ARIELLE SCOTT

Only when I’m dancing

The beat slows down and the DJ starts to fade in a classic, Bucie featuring Black Coffee, crooning over a barely there soul mix. The dark walls of the tiny basement glisten with sweat. It’s just you and her voice for a few seconds.

Then, the beat trickles in slow giving you rollercoaster-style butterflies in your stomach. You’re certain your New Balances are untied but there’s no way that will stop you from doing what you came to do. 

Your feet move with little direction as a circle forms around those that get it and those that will soon understand. You’re dead center. Suddenly, the vocalist hits a note that magically ricochets off the sweaty walls. The room is pregnant, they all feel it too .

The bass pumps up meeting the vocalist at her apex and the party cannot contain itself. Sweat takes over, your hair is wild and shit feels good. So good. You’re present.

Soon the beat slows down and fades. The lights come on and you watch those around you transform becoming Sarah, Michael and the other regular names, regular lives, regular people. You exchange niceties and head back home. Everything is right then, right now, you feel the cold air touch your sweaty skin and damn it feels good.

.

Living ahead of time

Over the past year, that’s the only time I’ve been “there”. 

I’ve been on an adrenaline rush since I can remember, always wanting to go faster, forgoing due dilligence for speed. Constantly shitting out ideas and fighting almost unnaturally to push them forward. Details were always missed, important events forever forgotten, all and more lost because I couldn’t see what was directly in front of me — I could only see what I wanted ahead. 

Of course, that’s a recipe for disaster. So now that I am once again capable of making those bold decisions, I’m deciding to do something very un-Arielle like instead. 

I’m slowing the fuck down, folks. Taking some much needed time to LEARN, explore and dance. ;)

.

Thank you

To my family and friends, I am so thankful for all of you. I learned a few weeks ago how quickly I could lose you all and everything can rushing into perspective. I have never been truly present for you all. That’s what pains me the most. I need to and will change this. 

And, that’s it. Just an overwhelming sense of gratefulness for all of you that continue to support and love me, and a vow to do everything I can to show how much I love you guys. 

Thank you.

. 

Oh, and… 

For those of you that don’t dance with me. Let’s change that, maybe? Shoot me an email (arielle[at]thearielle[dot]com OR just give me your info here and I’ll let you know next time I’m out, which will be very soon!).

storenvy:

Huzzah! Storenvy was just named to the list of 10 Greatest Industry-Disrupting Startups of 2012 by Forbes! 

Needless to say but we are honored! 

Most of you know I joined a pretty sick team a few months ago. As Marketing Director, it’s my awesome and insane task to drive brand awareness, improve our funnel, measure everything and come up with some big ideas. So far, it’s been a-maz-ing! Crazy growth, fun promotions and results to show for all of it. But I always have big questions and I’m always interested in what other people with similar tasks are up to. 

So, I found the cool marketing kids at some of the best up-and-coming startups in SF and invited them to get food with me. Here’s what I learned:

Don’t Promote at  SXSW

The common consensus around the table was SXSW is just too big. There’s too much noise. There are much smarter ways for an early-stage company to generate buzz and capture community. Instead, go and have a good time as a team. Party and meet cool people. Leave the promotion material at home.

Turn New Partners into Deadlines

I’m always on the fence about partnerships. The hand-holding, you’re waiting forever for the to close, difficult to measure. But a friend who joined us for dinner told us about a new partnership that led to her highest conversions ever. She used her partnership as a reason to give deadlines. “We just partnered with XYZ, we’re announcing it tomorrow, you better (insert whatever you want your customers to do) to take advantage of the announcement”. Loves it! 

Give it 4-6 Months

Of course, I am always ALL FOR focus. I love it. I love doing one thing very fucking well. It’s just in my blood. So naturally I rejoice when I hear that another marketer had that kind of crazy focus and it helped them identify their core user acquisition strategy. In fact, my friend noted that after trying many things at once, they decided to dedicate 4-6 months to SEO (read: only!) and that led to the growth they were looking for. Now that it’s a solidified strategy, they’re exploring adjacent acquisition strategies like paid search. 

Just saying… I’ve heard it before. I like hearing someone confirm it. Find that one growth tactic and focus on it for 4-6 months. Booyah! I’d add it even takes time to identify that a poor tactic. 

