yeah thanks for having me Sam I'm Stan
Lee I'm the founder of door - and it's
really amazing to be here because it
wasn't naturally that long ago where I
sat in in your seats I was class of 2014
graduated in CS as well as my co-founder
Andy and for those of you who don't know
what door - is we're building an
on-demand delivery network for local
cities and I want to start off with this
photo that I took just a few months ago
and I think it this was a night when we
just raised our Series A and I took this
photo as I was on walking back to where
I lived actually live in Robley at the
time on campus and I took this photo
because I realized this how ridiculous
the combinations of things I was holding
in my hand at the time you know I was
holding my CS 247 homework and then I
had a my tax forms since it was April
and had to fill out taxes and then also
that yellow speeding ticket and then
right below that was the was a fifteen
million dollar piece of paper I just
signed from Sequoia and that kind of
summarizes just how ridiculous our
journey has been you know starting at
Stanford doing this while I was at
Stanford and then transitioning this
into an actual startup and I want to
share that story with you today
it all began two years ago actually in a
macaron store it was my junior year at
Stanford this was Fall Quarter and at
the time I was really passionate about
you know how do you build technology for
small business owners and I sat down
Chloe the owner of you know Chantel Jian
um at KU store in Palo Alto at the time
just interviewing her you know trying to
get feedback on this on this product
prototype we've been working on and also
just learning about you know what her
problems were in general and it was
during this meeting when Chloe first
brought up this problem of of delivery
you know she I remember she took out
this really really thick booklet and she
showed me pages and pages of delivery
orders and a lot of these orders
had to turn down because there's no way
she could have to fold them you know she
had no drivers and she was the one who
ended up having to personally deliver
all these orders and and that was a very
interesting moment for us and and then
we thought the next over the next course
of over the course of the next few weeks
we talked to you know around another 150
200 small business owners and when we
brought this idea of delivery they kept
you know they kept you know agreeing
with us saying yeah this is this is a
really big problem for us you know we
don't have you know delivery
infrastructure is such a huge pain for
us there's there's not any good
solutions out there and which which let
us wonder you know delivery such a
common thing isn't such a obvious thing
why hasn't anyone solved this before
right like we must be missing something
here so we thought maybe maybe because
people have tried this in the past right
but they failed because there wasn't
consumer demand for this so we thought
okay so how can we test this hypothesis
you know we were just a bunch of college
kids at the time you know we didn't own
trucks or delivery infrastructures or
anything like that right we can't just
we can just spin up a delivery company
overnight so how can we test this
assumption we had so we decided to
create a simple experiment with
restaurant delivery we spent about an
afternoon just putting together a really
quick landing page and now went on the
internet I found some PDF menus of you
know restaurants in Palo Alto stuck it
up there and then had a phone number at
the bottom and which was our personal
cell phone number actually and that was
it we put up the landing page we called
it Paul to delivery comm and this is
actually what it looked like you know
super super you know simple ugly like
honestly we weren't really expecting
anything we just launched it and all we
wanted to see was you know would we get
phone calls from this and if we got in
the phone calls then that maybe this was
this delivery idea was something worth
pursuing so we put it up there we
weren't really expecting anything and we
were
calm and all of a sudden we gotta got a
phone call you know someone called they
wanted to order Thai food and we're like
oh wow this is this is a real order um
like you know we could have to do
something about it right so so we're in
our cars and and we realize okay like
we're not doing anything right now
Mazal just let's just stream by you know
Siam Royale pick up some Pad Thai and
it's delivered to this person and let's
try to learn how this whole delivery
thing works and we did we delivered to
this guy and up in Alpine Road I
remember he he told us he was a I was
asking me oh how did you hear about us
you know what'd he do he told us he was
a he was a scholar and then he handed me
his business card and I said he was the
author of a book called weed the people
and that was like our first ever
delivery right it was it was like the
best of the first delivery slash worst
deliberate you could have asked for we
couldn't make this stuff up and and and
yeah and then the next day we got you
know two more phone calls they after
that we got five and then it became 7
and then became 10 and then soon we
started gaining traction on campus with
Powell to delivery comm which was which
is um which is pretty crazy because
think about it right this was a landing
page you had to look up PDF menus to
place your order and they have to call
in this isn't exactly the most
professional looking site yet people
were still we stepped we kept getting
phone calls we kept getting orders and
and that's kind of we we knew we were on
to something when people are willing
like we knew we found this need people
wanted when people are willing to put up
with all this so I think another key
point to remember is that we launched
this in about an hour right like we
didn't spend you know we don't have any
drivers we don't have any algorithms we
didn't spend you know we have a back-end
we didn't spend six months building like
a fancy dispatch system now we don't
have any of that we just launched
because at the beginning none of that is
Nessa
at the beginning is all about testing
your idea trying to get this thing off
the ground and figuring out whether this
was something people even wanted and
it's okay to to hack things together at
