Zoelle Egner

Leaders must act as 'repeaters-in-chief' to ensure alignment, as most people require multiple exposures to internalize a message.

"The importance of relentlessly repeating the exact same stuff over and over again, even if you feel like everyone definitely knows... I repeated the same three talking points about why what we were do..."

Internal virality is driven by empowering 'champions' to solve problems for their colleagues, making the champion look like a 'superhero.'

"We knew if we can get to the right people and we can connect the dots to them to the correct use case... they'll be able to go to their friends and say, 'Hey, I'm using Airtable as a content calendar,..."

Templates drive retention by reducing the cognitive load required for a user to find value in a horizontal product.

"I think they [templates] can be tremendously helpful if you are horizontal because they help to narrow the surface area for a user, so they understand how to connect the dots between their problem and..."

Live problem-solving with unfamiliar tools reveals how a candidate handles pressure and learns on the fly.

"I like to ask anyone who's going to be in a customer facing role... to solve an unfamiliar problem using Zapier... I basically lay out for them a problem that I, as the customer want to solve, and hav..."

High-quality, industry-specific sample content builds brand trust by signaling that the product was built with a specific customer in mind.

"Invest in having a decent photo or a decent illustration. If you have sample content, this is actually a big one, sample content for your productivity app as an example. Take the time to not have it b..."

Billboards can serve as a powerful credibility signal for enterprise buyers, even if they don't drive direct lead generation.

"Airtable, back in the day, got roasted on Twitter for having billboards that were not super specific about a specific problem... They were actually super effective for us because we had a different go..."

Elevating a profession or job identity is more effective than trying to create a new software category.

"If you could hold up either an existing or a brand new job and say, 'This is really important for much broader business metrics, whatever else. We're going to create community for those people to come..."

A concise, mission-driven narrative gives people a sense of agency and attracts high-quality talent and volunteers.

"The incredible power of a simple idea to bring people together. One of the reasons why VaccinateCA was so powerful and got so many people to help is everybody immediately understood why it would be us..."

Positioning a startup as part of a larger inevitable movement increases perceived sophistication and importance.

"Having more of a point of view than just about your product, you can try and say, like, 'We are part of something bigger. Here's the broader circle or movement that we are a part of.' It makes it feel..."

PR should be viewed as a credibility asset for proactive outreach rather than a passive lead generation tool.

"PR is not going to get you leads or users... What it is good for is credibility... hiring or maybe improving the response rate for your cold outbound. Those are the two that I think make the most sens..."

A cadence of smaller launches is more effective for maintaining momentum than a single 'big bang' launch.

"Instead you can have not just one big launch but a series of launches that allow you to stay top of mind, to create momentum with your users, and to show up in lots of different places because audienc..."

Customer success interactions are a primary source for high-value, scalable content and templates.

"Make sure that you have also set up a process to take the insights that your customer success people are coming up with and turn them into as much content as you can... we would talk to a bunch of cus..."

Starting with the smallest possible infrastructure allows for rapid learning and prevents building based on incorrect assumptions.

"The power of having a laughably small MVP for something... In the beginning it was truly, basically, a spreadsheet, and phones, and that was it. Even that... not only had tremendous impact... but also..."

Proactive, immediate outreach to new signups helps build mental models of successful user personas.

"Literally had a Slack integration that we pulled in a whole bunch of information about anyone who signed up for Airtable... and literally would sit there and had a little button in each of the records..."

Unstructured phone conversations provide deeper insights than structured surveys.

"The simplest way to do this is to write a template email for yourself... 'I would really love to hear about your experience so far and get your feedback. Do you have 10 minutes to talk on the phone?'..."