Founder-Focus Events, What about us?

There was an idea that kind of blew my mind. In San Francisco, there are so many founder-focused events. I know because I used to attend all of them. But there’s a huge difference between growing a company as it’s just starting (and as a founder) and growing an already proven idea (as an early employee). We need more early employee focused events. I think that’s what I was subconsciously looking for when I coordinated the dinner. Just some food for thought. What do you guys think?

Anyways, will have another dinner next month specifically for the marketing people at early stage startups in SF. How specific can I get, huh? What do you think? Wanna come? Just let me know: arielle (at) storenvy (dot) com.

P.S. If that’s not you - I love putting together other weird dinners, pillow fights, party crashing events & drinks all the time. Just hit me up anyway.

(Image Credit: Heirloom Cafe)

I’m not a fan of weddings. The concept doesn’t make sense to me. You pay a fuck-ton of money for the celebration. Others join you for the celebration. But all you are doing is celebrating an assumption you have. The assumption is you and this person think you could be together for the rest of your life. 

Although that’s amazing, who cares about your assumptions? People shit out ideas and assumptions everyday. Hold your breath for 15 seconds. Welp! There goes another idea that just got shat out and announced to the world. (Btw, I love any chance I get to write the word “shat”)

I don’t understand weddings in the same way I don’t understand launches. Typically no one gives a shit. You make your wedding guests feel good because they can eat good food, they can tell you how good you look, you all listen to bad music and dance in ways your body never planned to. Yet, after the wedding is said and done — no one is surprised when your marriage has failed like the rest of them. Sounds familiar?

We should be celebrating longevity. We should celebrate success. We should celebrate results. We should be humble and modest about our ideas (cough: assumptions) and grow them like they are as fragile as they truly are. 

That said, because I like being contradictory and because I happily don’t know shit. I’m interested in launches. I’m interested in seeing ones that worked. But more than just generating worthless buzz, I’m interested in seeing a launch that has legs, that built on top of itself that grew incrementally and picked up steam. I’m interested in ideas that were released modestly and with the right amount of team effort, community development and pure genius grew into something worth dancing about. I’m interested in the post-launch periods. 

Launches are great. Longevity is much hotter. 

Here are a few ideas to help you think post-launch (remember ideas have very little value, so take this with a grain of salt and tell me some of your own):

1. Find the top launch metrics and obsess over them

This is simple: what are your expectations or assumptions for launching what you have? How do you measure those assumptions? What are your goals for launch? Focus on the top metrics that achieve that.

2. Get everyone thinking about launch and post-launch

Your entire team should dedicate time to focusing on post-launch for a set period of time. So before moving to the next product feature, etc. Everyone - engineers, sales, marketing - should all find creative unique ways to hit the launch goals. A common mistake I think many will fall into is pushing off the post-launch efforts to marketing and moving on. Well, that kinda sucks. I think everyone on the team will want to be a part of seeing the sexy results of all the hard work. Take a month or a month and a half to focus your entire team on spreading the message/growth. You may need to come up with landing pages, special analytics, etc. Product designers and engineers should be a part of the launch discussion and implementation.

3. Set a specific time period

Because you have your entire team focused here, make it clear when the post-launch period will end and everyone should move to the next feature, product, idea. That gives a feeling of finiteness that is nice. You’re not done when the product is finished or the feature is finished, you’re done when you’ve completed your post-launch period. 

4. Set time to review

Okay, I know I know… more time. I’d recommend taking some time to debrief on everything from production to post-launch as a team. Did you hit your goals? How could you improve for the next feature or product? Document those notes in a team launch diary (that sounds mad corny) or some database to grab insights from in the future.

5. Launch some shit

Okay enough planning out of the way here, now you should actually hit the ground running and announce to the world. Many have written on how to launch, not going to hop in here. 

