Collective Wisdom For Tech Startups

When talking about brands, most people think logos, or colors, but for BaubleBar (http://www.baublebar.com/) founder Daniella Yacobovsky (https://twitter.com/daniellayac) branding extends all the way to the way cardboard boxes are packed. Photo Credit: http://nyti.ms/1GxXF8a

Today we’re going to talk to Daniella Yacobovsky (https://twitter.com/daniellayac), one of the co-founders of BaubleBar (http://www.baublebar.com/). BaubleBar is a fascinating company, they make really cool costume jewelry, have raised over $15M from top VCs and fashion trendsetters, and are pioneering the field of “fast fashion” and data-driven product development. In this episode your learn about the dangers of trying to pitch your startup to Michelle Obama, a cool hack to convince VCs to invest in your company, and why all your marketing copy should be just a teensy bit offensive.

One of TripAdvisor co-founder/CEO Stephen Kaufer's mottos is to “innovate when things are going well.” His point is that when times are good, failed experiments aren’t fretted over. However, once the market turns, it’s probably too late. You can experiment, but those efforts will be looked at like flails or last ditch efforts. TripAdvisor eagerly anticipated the iPhone platform and were early to launch an app. They embraced Facebook advertising so enthusiastically that Facebook included TripAdvisor as a model in their pre-IPO S-1 filing. Location is a critical part of their business, so TripAdvisor figured out what to put in an Apple Watch before ever wearing one. These experiments have a cost, both in terms of cash and focus, but they ensure that the company won’t be caught flat-footed. Kaufer even talked about pilot projects like drones flying over picturesque sites, like a volcano crater, to capture video for even more versatile TripAdvisor profiles. Photo Credit: http://bit.ly/1LejIAv

Have you ever wondered how to get the attention of a startup CEO? TripAdvisor Co-founder/CEO explains how to get to the top of his $10B inbox. In step-by-step fashion you'll learn what to say and how to say it if you want to partner with a big company.

What do you do when your company is facing a crisis, or as TripAdvisor co-founder/CEO calls it, a "scared sh*tless throw spaghetti at the wall moment?" Some context: His team had been plugging away for about a year and a half and had a functional version of TripAdvisor. Their original plan was to do B2B sales, embedding their travel search engine into major websites. They reached out to all the travel companies, media giants like Yahoo, and were in the early stages of selling their product. Then disaster struck. After 9/11 the travel industry was in shambles. TripAdvisor wasn’t sure if their champions at these companies would even have jobs in the coming days and months. In addition to the terrorist attack, the financial markets had collapsed since the company’s founding and TripAdvisor was on the verge of running out of money. The team had a cool product, but little traction and was on the verge of running out of money. Kaufer offered the investors their money back. They declined, and he resolved to sail to victory or go down with the ship. He asked the team to take pay cuts and gave them more equity. The investors gave him a small bridge of capital to create enough runway to find a business model with promise. The team experimented with banner ads, but quickly realized they lacked the hundreds of millions of page views required to turn that into a thriving business. A Yahoo-inspired directory didn’t pan out. Finally, the team experimented with a cost per acquisition revenue sharing deal with Expedia. The company had a temporary reprieve but needed to find a way to make money. Their strategy changed from B2B to B2C. Expedia was willing to pay TripAdvisor for each referral that turned into a booking—with no limit on the payment. This turned Kaufer’s problem from an abstract one, “how do we make money,” to a more concrete query “How do we get more traffic?” An existential problem became an energizing challenge and the company now has a market cap hovering around $10B dollars. Photo Credit: http://bit.ly/1ObYnbK

TripAdvisor is the undisputed leader in travel, but it’s not for lack of competition. Kayak was a contemporary company that never encroached on TA’s core business. Airbnb competes with TripAdvisor, but only on a subset of properties. However, upstarts like Trivago have taken aim squarely at TripAdvisor’s core business. Trivago’s product is comparable, but lacks the engaged community, decade and a half of user generated content, and many of TA’s features. However, their traffic and market share has grown steadily on the back of television commercials. Kaufer had dismissed the concept of TripAdvisor doing TV advertising for the better part of a decade, but in the face of a competitor’s success with the advertising medium, he was willing to reconsider his prior beliefs. “I’m stubborn," he says. "But I’m not stupid.” Photo Credit: http://bit.ly/1P8VXeP

An IPO will change any startup, but TripAdvisor co-founder/CEO says it doesn't have to be disruptive. He believes you should set the groundwork early by creating a culture that focuses on product and growth while keeping background noise to a minimum. Photo Credit: http://bit.ly/1GkPmH6