the beginning at YC does the mantra we
we like to talk about is doing things
that don't scale so at the beginning we
were the delivery drivers now we would
you know go to class and then after
class we'll go you know deliver food we
were the you know custom support like I
sometimes have to take phone calls
during lecture we we had to we spent
afternoons just going down University
Avenue passing out flyers about kind of
promote door - I mean we don't have any
dispatch system so what we had to do was
you know we use square to charge all of
our customers we used Google Docs to
keep track of our orders we use apples
find my friends to keep track of where
all of our drivers were you know stuff
like that I'm just thinking out like
what's just hacking together solutions
you're trying to get this thing off the
ground in fact at one point we were
growing so fast that Square actually
shut our account down because we were
under suspicion for money laundering let
me think about it we're getting small
chunks of like 15 $20 orders coming in
at a rapid pace it was yeah and luckily
my co-founder Tony worked at square so
he just emailed so somebody's there and
uh everything was solved yeah and um
another thing about doing things that
don't scale is that it also allows you
to become an expert in your business
right like driving helped us understand
how the whole delivery process worked
you know we use that as an opportunity
to talk to our customers talk to our
restaurants we the dispatching which
helped us figure out you know how we
manually dispatched every drivers and
that helped us figure out you know what
our driver assignment algorithm should
look like we did customer support
ourselves you know getting real-time
feedback from from a customers I
remember you know for the first few
months when we got started we
would manually email every single one of
our new customers and at the end of
every night and just asking them oh how
was your first delivery how did you hear
about this and we would personalize all
these emails right right if I see
someone ordered chicken skewers from
orange hummus I would say oh like I love
orange on this you know how were chicken
skewers how did how did your first
delivery went you know just feedback
like that was was really valuable and I
customers really really appreciated that
and and I remember um one time this was
during YC we were at a we just came out
of meeting with one of our restaurant
partners and you know we wanted we heard
about this ice cream store that just
opened up you know on University Avenue
called cream and wanted to go try it out
and then all of a sudden our co-founder
back at our you know office slash house
texted us saying oh we need drivers on
the road we got a huge spike in demand
so we debated for maybe you know 10
seconds like should we go get ice cream
or should we go go deliver obviously we
went and delivered but that kind of
became our motivation on you know
scaling right like if we can scale then
you could go get ice cream next time so
so yeah I think that kind of um and now
of course we scaled across different
cities now you have to worry about
building out automated solutions and
dispatch systems and figuring out how do
you match demand and supply and all that
fancy technology stuff but none of that
matters at the beginning because at the
beginning it's all about getting this
thing off the ground and trying to find
product market fit so just to summarize
so there's three things I would say that
I learn from from doing door dashes
first test your hypothesis you want to
treat your startup ideas like
experiments the second thing is launch
fast we launched in you know less than
an hour with a really simple landing
page and finally it's okay to do things
that don't scale doing things that don't
scale is one of your biggest competitive
advantages when you're starting out and
you can figure out how to scale once you
have the demand and maybe once you've
scaled then you go get that ice cream
thanks sure yeah so my question was how
did our first customer hear about us our
very first one had no idea we just
launched pop Paulette of delivery comm
we don't do any marketing so I assumed
he just must have typed in positive
delivery into the web browser and then
after that we didn't do did barely any
marketing I think I sent out like one
email to my dorm and does about it it
was all through word-of-mouth and and
that kind of just validates you know
just how strong the needy found you know
when people just start talking about you
and they're willing to put up with all
this you know terrible user experience
terrible design and stuff like that
it seems so obviously you're wondering
why no one's done this what's your
answer now yeah I mean looking back I
think um I think the biggest thing is
mobile the fact that now everyone has
one of those in their pocket and we kind
of saw that trend and and thought you
know what if you can design you know a
delivery system that was entirely based
off mobile you know where you don't have
it you didn't have to have to have any
infrastructure or delivery fleets
instead you could you know instead of
hiring drivers full-time purchasing
vehicles what if you can tap into a more
of an on-demand pool of independent
contractors and only send orders to them
when when they have time so so that's
kind of the the insight we had we
everything was done through mobile yeah
did you know we were going to be a
startup or we just make you some money
first yeah I mean at the time we just
wanted we're all really passionate about
building technology for small business
owners and and honestly this delivery
thing came out of a experiment right
with the landing page like it was
literally an experiment we didn't we
weren't expecting anything and it just
took off and and we went with it and
logistics was always something we were
really passionate about as well you know
like logistic strands per tation and
it's kind of the perfect fusion of you
know how do you help small business
owners through delivery back you do you
launch the whole bottle at first or the
website and how long did it take from
idea to the first launch yeah was we
started with this this landing page
right here the cusp an hour to launch
