Lessons from Airtable’s unconventional growth strategy | Zoelle Egner

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Zoelle Egner is best known for her time at Airtable (currently valued at $11 billion), where she was the 11th employee and built and led the initial marketing and customer success teams. Currently she’s the Head of Marketing and Growth at Block Party, a company that designs consumer tools for online safety and anti-harassment. In today’s episode, we explore the marketing strategies that helped Airtable punch above its weight and build an established brand. We also dig into how Airtable was able to find its first super-users, how customer success played a key role in getting early traction, and the do’s and don’ts for marketing investments. Zoelle also shares her experience working for VaccinateCA (which ended up playing a massive role in helping get people vaccinated during the pandemic) and several tips for obtaining valuable customer feedback.

Find the full transcript here: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/lessons-from-airtables-unconventional

Where to find Zoelle Egner:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/zoelle

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zoelleegner/

Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

Referenced:

• Patrick McKenzie on Twitter: https://twitter.com/patio11

• The Last of Us on HBO: https://www.hbo.com/the-last-of-us

• Airtable: https://www.airtable.com/

• Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/

• Block Party app: https://www.blockpartyapp.com/

• Kathy Sierra’s book Badass: Making Users Awesome: https://www.amazon.com/Badass-Making-Awesome-Kathy-Sierra/dp/1491919019

• Gainsight: https://www.gainsight.com/

• Datadog: https://www.datadoghq.com/

• Notion: https://www.notion.so/

• Zapier: https://zapier.com/

• Computing Taste: Algorithms and the Makers of Music Recommendation: https://www.amazon.com/Computing-Taste-Algorithms-Makers-Recommendation/dp/0226822974

• Ancillary Justice: https://www.amazon.com/Ancillary-Justice-Imperial-Radch-Leckie/dp/031624662X/

• The Happiness Lab podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-happiness-lab-with-dr-laurie-santos/id1474245040

• Gastropod podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gastropod/id918896288

• Everything Everywhere All at Once on Showtime: https://www.sho.com/titles/3493875/everything-everywhere-all-at-once

• Extraordinary Attorney Woo on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81518991

• Figma: https://www.figma.com/</