Scatter Brain highlights

“People in the bottom 50% [of activity on the marketplace] are generally just doing a casual gig here or there so they aren’t a great fit for Dayslice because they don’t tend to have a repeat customer base. The marketplace take-rate also stings a lot less when you’re not making significant income overall from it. Meanwhile, people who are the very high-end of use (especially the top 3%), tend to uniquely and disproportionately benefit from their marketplace ranking so they’re harder to peel away. But when we target folks in between these groups [between the 50% and 90% percentile of activity on the marketplace], we tend to get a lot of “aha!” moments and excitement around Dayslice.” 

“Think about Home Depot as a toolkit when it comes to home construction–you can build a million different homes with the individual tools at your disposal. That being said, most people don’t actually want the toolkit. They just want to buy a house that has already been built for them. And, sure, they’ll want some customization–like they’ll put some frames up of family pictures and might paint a wall–but mostly they don’t care about having control over every little decision that goes into their house. You need to know whether you’re building “toolkit” software or “product” software because it will trickle down into seemingly small product decisions but make a big impact on the overall product experience.” 

“With freelancers, it's very similar to being an investor; the bigger and better your network is, the more “deal flow” you get. Last year we took the first step towards that by enabling users to publish profiles so they can get discovered and discover others who can fill roles on their project teams. We knew there was a demand for a system built for collaborative freelance, and the network was already there; they just couldn't see each other yet.”

“All of our software is free. We also offer free business banking and peer-to-peer payments to make that financial collaboration accessible. We make money from ACH payments, the interest on deposits, and the interchange from the debit cards. But the bigger picture here is financial services specifically for freelance businesses. That includes products like invoice factoring, small business loans, credit lines, etc. All your friends are here, and all your finances are here; why would you ever leave?

“The market conditions have been whiplash, but I'm a female founder. Everyone says, “winter is coming,” and it’s like, damn dude, I live in winter! The market is not for the faint of heart right now. If you are used to getting easy money, you will not make it.

We are going to eat at this market, so I plan to win by building a global freelance operating system that delivers on our vision of putting more money into independent’s pockets. We will distribute pricing data to rapidly grow the network, expand our partner ecosystem to offer help with taxes, healthcare, and legal, and be the bank for this newly unlocked freelance economy. That includes new financial products like fast payments on invoices and small business loans or credit lines. Ultimately, we want more and more people breaking that six-figure ceiling.”

“Being able to talk to your users based on subscription status and what you talked about is so hard. You can do that, but you have to build difficult infrastructure. Apple doesn't let you do that out of the box. And that's what we do. Let's say you're a website using Stripe. You can quickly get a list of all active subscribers and dump it in Intercom. You just can't do that on an iOS or Android system. So we fill that gap. There's a reason I started a B2B company instead of a B2C company. I was tired of all that crap.”

“I, as a developer, cannot tell Apple to refund a customer on my behalf. It's a terrible experience for everyone. My mom went through this and asked, "have you heard about in-app purchases? I made an in-app purchase, and I didn't want it. The developer told me to talk to Apple. I can't believe it." I can't believe it either, mom.”

“It would certainly be easier if I started playing secret games and stopped sharing. I could control the narrative better. I could have "the reality" and "the real reality." But I think that wouldn't help the company. I don't think it would make us operate better. Sometimes it bites me because I share scary things.

I've sent some pretty sour investor updates over the last three months. Initially, a few people were like, oh, are we going to die? And I was like, probably not, but like, maybe. I know you're a little scared, but welcome to my world. If I present the problems on my mind, people will often bring me things I wouldn't have thought of because they're seeing stuff on the frontlines. I have lost the frontline visibility I used to have when I talked to customers and worked on the product daily. And so, I try to propagate my thinking as much as possible so folks can make decisions or take in information and funnel it back to me.”

“Journalists operate under first amendment protections that are near absolute in the US. A journalist reading this would immediately begin to object to all their perceived limitations — because most journalists hold themselves to strict rules on protecting anonymous sources and have an entire code about whether the information was gleaned on the record, on background, or off the record. They are also constantly seeking to operate in a way that would be defensible in a libel suit — not recklessly disregarding the truth and making sure they have two sources to confirm potentially sensational facts, for example. But even with all that, compared with business people, journalists have much more freedom to do their jobs from a legal and regulatory standpoint.