total I set out a space filled with love
those days and seen those other puppies
yeah um yeah the question was how does
door - stand out among a very
competitive space I mean I mean in the
beginning I mean for us consumer demand
has never been the problem you bent up
until now so for us it's just about you
know finding a need and just focusing on
serving that serving that demand so I
mean the beginning competition doesn't
really matter when you're getting
started yeah question was how long it
took for us incorporate into a company
when we went through YC so we launched
in January 2013 and then we did YC that
very summer and we when we decided to
take this idea through YC we
incorporated one more
yeah you what do you plan to do next or
where do you plan to go with this
besides I do delivery yeah I mean the
question was where do we plan to go
beyond food delivery when for us the
only started door - it was always you
know like I said about you know helping
small business owners and figuring out
you know how do you serve this for any
local merchants whether you're a macaron
store or a restaurant or a furniture
shop I mean I desto our focus that's
like the long-term vision for now we
just focused on restaurant delivery as a
way to scale but ultimately that's where
you want to end up in Thanks okay next
is a waffle Williams teespring he's from
NYC yeah I almost rejected them idea but
now there's a million dollar G of
revenue so very luckily I'm not I'm also
gonna talk also about doing some show
all right thank you guys for having me
my name is Walker I'm the CEO and
founder of teespring for those of you
guys who don't know what teespring is
we're an e-commerce platform that allows
entrepreneurs to launch products and
apparel brands without risk cost or
compromise today the company is about
180 folks and we ship tens of thousands
of products each day and I want to talk
to you about one of the most fundamental
advantages you have as a startup and
that's that you're able to do things
that don't scale and I define things
that don't scale as things that are sort
of fundamentally unsustainable they will
not last they will not bring in the
millionth user and where they break it's
usually time but it could be a number of
other things but it's really growth
strategies that won't take you to a
million users and there's three real
places I want to focus on today the
first one is finding your first users
the second one is turning those users
into champions and the third one is
finding your product and market fit
so finding your first users the first
thing you have to understand is that
there is no silver bullet for user
acquisition you know everybody and this
includes me when we got started you look
for that that dream solution that
pay-per-click campaign that has
tremendous ROI some accelerating
partnership that's going to springboard
you into the stratosphere an affiliate
agreement something that solves it for
you but the reality is for the vast
majority of companies and in fact for
every company that I've had the chance
to speak to the CEO of that's just not
possible
those are unicorns and most of the
companies that from the outside look
like they've had this dream growth curve
the reality is that those first users
were impossibly hard to get and let me
tell you about the story of a
ridiculously unsustainable business so
this is teespring in 2012 when we first
got when we first launched the the
business couldn't have looked worse it
took days of meetings we had to offer
free design days of revisions back and
forth we'd have to launch the product
ourselves we'd have to do the social
media all to sell like 50 shirts for a
local nonprofit and generate a thousand
dollars of revenue anybody looking in
would have said you guys need to give up
this is a terrible idea but as time went
on those users start to add up and you
know I think something you have to
understand is that when you first launch
a company just by virtue of the fact
that it's a new product you're going to
be bad at selling it right you've got no
idea what the pain points of customers
really are you've never sold it before
you don't have any success stories to
point to or testimonials those first
users are always going to be the hardest
and so it's your responsibility as a
founder to do whatever it takes to bring
in your first users and you know it's
going to be different for every company
the common thread that I hear is
founders need to spend personal time and
effort a lot of their personal time and
effort to bring those users in
themselves it you know can mean a number
of things everything from sending 100
emails a day getting on the phone and
calling as many people as you can going
through a network if you have a network
like Stanford or Y Combinator anything
you can do to get that first user and
you know I really equate it to pushing a
boulder up a hill and if you think of
like a very sort of smooth hill the when
you get started the incline is the
steepest in those first inches are the
hardest and over time as you get farther
and farther the incline steadies out it
gets easier and hopefully eventually you
reach a point where you're at the top of
the hill and the boulder starts to roll
on its own and so those first users you
just cannot focus on ROI in the sense of
time do not expect to spend an hour and
return of dollars maybe Stanley is one
of those unicorns that was a pretty
incredible story but for for most of us
those first users are going to take a
lot of hand-holding a lot of personal
love and that's okay that's essential
for building a company and the one sort
of caveat of that is that I don't
recommend giving away your product for
free and there's plenty of exceptions to
this rule but in general cutting costs
or giving the product away is an
unsustainable strategy I wouldn't
recommend you need to make sure that
users value your product and you know
people have a different they treat
products that are free in a much
different way than a paid product and
oftentimes it can give you a false sense
of security of oh we're getting all
these users surely we can convert them
over to paid the second aspect is what
happens when you get those users how do
you turn those users into champions and
a champion is a user who talks about and
