new shirt will have a fancy triangle on it. And below the triangle will be the letters K-E-E-N-I-O. I’m joining a brilliant group of data scientists and their friends, and as their VP of Community I’ll be helping to build more relationships and help more people.
Why Keen IO? Again, the answer is easy: PEOPLE.
Keen is a SendGrid partner, a fellow Techstars alumni, and a fellow 500 Startups portfolio company. Keen values its people and those around the company just as SendGrid does. And conveniently for this story, the relationships forged between the two companies and our common friends has led to this opportunity for me to continue growing and learning and having a positive impact, while keeping it in the family.
I can’t wait to see where this new adventure takes us. I look forward to seeing lots of new and familiar faces along the way.
If we bump into each other — online or offline — say, “Hi!” I’ll say, “Hi!” back. And if we’re lucky enough to be IRL, maybe there’ll be a hug and/or a high-five involved, too.
Wanna get in touch? Email me at [email protected] [dot] email or find me on the interwebs.
Originally published on my old Wordpress blog on August 15, 2014.