6. Break-This-Glass Emergency Promos

Here’s the thing, it absolutely sucks when your launch is lackluster, especially if you’ve made a kickass product. I’d recommend having a few tested or just crazy emergency ideas to help your launch pick up steam. Here are a few:

• Make your app, product, feature free for a short period of time
• Partner with a few blogs and do quick giveaways
• Create a flash sale and significantly discount your feature/product
• Give discounts to specific Meetup groups, organizations, etc
• Hold a Twitter or Facebook contest 
• Have blog partners or other organizations have contests for you
• Write an inflammatory blog post about your app and your competitors to generate some buzz
• Restrict access and make your app or feature invite-only retroactively (those who got access will feel special)
• Contribute an article to big publications about what you’ve learned in launching within your industry, etc.
• Send bloggers bacon donuts or something weird like that

You get the point! Have a few ways you’ll quickly add fire to your launch if you’re losing steam. 

PS Kim Kardasian. #nuffsaid

(Image Credit)

So here’s the thing. 

They say people lose the ability to think for themselves once an “expert” is involved in the decision making process. 

I remembered this when I was asked about company culture from a colleague. That got me thinking about company values and the one value I couldn’t seem to forget was: a culture of humility. In fact, I’d advocate for a company of ignorance. 

A company that is humble enough to know nothing and assume everything will be tested. Everyone replaces the two words, “I know” with phrases like “I assume”, “I wonder if” “I believe” and so on. 

Thinking this way, everything would be an assumption that is tested from feature ideas to positioning statements. Nothing is valid unless it has a success metric that proves otherwise. No one is right unless they have proof within the context of the company. We’re all humble motherfuckers. 

Directors and managers are not experts because of time, they are efficiency ninjas. They help their teams power through hundreds of assumptions, gathering insights and finding ways to implement them. They understand how to prioritize assumptions, decide on the right metrics for success and how to execute the tests. They know how to comfort their team members once they assumptions are proven invalid. They know everything is a part of the test. 

Everyone is humbly ignorant.

I’ve said that already, right? Cool. Just wanted to drive home the point.

They know nothing and because of this, they can ask ignorant questions and find unique solutions to industry-wide problems. They’re more innovative, they’re faster. They don’t get married to a particular design to a particular project because everything is understood to be one big test. Taking a step further, every project is broken down into bite-sized mini assumptions that validate the larger idea at every step. Large branding projects are cut into digestible fragments, starting with a mission statement and testing it with target consumers, moving to headlines and ad copy and testing with clickthrough all the way to sending news releases and seeing which get bites. 

They’re only limited in their abilities to wonder, believe, try it out and learn. 

Everyone enters ignorant. There’s no way you can be an “expert”, even if you were hired for your previous knowledge. You’ve never worked with that particular team, on that particular project, with those particular set of variables. You’re a noob. The only knowledge you can accumulate is through testing and trying out your beliefs within the context of your company.

Humble people are hired. Humble hungry people are hired. People who are ready to dive deep, find the gaps, make assumptions and discover what to measure. Failure isn’t a part of the process because a successful test can either validate or invalidate an idea.

I could totally be beaten a dead horse with this concept. Maybe people have written for years about humility in the workplace, but that’s the kind of culture I think we all should aspire to create.

Growing up, I was taught to think willpower was all one needed to succeed. Media, teachers, literature all groomed me to believe success was just around the corner. If I just put in more time, more attention, etc., my wildest dreams would come true.

My own grapple with failure 

About eight months ago, my world imploded on itself. A company I had given my all to was not turning into the success I expected. I pushed my team to work harder, I pushed myself to take all external feedback into consideration and I kept pushing. However, I was not as successful as I would’ve hoped. The time I put in didn’t matter one bit. 

I failed, which isn’t a huge deal. The scarier thing was I couldn’t pick myself up afterward. The failure changed my personality and it changed the way I felt about myself. I became more nervous and less hungry. I became - and still have traces of being - one insecure punk!  

Looking back, I had never had this kind of failure before. In school, if I believed in something and I put the work in, I received the grade. When working on projects or for other companies, I would achieve my goals if I put my attention to it. Hell, most of the time, I was rewarded just for putting time in. That’s how we grow up today. We’re rewarded just for showing up and giving a shit. 

So I’d like to propose something crazy. It’s called failure school.

Failure school would be an institution that tested an assumption. That assumption is young brilliant minds are not capable of assessing and overcoming real failure due to a lack of preparation, and because of this they are less likely to pursue innovation again or in a timely manner. So, Failure School prepares students for the recovery.