advocates for your product and I'm a
firm believer that every company with a
great growth strategy has users who are
champions and so really the easiest way
to build turn a user into a champion is
to delight them with an experience
they're going to remember so something
that's unusual or out of the ordinary an
exceptional experience and the easiest
way to do this early and again something
that is completely unsustainable it's
not going to scale forever is to just
talk to those users
and people will say this all the time
and you hear it's one of the sort of
core tenants of Y Combinator is talk to
users but I cannot stress how important
it is that you spend a large chunk of
your time talking to users and you
should do it constantly every single day
and as long as possible today at
teespring I'm still the catch-all email
address so anytime somebody misspelled
support or writes an email address that
doesn't exist I get that email and so I
still do about 12 to 20 customer service
tickets every single day I spend hours
each night reading every single tweet
probably a little bit OCD but that's
okay I read through all the teespring
communities you're never going to get a
better sense for your product than
actually listening to real users and
especially in the early days your just
the products you launch with and the
feature set you launch with is almost
certainly not going to be the feature
set that you scale with and the quicker
you talk to users and learn what they
actually need the faster you can get to
that point so there's three ways to talk
to your customers you can run customer
service yourself up until teespring was
doing about 130 140 thousand dollars a
month my co-founder Evan and I did
everything in customer service this is
one that there's going to be an instinct
to quickly pass off and that's because
it's painful even today when I open our
customer service portal I have like an
emotional reaction where my stomach
sinks because it sucks talking to users
who have had a terrible experience and
it's painful it's something that you
love and you've put so much effort into
and you've gotten it wrong or they've
had a terrible experience or somebody
didn't treat them right but it's so
important that you go through that and
learn what you need to build what you
need to fix the second step is to
proactively reach out to current and
churned customers and insurance or
customers who have left and this is one
that that often falls by the wayside in
sort of the pursuit of new customers but
you want to make sure that your
customers are having a consistent good
experience
you don't want to just leave those
current users as sort of you don't want
to take them for granted and then when a
user actually leaves your service you
want to reach out and find out why both
because that personal outreach can make
the difference between leaving and
staying sometimes people just need to
know that you care and it's going to get
better and because even if you can't
bring them back there's a chance that
you can learn from the mistake you made
that caused them to leave and fix it so
you don't churn users out the same way
in the future
and the final one is again the one that
I'm probably too OCD about but it's
social media and communities you need to
know how people are talking about your
brand you need to reach out and make
sure that when somebody does have a bad
experience and they're talking about it
that you make it right problems are
inevitable in startups there's going to
be issues you're not going to have the
perfect product things are going to
break things are going to go wrong
that's not important
what's important is to always make it
right to always go the extra mile and
make that customer happy one detractor
who's had a terrible experience on your
platform is enough to reverse the
progress of 10 champions it's all it
takes is one person out there to say no
you shouldn't use those guys for x y&z
reason to ruin a ton of momentum so even
if it's you know there's examples in the
early days where we would mess up
massive orders we'd print the color
slightly wrong it would be the wrong
size and it would be like half of our
gmv for that month and we would know we
got it wrong the customer would be
unhappy and sort of this instinct is
well you know it's it's only a little
bit off or it's not completely wrong
it'll be fine but the reality is you
just got to bite the bullet and make
sure that it's right and those customers
the customers that are often originally
the most frustrated tend to turn into
the biggest champions and the longest
term users and the last one I want to
talk about is finding product and market
fit and what I mean by that is that you
know I mentioned this earlier but the
product you launch with will almost
certainly not be the product that takes
you to scale and so your jaw
in those early moments in those early
days of a start-up is to progress and
iterate as fast as possible to reach
that product that does have market fit
and as engineers your instinct is going
to be to build a platform with beautiful
clean code that scales right you don't
want to write a sort of duct-tape code
that's going to pile on technical debt
but you need to optimize for speed over
scalability and clean code and sort of
an example of this is in the early days
we had a couple enterprise customers
come to us sort of bigger nonprofits and
say hey we really like your service but
you're missing these fundamental things
so we can't we're not going to use it
and we've looked at sort of what it
would take to build out those features
and we weren't sure they were going to
work long term but we wanted to try it
and my co-founder Evan who is our CTO
and a million times better developer
than I am sort of ran the math and
figured out that if we did it the right
way it was going to take about a month
to build out these features and in a
startup a month you know you live in dog
years a month is a year and that just
wasn't going to do so he actually went
out duplicated the codebase duplicated
the the database and was able to
basically build a completely different
product that he didn't have to worry
about the existing users for to serve
these enterprise customers we gave them
the tool they on-boarded they generate a
lot of revenue eventually we learned