When I moved over to the finance world, I initially thought I would work a beat just like a journalist would — cultivating sources inside companies, getting to know experts, and so on.

For example, if a stock analyst hears a rumor, she can’t phone a bunch of people asking whether it’s true without risking that behavior as being construed by FINRA or the SEC as spreading the rumor! I remember learning this and asking, “Don't I have free speech?'' And I learned that, no, if you work in finance, you don't have free speech. Wall Streeters don’t have free speech; they have compliance departments.”

“A public markets investor will establish a position in your company and then trade around it depending on factors that sometimes have nothing to do with their belief in your long-term growth prospects. If your company valuation grows quickly in a short time, funds might trim back their holding to maintain their weighting of your stock, depending on the fund objectives and their rules. It’s important not to get defensive about that. Or, you might have a shareholder whose assets under management are smaller relative to the big guys but holds a significant position in your company — and they might need to trim all their holdings a bit to free up capital to buy some hot IPO or whatever. Or, a fund might be chasing cyclical or macro trends, and you sit in a sector that just fell out of favor. (Hello, SaaS spring 2022!) The point is that the markets are open every day from 6:30 am until 1 pm pacific, and your company’s value bounces around minute-by-minute. A good IR team can help you make sense of the chaos and identify what’s in your control.”

“The first organised wave of B2C marketplaces came to Pakistan somewhere around 2012 when Rocket Internet unleashed some of its globally successful models in Pakistan. While most of them eventually folded, Daraz, the B2C ecommerce company, thrived, only to be acquired by Alibaba at a reported value of $180 Million in 2018. The talent that worked in the Rocket Companies during their foray into Pakistan was key in developing the tech ecosystem in the country.

Then came Careem and Uber around 2015-16, and the mobility space heated up. The multiplier effect that Careem had on talent, entrepreneurship, and investments is well-documented. Careem’s fast scale-up, competition with Uber, and the eventual $ 3.1 B acquisition by Uber put the Middle East/Pakistan region on the map. The talent that Careem developed went on to start more than 50 startups in the region, similar to the Paypal Mafia in the US.

It wasn’t until 2020 that B2B marketplaces suddenly got into fashion in Pakistan. Buoyed by the success of Udaan in India, we suddenly had quite a few B2B marketplaces in the FMCG/Kirana space. To be fair, the term marketplace is being used quite liberally here as the business model for most of these startups is closer to e-distribution than to marketplaces. The predominant operation is buying goods, storing them in warehouses, and distributing them to the retailers as the orders are received through apps or call centers. Interestingly, most of the capital raised in Pakistan is concentrated in this space as these businesses are easier to scale GMV-wise.”

“Airlift was a key part of the Pakistan startup story for the longest time. Airlift’s $12M Series A led by First Round Capital in late 2019 changed the game in the Pakistani startup space. This kind of raise was unheard of in the Pakistani context. For decades, startups in Pakistan who wanted to raise capital had very few doors to knock on. Round sizes were generally $25,000 to $200,000, early stage valuations above $1M were rare, the diligence was quite extreme, and don’t get me started on liquidation preferences and reserve matters. And then, a few months into its incorporation, Airlift raised a monster $12 M Series A. Immediately, potential founders started paying attention. Foreign investors started paying attention. Airlift, in many ways, catalysed the explosive growth in Pakistan’s ecosystem.

However, while Airlift continued to dominate the funding headlines, its operations were anything but successful. Running a quick commerce business means building competencies in growth, product, supply chain management, procurement, pricing, warehousing, last-mile delivery, customer experience, etc. Airlift built the ability to scale fast. However, some of the abovementioned competencies did not materialise as quickly as required. That, the model’s inherent weaknesses and the macros eventually did it for them.”

“The first generation of companies opened up access to opportunities through digitizing the job application process and skill-building experiences. They focused on removing friction from the job application process, which led to the ‘one click’ application phenomenon. But friction in the job application process is a good thing --it’s needed. Recruiters don’t want to sift through thousands of applications with limited signals on an applicant’s intent and capability - a problem that those early companies only exacerbated. On the edtech side, the first gen companies (e.g., Coursera, Udacity, etc.) opened up access to knowledge that historically was difficult to access (because you had to go through a four-year college degree). There was this extreme proliferation of educational content, albeit with significant variability in quality. But these companies missed that knowledge alone doesn’t get you a job. An employer’s trust in a credential gets you a job, not the knowledge you gain from a course.

