How did you make the jump into startup life?<\/strong><\/h2>\nJenna like many other entrepreneurs started with a more technical background only to later shift to marketing. There, she’d find that the balance of technical and marketing skills made for a deadly combo. The intention to acquire these skills had everything to do with the purpose and culture of the company that would hire for them.<\/p>\n
“You only know how to do Excel and that’s not what startups care about. I thought, ‘Okay, how can I make my resume better for a tech startup because that’s the Holy Grail of culture?’<\/em><\/p>\nI convinced my company to pay for Sequel classes. I said I\u2019d use it to recode these risk assessments that we had to do which were giant, bloated Excel projects. It was a nightmare to update anything. <\/span> <\/em><\/p>\nTo this day, I still use Sequel. <\/span><\/em>It’s a super powerful tool. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\nStill, I needed to get into a startup. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\nWhen you’re in finance and go to school for business, the mentality at the time was everything should be private. Your Twitter feed should be private. Your Facebook account should be private. You shouldn’t have an online personality.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\nWhen I jumped ship into the tech startup world, I saw people with hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers. They had these personalities online. They all had a side hustle and they were all doing online businesses and everyone was super plugged into the tech scene.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\nThe startup that I got a job at was called Chartbeat. They do real-time data analytics for publishers. I convinced them that I should be a customer support agent. I got the role and immediately realized that I did not want to do customer support.”<\/span><\/em><\/p>\nWas the tech startup life what you thought it\u2019d be?<\/strong><\/h2>\nWhen Jenna jumped into startup life, she experienced, like many do, that not every startup is right for you. Sometimes it takes several. Fortunate for her, she found that path fast.<\/p>\n
“At the Chartbeat, we could see the entire internet traffic which enabled me to understand how people move around the internet. It was my crash course in tech startup and hacking things together.\u00a0<\/span><\/em>So I started using more of my skills to understand what are the goals of the company.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n‘What do they hold most valuable?’<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n‘Who\u2019s driving the decisions?’<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\nThen I realized I wanted a culture that had more work-life balance. I want to be friends with the people I work with and hang out with them after work. I also realized that culture wasn’t everything and I wanted to care more about the product. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\nI was working on real-time data analytics, but at the end of the day, we were selling this idea of concurrence which is how many people are on your website at any given moment. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\nAfter a while, I felt like I was sitting on the internet trying to get more people to go to the Internet. It didn’t feel authentic. I wanted to spend my time doing something more meaningful.”<\/span><\/em><\/p>\nWhen did you first step into growth hacking?<\/strong><\/h2>\nMost growth hackers don’t even know they are one. When Jenna started her blog, she’d began to translate her technical skills into the world of marketing officially making herself a growth hacker.<\/p>\n
“Because I got into the tech side of the internet, it opened my eyes that you can start your own business. I know that sounds straightforward, but people can run businesses and you\u2019re a person and you can just do it if you have an idea. Just create a website and talk about it. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\nAt Chartbeat, I started a blog about health and wellness called <\/span>Urban Fitopia. <\/span>That was in the early days of Tumblr and I became one of the fastest growing ones. This was around 2013.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\nThat was my first foray into growth hacking. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\nThe number one thing I learned in building an audience is consistency is king.<\/strong> You have to create content on a schedule, then publish it regardless of whether you think it’s perfect. You have to just put stuff out there and see what the response is.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\nNumber two is building relationships.<\/strong> I met many awesome health and wellness bloggers online based in New York City, and then met them in person. This led to partnerships.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\nThen three would be don’t solve for your future problem, solve the problems at hand.<\/strong> You have to boil down what your steps are.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n‘Do you want to grow your blog or do you want more followers?’<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n‘Do you want to sell a product?’<\/span><\/em><\/p>\nStop worrying about what happens at scale or ‘how do I source 100,000 apples?’ or anything like that. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\nYou have to say, <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n‘How do I get that first customer?’<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n‘Get the first five customers?’<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n‘Maintain those customers?'”<\/span><\/em><\/p>\nHow did you solve for culture-product fit?<\/strong><\/h2>\nUnlike many employees, when Jenna lost purpose at her job, she picked up another one fast. This helped expedite\u00a0her career and learnings faster than most people.<\/p>\n
“When I was at Chartbeat, I got an itch to work on something that had more importance to people’s day-to-day lives. Because I started this fitness blog, I talked to many health companies on the internet. One of those companies, I started tweeting at and we started having conversations online. This company is now called ClassPass.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\nThey\u2019re a gym membership for boutique fitness studios. They offered me a job on Twitter. I became their first marketing hire. That\u2019s when I went from real-time data analytics and being a product analyst to being a full-time marketer.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\nI got my crash course in online marketing.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n‘How do you blend this idea of a tech company that’s online with a physical experience or real life experience?’<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n‘How do you get people to do what you want them to do?’ <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n‘How do you grow in engagement?’ <\/span><\/em><\/p>\nI loved my time there, but I wanted to be in the driver’s seat.”<\/span><\/em><\/p>\nHow did you come up with the idea for Green Blender?<\/strong><\/h2>\nThe best companies are never intentional. They happen because you’re playing with your passions. For Jenna that was health and wellness.<\/p>\n
“I was thinking about health and wellness and my boyfriend at the time (we\u2019re married now) was working at another tech startup. We were talking about how technology can help you improve your health. We got a blender and started making smoothies around the same time. Then one day he said, ‘We should just send people smoothie ingredients to people’s houses.’<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The problem was obvious. Nine out of ten Americans don’t eat enough fruits and vegetables, not because there’s lack of information online or that you don’t know you should. It was convenience. That\u2019s why we were seeing meal kits becoming popular.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\nPeople were becoming more comfortable receiving food in the mail. We did some research and found that 82% of US households own a blender. It’s the second most popular appliance in someone’s kitchen. Every ten years the whole country buys a new one.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\nThe data said this would be a great opportunity.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\nAmir and I are firm believers of The Lean Startup mentality.\u00a0<\/span>So we created a landing page that had our value prop on it.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\nIt said something like ‘Smoothies delivered. Sign up here.’ We had a simple optin for their email and zip code. We drove five hundred dollars of AdWords traffic to it.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\nAnytime someone tried to sign up, we would say ‘Sorry Green Blender isn’t in your area. Try back later.’<\/span><\/em><\/p>\nWe were just trying to see if we could get someone’s email address and how much would that’d cost.\u00a0<\/span>We got around 150 emails on the list.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\nAt the time, we were flying to Tahoe for a ski trip and I looked over at Amir and said, ‘Okay, let’s just get this done.’ In flight, we set up an LLC on LegalZoom and a business bank account.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\nWe thought ‘Let’s send them an email and see if they buy.’ So we sent an email that said, ‘Great news Green Blender is in your area, sign up here to get smoothies delivered.’<\/span><\/em><\/p>\nFive or six people bought and then we were like, ‘Oh shit. We have to produce this idea.’<\/span><\/em><\/p>\nWe went to the grocery store put boxes together and got on the subway and delivered them to people’s houses.”<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n