what features were core and we
integrated them into the core product
but what would have taken a month we
were able to do in you know three to
four days a great rule of thumb is to
only worry about the next order of
magnitude so when you have your tenth
user you shouldn't be wondering well how
are we going to serve a million users
you should be worried about how are we
going to get to a hundred when you're at
a hundred you should think about a
thousand it's it's one of those things
where necessity is the mother of
invention of all inventions so when you
hit that breaking point like the Twitter
fail whale is a great example and
teespring
there were months months stretches where
every single night the site would crash
every night and then during the day and
every single person on the team would
to sleep with their phone on loud under
their pillow so that inevitably when the
buzzer went off we could quickly get up
restart the servers and go back to sleep
and this would happen daily but the
reality is that it was worth it and you
know you'll end up with these huge pain
points and all this technical debt and
regret but it's worth it just to get to
that end goal and that product fit
faster you will make it work you will
survive that those sort of bumps are
just speed bumps and speed is so so
important early so the the lesson that
I've been learning lately is you know
you want to do these things that don't
scale as long as possible there's not
some magical moment it's not the series
a it's not when you hit a certain
revenue milestone that you stop doing
things that don't scale this is one of
your biggest advantages as a company and
the moment you give it up you're giving
your competitors that are smaller that
can still do these things that advantage
over you so as long as humanly possible
as long as it is a net positive you need
to be spending time talking to your
users you need to move fast and
development as fast as possible but
don't give it up willingly it should be
ripped from you and so sort of trying to
practice what I preach I want to give
you guys my email address if you guys
have any questions if you want to learn
about teespring if you want to print
some t-shirts fingers crossed
just shoot me an email I'd love to help
and I'd love to speak to you and the
last thing is we've created an official
how to start a startup tee with Sam and
all proceeds are going to wat see I
couldn't miss this opportunity to sell
so if you guys want to grab one of the
official tees just go to tee spring comm
slash startup and it's supporting a
great cause thank you
sure go ahead
yep all the t-shirt printing business
seems like it has a lot of combat so
what made you what convinced you I think
this is a viable market even when sure
you know it so the question was the
t-shirt printing business has a lot of
competition what would convince us to
get into the market I think there's two
factors to it so first I completely
agree from the outside people have been
telling us that this is a silly idea
since day one and sort of at every order
of magnitude we reach people will come
and say hey that's a terrible terrible
idea why are you doing that but the
reason that we launched teespring is
because we ran into a personal pain
point where we had a need and we looked
at the current solutions I was a student
at Brown and I was trying to create a
remember the bar shirt for a dive bar
that got shut down and I realized that
nothing needed nothing matched my needs
and so because I knew that I had that
pain point and I knew there was market
fit and I had seen people adopt the
product I knew there was something there
and it was also one of those things
where you can sort of feel the you can
you can sort of feel the wind on your
back
where people are adopting the product
quickly you're the pain point is clearly
there it's not a met need so I would say
that often times great ideas start by
looking like silly ideas and then you
can sort of feel out whether or not
there's a scalable business here by how
people are adopting it is it possible to
bring customers aboard sure no you know
today our biggest customer base are
entrepreneurs who are trying to build
brands and businesses you know we have a
little over a thousand people that make
their full time living on teespring
today via brands they've launched and
the other side is influencers so YouTube
stars reddit communities bloggers who
want to add product merchandise as a way
to sort of create a brand and monetize
that affinity so those
our two biggest markets we still do work
with a lot of nonprofits and love
working with them it's still a part of
our business just not the majority thank
you yeah honor of Kiko and then Justin
TD which and I'm from my company there
and so I talk about yeah cool well well
I wait for the slide to happen I started
a bunch of startups but I think you've
heard a lot of awesome you know kind of
how did I get started stories so I'm
going to talk about something very
specific that people always have
questions with which is press and like
how do you get it how does it work it's
something this is kind of like an
abridged version of what we talked about
at Y Combinator and hopefully you guys
will find it helpful so you know a lot
of people I think when they first get
started with entrepreneurship think
about getting press and being in the
press is something that happens
magically they think about it as like
something that you know journalists are
like out there like trying to find the
best stories and really you know like
discover them like it's like a
meritocracy which is like absolutely not
the case so before you think about press
one of the things you really want to
think about is who you want to reach and
like what's your actual goal right a lot
of people like I know when I got started
I wanted to just be in the news because
I thought that's what like he did as an
important company and it turns out it if
you don't have any goals you're not
going to achieve them right I mean
that's true of like pretty much
everything and with press if you just
like aimlessly want to be covered it's
not really going to do anything for your
startup so getting like in the news is
nice because you can send it to your mom
or and say hey I have a real job you