The paradox of failure school is it cannot, in any way, be about failure. The students who enter the program should not enroll ready to fail. They should apply to failure school in the way they apply to any other incubator program (although I’ll add now that incubators should replace formal undergraduate education so I imagine failure school would replace university). Students will apply with the goal of turning their big idea into both reality and success. 

The school would not provide any help or assistance on the actual development of the student’s projects or companies. All resources to improve their projects would exist between the peer network itself - especially as networking is the only value universities have today. The school would only kick in the moment a student was forced to give up. Maybe they simply ran out of money, maybe their idea was proven to be technologically impossible - whatever the case, the student would have to give up in order for the school to educate. 

The Failure School Currriculum

All failed students with truly valid failures would be put through the curriculum that consists of (1) peer group “crit” sessions, (2) a thesis on failure documentation, (3) a written manifesto for the next project they will pursue and (4) dedicated exploration time. 

The peer group “crit” sessions would be a combination of very diverse student entrepreneurs. Every morning they would explore their many business or project decisions. Each student would divide their project into segments:

1. Formation of the idea
2. Idea research 
3. Financial preparation
4. Team development
5. Team dynamic
6. Advisory development
7. Success metrics
8. Idea production
9. Idea release and promotion
10. Data analysis and review
11. Point of failure
12. Point of pivot
13. Team dynamic post-perceived failure
14. Cope

Every morning the students would dissect and criticize decisions made at every project segment. The goal of the peer group “crit” sessions is to expose assumptions, hidden mistakes and missed opportunities.

The failure documentation thesis is a personal journey for the student. The thesis gives the student a way to take all of the notes from the peer group “crit” session and reflect. The theses can take on any medium, as long as they answer fundamental questions and more importantly, their thesis can be used as a framework for any student with a similar idea. I imagine they will read like one part case study, one part diary.

The manifesto is a set of core values to be applied to the next project or venture by that student. After heavy reflecting and receiving harsh criticism at every stage, that entrepreneur should have an opinion on how to be better the next time. More importantly, that entrepreneur is seasoned enough to know the kind of culture she wants to create in the future. This manifesto spells out the mission for the next project and gives two to three core values that she will stick with when she’s ready to hop in. 

Finally, exploration time. Exploration time is the area where I want to think deeper. Burn-out is so very real for most entrepreneurs. More importantly, it’s so easy to get sucked into thinking linearly about your project or venture when you’re entrenched in the day to day. Exploration time grooms the entrepreneur to spend time exploring new hobbies, new neighborhoods, new ideas to think through perceived obstacles. It’s easier to think through the impossible with a fresh perspective 

This could be a super ridiculous idea. All I know is I lost the go-getter, balls-to-the-wall person I used to be and I’m slowly finding her again. I’d love to hack the time it takes to recover from a significant failure. I think an Alcoholics Anonymous for Failure may accomplish this. 

Oh yeah…. and Failure School could accomplish building the largest database of failed project documentation ever. Imagine having an idea and being able to check your idea against the database of theses. Within this database, you find a few hundred papers from people who had the same idea, tried it and why they failed. That would amazing! 

storenvy:

To celebrate International T-Shirt Day we knew we had to do something massive. After several pots of coffee and a wicked brainstorming session we decided the only proper way to celebrate would be to team up with 50 different Storenvy merchants to offer some insane deals on tees!

Here’s the scoop!

• 50 different tees from 50 different Storenvy merchants all for only $10 each!
• The sale only lasts 72 hours from Wednesday June 20th to Friday June 22nd
• One lucky winner will take home one tee from each store! A $1,000 value just for tweeting!

Head on over and start picking up your $10 tees while they last! 

http://nvy.gd/Ld6NSF

Things just got awesome.

A look at the situation:

Storenvy is an online store builder AND a marketplace. That means you can create your own fully customizable store like these stores AND you can shop across all of the stores on our platform like so. 

Diving deeper, we are looking for creative ways to speak to potential store owners while attracting shoppers who just want to discover cool unique items. 

So, what does a marketer do in a tough situation like trying to operate in a very definitive two-sided market?

We asked “What if?”

There are a ton of examples and good ideas on how to battle this problem from other  creative startups. But before we hopped in and started split-testing potential homepage options, we decided to test a simpler hypothesis: what happens if we just tell people to open a store? 

We tested the theory with a few links to the homepage and a “hello bar” explaining what Storenvy was. Results: our highest day of store signups in the entire history of the company. 