I characterize the second generation as companies focused on establishing their credential with the explicit goal of that credential leading to an employment outcome. This approach was an improvement from 1st gen companies, but they struggled to get credible buy-in from employers and candidates. These companies took on the monumental challenge of trying to convince employers to hire using a new credential from a new and unknown provider. It’s (almost) impossible to get an employer to adopt a new framework or credential for hiring outside of a university degree, although there are some successful examples.“

“The Australian start-up ecosystem was nascent when we founded the company in 2017. Atlassian was the only true homegrown success (although Canva and a few others were on their way). Even today, the availability of early-stage capital in Australia pales compared to the US. Forage found it challenging to raise pre-seed money in that environment and struggled to even set up conversations with local funds. We raised just US$30k in pre-seed capital from an Australian accelerator, which we lived off for the company’s first year (we’ve now raised $38m for context). That first year bred a sense of extreme capital consciousness - every cent was scrutinized, and we had no choice but to figure out how to use it to make meaningful revenue from our customers. Given that starting point, I’ve always felt more comfortable in an environment where you have to figure out how to go further with less. I counterintuitively found that environment more challenging where the expectation was to deploy capital aggressively to pursue top-line growth. I know many international founders who share similar feelings.”

“The advice I always give people who got laid off is that they have to do two types of work to get through this phase - the first is mental - and it's the hardest. They have to be mindful about not letting fear cloud their thinking, you have to do everything you can not to let imposter syndrome creep in, and you must remember that you are not low-value and you're great at what you do. If people can keep themselves out of that mental ditch of despair and stay in a positive mental space, it's easier to navigate the job hunt. Easier said than done, but it's key to going into this short career blip with a clear head. Doing that mental work also connects to the second part, engaging with the people who can help you get a new role. I leaned on my network of former colleagues who knew what I was capable of to give me the first boost to get back into the game. I also owe much of my career to the humble cold email. I have sent cold emails to former colleagues, founders, and comms leaders at companies I wanted to work at, and in a few instances, they created a role for me. It's not a surefire approach, but a 'shoot your shot' method has worked for me.”

“I've been doing PropTech comms for 13 years, so I've worked through nearly the entire evolution of the category. I was at Trulia in 2008, pre-IPO, pre-Zillow acquisition when the innovation in the space was the unlocking and digitizing of listings. The listings and ads for realtors had traditionally been in the window at a real estate office or in the newspaper, but now they were online. Those ten years of the early 2000s were the first significant shift in nearly 100 years, and then 100 more years of innovation happened in the next ten years.

Zillow and Trulia changed the 'what' and 'who' of real estate - they showed consumers what homes were on the market, put some visibility on rates and lenders, extracted data to show trends, and showed them who could help them through the process. But no one ever touched the 'how' of the process. Anyone who has ever bought or sold a property knows that the pain points are concentrated in the 'how' part of the process.

I spent 2017-2020 at Opendoor, where I worked on most of our comms needs and eventually focused on launching new markets and growing those markets via local/regional comms. Real estate is inherently local - always has been, always will be - and we treated comms in the same way, and we used it to create a category, overcome skepticism, and enhance paid marketing efforts. To many consumers, Opendoor was essentially a digital version of the cardboard signs on the side of the road that said, "I will buy your home for cash." 

“Founders may have nailed the origin story and the future vision, but they should look to comms to weave that into a current and future narrative that can be used in various forms with different audiences. You say different things in a sales meeting than you'd say to an individual consumer. Comms can help keep those narratives separate but aligned. Also, while founders were building and becoming experts in a category, it's unlikely they were studying the media landscape and building media relationships. They don't often understand how media relations work, how to create internal timelines and execution plans that map when a funding round is happening, a product is launching, an acquisition is underway, an exec transition is playing out, or a crisis is unfolding. That is where comms experience is invaluable and necessary. Comms is also a great gatekeeper of your time.”