know look we're in the New York Times
but if you don't have a actual goal for
your like a business goal with it it's
really just like not a good use of time
so you know there's many different goals
one example is you know you might want
to with with Socialcam which was a
spinoff of justin.tv it was like an app
that was kind of like video Instagram
and our goal was really to
be known as like a video like Instagram
app and like be thought of in that
context when it was you know time to
pitch our like Silicon Valley investors
and and influencers and so we really
wanted to get in like tech press and
kind of be positioned as this like new
hot social lab with exec one of my goals
was ii like to get customers so exec was
like a cleaning local cleaning service
and our goal was to get people in San
Francisco to use it it wasn't like
useful to get national press because you
know 99% of those people can use it so
we really targeted initially a lot of
you know like SF Chronicle and a like
local San Francisco press that would
directly talk to people who could
potentially use our app for twitch which
is probably the thing that you guys
mostly know it was you note which was a
key SPN for gaming or kind of like a
live streaming community of gamers and
our goal was to with press was like to
reach the gaming industry because like
when we when we started now it's like 55
million uniques and like people in the
gaming industry know about it but when
we started nobody really knew that like
it was a place to advertise and like it
wasn't like known as like a you know we
were very nascent small gaming community
and our goal was to like get people in
the gaming industry whether they were
developers or advertisers to think about
us as like an important place where like
influencers were so we really targeted
industry trades and game dev blogs and
places where I like gamers when they up
games be stuff like that the industry
was reading so you know what's an actual
story I think there's you know there's a
bunch of different types of stories but
these are usually the ones that you see
in you know startups
those are like product launches like you
let just launched a new version of your
app there's fundraising for whatever
reason you know press loves to write
about fundraising even though it's not
very interesting so you know like if you
raise a million dollar seed round pretty
much you can get that covered milestones
or metrics like you've achieved a
million dollars a a week in revenue that
one of our one of our the the company
that bought exact just announced that
they achieved a million dollars a week
in revenue and it was covered pretty
widely
like business stories which generally
happen when you're like already a
successful company someone like a New
York Times or New Yorker business
magazine will like want to cover like
kind of the story of your startup
usually don't have to worry about that
in the beginning what I like to call
stunts which are like I don't know if
you guys remember but a couple years ago
this YC company called WePay dropped a
block of ice with money frozen in it
outside of the PayPal like a PayPal
Developers Conference because they were
like PayPal was like no in the news for
freezing
you know like various the developers
accounts and so that was like a widely
covered because it was just so you know
kind of an interesting thing and it
really it got them in the story right
they wouldn't been talked about in the
context of PayPal at all really hiring
announcements fear of big enough company
and you hire someone really important
people want to cover that and then
contributed articles like you writing
some sort of industry overview or some
opinion piece in like maybe a tech blog
or set like that so those are like you
know basically any of those things can
can be stories one of the things that
people usually don't think about is that
you know you really have to think about
like everything when you start a
start-up you think that everything
you're doing is interesting but that's
not true for like other people right
like you what you need really need to
think about is like objectively if I
wasn't the founder of this company would
I want to like read a story about what
I'm pitching right so you know you're
incremental feature release your 2.01
you know feature release might not be
interesting it like just because you add
it like you know find your contacts in
facebook or something like you have to
you really want to take a step back
before you invest the time and like
actually trying to pitch a story and
think does anyone will anyone actually
want to read this because what people
are you know journalists and bloggers
are looking for is things that people
actually want to read right the other
thing is like you don't actually have to
be very original your press in news
doesn't have to be original you know
like you don't you just have to be like
what I like to call original enough
right so you don't want to be the second
cooler company to raise five million
dollars on Kickstarter right that's like
that the first guy
I guess like all the news but like if
you're the I think the first video game
console to raise ten million dollars on
Kickstarter like oh yeah I was that was
like really raised like a million
dollars in 24 hours that was like huge
news because they were kind of like the
first in that category right even though
other people had raised a lot of money
on Kickstarter before so just like think
about your stories in the context of
like where they are in the like what
else has been written about and if
they're like kind of novel enough and
they haven't been something that was
like just written about in the news so
one of them like actual mechanics of
getting a story this is like pretty
tactical so what if you want to get your
news in you know the press basically
there's some easy simple steps so it's
basically getting press is like you can
think of it like a sales funnel so
you're going to talk to a lot of people
and not all of them are going to convert
right and so you shouldn't be upset when
someone like one individual person or a
reporter or whatever it doesn't write
your story the first thing is like you
have to think of a story right it's
going to be one of those probably one of