See in red the changes we made:

Lesson learned: ask simple questions

My take on this is when you get so involved in the nuts and bolts of your startup, you forget to ask simple questions. When people visit our homepage, do they know what to do? Do those visitors have enough information to make those actions?

Oftentimes, you need to stick with the basics and just tell people what to do when they arrive. On every page, what action do we want? If we want multiple actions, will people just run away? This is obviously just the beginning for us, but wanted to share our little surprising success story. 

P.S. Just had an excellent class with Cielo de la Paz on how to do live user testing to answer many of those questions from real people with outside perspective. I’d highly recommend you do qualitative user testing to get some unbiased answers to those questions, especially if you need help coming up with new questions to ask. 

storenvy:

Just recently Storenvy passed 15,000 active storefronts and the following is an exact reenactment of the events that occurred shortly after.

Thanks again to the Storenvy community for all the love and support, we truly wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for all of you!

This past weekend, we welcomed over 80 strangers attending someone else’s party into our office. These strangers weren’t coming to see us. In fact, these strangers didn’t even know who we were, but we gave them a space, a seat, a few donuts and plenty of coffee to feel welcome. These strangers were coming to attend a vendor meeting of an upcoming design festival, and didn’t care about us at all. 

I work for a company called Storenvy. We are on a mission to give everyone in the world their own online store (for free!) and the ability to shop from each other. It’s a hairy difficult mission, but that’s why I accepted the job.

Back to the party. 

Sometimes, it’s better to give a shit instead of trying to move the needle 

When I came to my team and asked for us to sponsor the vendor meeting of this upcoming design festival, they didn’t exactly see the point. Think about it, why would a young startup spend money to host someone else’s party? Why not just host your own party where you will be the main attraction and people will come to see you? It’s not exactly a scrappy way to “build community”. 

I listened, and I second-guessed the idea. Why did I want to go all out to do something like this? We wouldn’t see a tremendous leap in traffic by doing something like this, if anything, we’d just feel good about it.

The truth is when you’re a young company with very little brand recognition amongst your target audience, you cannot afford to talk about yourself. No one is going to care. If you’re going to go after your audience offline - which I highly recommend you do - the most efficient way to do so is to get involved in what’s already happening in the communities you want access to.

You run a cosmetics mobile app and you want to attract beauty bloggers to talk about you before you launch. Instead of reaching out to the head of a local beauty bloggers meetup group to invite them to something you’re doing or just talk about yourself, you ask how you can support them. You ask them what kinds of events, content, etc they’re working on and little ways they need help.

Sounds simple enough, right? You’d be amazed at how this simple focus on them vs. focus on us approach can be missed when you’re trying to improve your conversion rates.  

In fact, if I were to craft an ongoing offline marketing strategy, it would consist almost entirely of partnering with small communities and groups on the events they’re already putting together. It would consist of supporting those events in little ways (venue space, providing food, giving away fried chicken). Hell, if I were going to craft any strategy that involved brand awareness, I would take a pure partnership approach.

I’d do exactly what Tumblr is doing these days with co-hosting meetups.

What happened when we gave a shit

So, we hosted a meeting for this design festival. 80 strangers came into our office. We took a few minutes to explain who we were, why we do what we do and how we wanted to help them. Just three minutes and then they continued with their meeting. 

Let me say that again, we hosted someone else’s party. That organization brought several strangers to our office, we warmly welcomed every stranger and provided them with a seat/food, then those strangers listened attentively to us as we explained how amazing we are. We also got a little credibility boost because we were endorsed as worthwhile by the organization having the meeting. Credibility, demo, in-person interaction… all because we gave them a space to meet. How many times have you given a three minute demo to 80 potential customers without doing the work to attract that audience? 

So, what’s one incredible way to build community? 

Shut the hell up about your company and give small communities a platform or a space to do what they want. Co-host an event. Provide space for their events. Host a wine-and-cheese in your home. Believe me, they’ll welcome your help, your friendship and happily give you a few minutes of their time. 

That’s how you do offline. 

P.S. But it wouldn’t be a startup, if we weren’t trying out a ton of different ideas! We are hosting a little event on how to kick ass by selling online for our building and beyond. Click on the link and join us! You know you want to.