TripAdvisor is bigger than Yelp by any metric that matters, yet Yelp has a much bigger PR footprint. Founder Collective's Eric Paley asked TripAdvisor co-founder/CEO Stephen Kaufer if that was a problem. Kaufer wasn't worried about it. TripAdvisor customers who own hotels or venues are fiercely protective of their ratings and guard them zealously. One of TripAdvisor’s secret weapons is that they’ve created a brand that their customers are incentivized to share and defend. Like Fodor’s, Zagat, and other tastemakers before them, TripAdvisor is a trusted editorial mark of distinction in addition to being a wildly profitable tech platform and that passion is more important than a few fleeting press mentions. Photo Credit: http://bit.ly/1YOpvmi

28 seconds of advice from TripAdvisor co-founder/CEO could easily cut 28 days worth of effort from your project plan. Kaufer has built a company worth $10B, but he's taken plenty of shortcuts along the way. You should too. If someone has already figured out a way to market, run ops, or improved some other commoditized part of a business, don't try to reinvent the wheel—steal the ideas (while respecting all patents, copyrights, and other IP, of course.) Photo Credit: http://bit.ly/1MXP4xD

Travel is a sexy category and many startups have tried to turn a passion for exotic locales into an enormous business, but most have struggled. The travel industry is massive, with $7.6 trillion dollars of economic impact, but the opportunities to meaningfully take money from that pie is small. TripAdvisor co-founder/CEO Stephen Kaufer’s brilliant original insight was to stay close to the money. In this case, the money amounts to the fees that hotels bake into their pricing structure. Travel agents used to benefit from these fees. OTAs made their fair share in the transition to digital, but TripAdvisor locked onto that piece of the revenue pie. Kaufer realized that hotels are a honeypot, while ancillary services like flights, restaurants and activities are businesses fraught with low margins, huge amounts of competition, and low loyalty. TripAdvisor didn’t ignore these areas. Even with low revenue potential they represent a big piece of the customer experience, but they were looked at critically in relation to the core business. One of the reasons TripAdvisor has thrived while competitors like Yelp have struggled recently is that it has prioritized the parts of the market that had the highest payoff. Photo Credit: http://bit.ly/1VmPFrU

Trip Advisor Co-founder/CEO Stephen Kaufer has managed to build a multi-billion dollar business, but he doesn't credit the success to design, technology, or marketing. Instead, he says a commitment to ongoing improvement has been one of the most important aspects of his corporate philosophy. For the last 12 year, TripAdvisor has released a new version of their website Every. Single. Week. Kaufer’s matra is “speed wins.” At one point the product team, feeling overwhelmed by the size and complexity of the codebase, petitioned to make releases bi-weekly. The request was summarily denied with a flat no. Further pleas were made and met with flat no’s. Kaufer credits the decision to his background in computer science, but are also an important reflection of his managerial sensibility. “It’s not like we’re building embedded software that’s shipping out on a chip,” he says. “If the site goes down we can revert. I don’t slap the team around if there’s a bug. That’s software.” Photo Credit: http://bit.ly/1NVLG4S

For more startup resources, visit http://www.collectivewisdom.io STEPHEN KAUFER, THE CEO OF TRAVEL GIANT TRIPADVISOR SAT DOWN WITH ERIC PALEY IN THE THIRTEENTH INSTALLMENT OF THE FOUNDER DIALOGUES SERIES. THE CONVERSATION TOUCHED ON THE COMPANY’S EARLY STRUGGLES TO GET TRACTION, THE IMPORTANCE OF BUILDING A BUSINESS NEAR A SOURCE OF MONEY, AND WHY SPEED WINS AT STARTUPS. Stephen Kaufer has the demeanor of a friendly Vermont bed & breakfast operator, but is responsible for building TripAdvisor into the world’s largest travel website. His company has a $11B market cap, is the 51st most popular website in America, and counts nearly 200 million app downloads. Their database contains 250 million reviews of 5.2 million businesses in 123,000 destinations across the globe. They’ve become the key rating source for over three million restaurants, 950,000 hotels, and 560,000 attractions. Beyond the stats, they’ve got a community that responds to 85% of posts in their forums within 24 hours. Despite all this success the company exhibits few of the trappings of a big business. There is no reserved parking space for the CEO in front of the company’s new 282,000 square foot headquarters. Instead that prime real estate is reserved for expectant mothers and potential employees visiting for interviews. Kaufer sits in a corner office, but is surrounded by a gaggle of junior engineers instead of VPs and assistants. Popular culture has conditioned us to expect a certain amount of bravado from CEOs. It manifests in different ways—Steve Jobs’ imperiousness, Mark Zuckerberg’s petulance, or Elon Musk’s Iron-Man inspired exertions, but Kaufer is the exact opposite of those stereotypes. Kaufer has demonstrated how it’s possible to build a thriving, iconic tech business while retaining the charm of a friendly traveler.

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You'll obsess over your logo and web design, but startups too often skimp on the photos that define their brand. RedAntler (http://redantler.com/) CEO JB Osborne (https://twitter.com/jbosborne) explains why that's a mistake.