those things that I listed up before the
second step is like you want to get
introduced to a reporter or multiple
reporters who are going to write about
your thing
it's like much much easier just like any
sort of business development to actually
get in touch with them through someone
it's like you know rather than cold
emailing them the best thing to do I
found is like you want to go to
entrepreneurs who are just written about
like your friends who maybe started to
startup and they were covered on
TechCrunch get them to introduce you to
your that reporter who wrote about them
the reason that's good is because like
from the entrepreneurs perspective like
the easiest thing to do in the world is
introduce you to a reporter who already
wrote about them right they don't like
need anything else from that reporter
they're actually doing that person a
favor if your story is interesting it's
not like you're asking for interest to
investors or potential you know people
that they would want to hire employees
and then from the reporter's perspective
they're getting intro to someone who you
know they already vetted as interesting
like they're getting answer from someone
who they know they thought was
interesting enough to write about and so
like
by the transitive property you're
basically gonna they're going to think
you're you know probably interesting so
you get like an email it's like oh you
know from this guy that introduces you
to the reporter and you want to get in
contact with them with enough time that
you can actually get them to like write
a story probably a week in advance or
more because they're not going to like
drop everything they're doing to just
write about your news so a lot of people
especially first-time entrepreneurs will
come and say like just that I'm watching
this product tomorrow
like can you get me in this you know
TechCrunch or something and that's like
probably not going to happen unless you
already have a relationship the best way
to do it so the best thing to do is like
give yourself some lead time get that
intro in advance and then so then you
should like once once you've set a date
for your news to go out you're going to
launch your product like in two weeks
you have this intro you set up some sort
of meeting and you really want to get
the the reporter to like invest time and
effort in the UI because they don't like
there's like kind of a sunk cost fallacy
at play basically if you the more time
and then they spend with you the more
likely they are to like actually write
something so you the best thing to do is
get like a face-to-face meeting right
lots of people report bloggers actively
don't want to meet you face-to-face but
like if not that then get like a phone
call right and get on the phone with
them the worst thing to do is like just
have an email exchange right because
it's very easy for them to like forget
about it
ignore it so you want to like actually
try to get in contact with them instead
of a meeting okay so then the next step
is actually pitch them what I usually do
is actually write out all my new like
this story that I would want to see
published like in bullet points and I
like will write out the store my ideal
story and I'll memorize it like the
entire like set of bullet points and
when I have a conversation with them if
it's in person I'll like walk them
through this like I'll have a
conversation that's like structured like
my outline and they'll be like taking
notes right and then they'll go and
transcribe those notes into a story and
so it's like a tell apply what I wrote
will eventually be translated into a
actual story
and you know by preparing you can
actually can you know much more easily
control the conversation and not forget
critical things like you know your
co-founding your co-founders name or
like what the fault of features in your
awesome app are if it's I'm doing this
like on the phone I will like have this
bullet points in front of me and I will
make sure to like walk through a
conversation that includes all those
things so you know you do that they you
have a pitch to take they take notes
they're going to write the story at this
time and then the next thing is like
follow up like a couple days or day
before your actual news goes out you
want to send them an email that says
like you know this is the time we're
launching the app like Jeff thanks for
meeting here's like collateral like
media if you have like a video or photos
or something you want them to include
screenshots like how to spell your
co-founders names and your name just
like include all the information that I
really care about and I bowled it right
and then that's it then hopefully the
the day comes you press submit on their
release to the App Store and at the same
time they release their article on
TechCrunch and you are famous okay so a
lot of people ask us about PR firms so
you know I think in the beginning it's
kind of like everything else you do at a
start-up you want to do it yourself
before you hire someone else to do it
and yeah it's actually pretty easy
especially with tech press who you know
bloggers who like constantly need new
things to write about and you know you
should I strongly encourage people to
like try it themselves and kind of get
started by learning the process
themselves before they hire anyone one
thing I'll say is that like firms can
only help you with like kind of the
contacts and the logistics but they
can't help you know what's interesting
about your company or very you know I've
never had anyone who's been able to tell
me what the stories that I'm producing
are they've only been able to tell me
you know like you're you know like
here's other here's a list of reporters
that you might want to contact so you
know you really have to be responsible
for thinking about like what's
interesting about your company of what
are you doing you know what's the
roadmap of interesting things that
you're working on they're also really
expensive you know I think we were
spending between Phi
thousand and twenty thousand dollars a
month which is like at very you know for
various firms that's a lot for a startup
right you should it's generally not a
good use of money I would say especially
in the very early days yo getting
presses is a lot of work so you should
really make sure it's worth it you know
like I said it really getting press
doesn't mean it feels like it's like a
vanity metric right it feels like you're
being successful because lots of
successful companies you know like
Google and Facebook are covered in the
press all the time but it doesn't
actually mean you're successful it
doesn't you know actually give you you
know mean that you're getting you're
making money you're getting users you're
making the disease you're happy it's you
know sometimes it's a really good
strategy for getting your first hundred
or two hundred or thousand customers but
it's really not a scalable user
acquisition strategy so it's something
that's really just like a you know a
bootstrap you can't like just get like
infinity articles written about you like
eventually people are going to like get
tired of hearing about your company and
usually that happens pretty pretty
quickly right the pole point about news
is its new and so it's pretty pretty
pretty hard unless your Google to like
get covered in the press like every week
you know something to you know if you
decide it's worth it though like they do
want to have like a regular heartbeat of
news so that's like something where you
know you're planning out those types of
that what you're thinking about what
you're doing that matches those you know
maybe seven story types in the future
and like you know when I was you know
working primarily on marketing and PR it
would be I would like make a schedule on
like a calendar of what when we're going
to launch things and like make sure to
space them out but like have them you
know appear regularly at regular
intervals so that people like didn't
wouldn't forget about us and we could
kind of maximize our coverage and you
don't really want to keep your you know
contacts fresh it's like a really a
relationships business so once you
someone writes about you should keep
going back to them for forum or for
writing about you know to write about
you in the future it's kind of like you
know when when basically people you know
you're more likely that do something for
someone you've already liked it done
something for you really like it's if
you just you know I would try to
establish good relationships with a
couple reporter
over time that you can go to to you know
break news and it will come in handy
later if you ever have in the position
if you're fortunate enough to be in the
position where people are writing
negative things about you you know
having relationships will help you you
know kind of get your side of the story
out and the last thing is like you know
it's kind of a golden rule really or
maybe more like a pay it forward really
applies here
like you should help your fellow
entrepreneurs get get coverage because
they will help you get coverage the best
way to get covered is really through
these like warm introductions and so you
know when I'm ever I'm meeting with
reporters I always help like throwing
out the names of like other things that
I think would be interesting stories for
them and usually that comes back they
the reporters like it because they it's
like helping them find interesting
stories and you're more likely to get
you know leads back from those
entrepreneurs that you help out so if
you're interested in learning more about
press there's two resources that I
really liked Jason Kincaid was former
TechCrunch reporter just wrote a really
really great overview that covers a lot
of things I just talked about in more
depth and from the you know blogger side
that was a really great book and then
kind of an evil resource is this book
trust me I'm lying which was written by
and the one of the former marketer at
American Apparel
and he talks about like a lot of ways
that he pretty like evilly actually
manipulated the press but I think it's a
pretty good look into like the
psychology of like how people you know
things spread on the Internet
you know how stories spread on the
internet and then it some might be
valuable to take a look at cool that's
that's basically it
one question just one to quit okay two
questions or zero questions when we're
in love when is the right time to start
worrying about press all together I
think it's a really good way like if you
just the first time I launched you know
my first products in our first startup
for a lot of them we got like zero
attention and we didn't really know how
to even get a hundred users I think it's
a really fine way to get a hundred users
and a lot of companies in YC when they
first launched their product will
encourage them to get out and just do
one tech much story to like get a few
people to see it it's good to get in the
practice I wouldn't like obsess over
getting like coverage in multiple
outlets or anything like that in the be
very beginning alright anything else
story about relation of mom thing so
like how much of a control did you guys
actually play out yeah so twitch you
know had this thing called
twitchplayspokemon where developers set
up like a Pokemon like Gameboy game that
was controlled by chat so you know
millions of people would be typing an A
or B and like the character would run
one around aimlessly and that was like a
huge news story and I think that what we
did was you know there's a couple of
parts when we set the stage by having
other news stories that so when someone
from the BBC would Google like twitch
and be like what is this crazy thing
that everyone I reddit is talking about
they would like have some contact the
other thing is like we didn't come up
with the idea for Twitter right that was
like fortuitous but we helped you like
give it legs by you know making the
company available to talk to the
reporters and suggesting follow up
stories about like you know there were
stories not just about
twitchplayspokemon because a hundred
thousand people were watching this
Pokemon game but because you know it
finally like there were stories when
they beat the game and there were
stories when they launched twitch plays
Pokemon you know crystal or whatever the
next Pokemon version wasn't like so he
kind of gave that story like a little
bit more legs but we didn't you know
originated it it was the community
really we
they did it alright I think that's it
thank you very much