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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: <a href="https://www.lennyspodcast.com/lessons-from-airtables-unconventional-growth-strategy-zoelle-egner/#transcript" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.lennyspodcast.com/lessons-from-airtables-unconventional-growth-strategy-zoelle-egner/#transcript</a>

Where to find Zoelle Egner:
• Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/zoelle" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://twitter.com/zoelle</a>
• LinkedIn: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/zoelleegner/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.linkedin.com/in/zoelleegner/</a>

Where to find Lenny:
• Newsletter: <a href="https://www.lennysnewsletter.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.lennysnewsletter.com</a>
• Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/lennysan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://twitter.com/lennysan</a>
• LinkedIn: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/</a>

Referenced:
• Patrick McKenzie on Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/patio11" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://twitter.com/patio11</a>
• The Last of Us on HBO: <a href="https://www.hbo.com/the-last-of-us" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.hbo.com/the-last-of-us</a>
• Airtable: <a href="https://www.airtable.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.airtable.com/</a>
• Hacker News: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://news.ycombinator.com/</a>
• Block Party app: <a href="https://www.blockpartyapp.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.blockpartyapp.com/</a>
• Kathy Sierra’s book Badass: Making Users Awesome: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Badass-Making-Awesome-Kathy-Sierra/dp/1491919019" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.amazon.com/Badass-Making-Awesome-Kathy-Sierra/dp/1491919019</a>
• Gainsight: <a href="https://www.gainsight.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.gainsight.com/</a>
• Datadog: <a href="https://www.datadoghq.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.datadoghq.com/</a>
• Notion: <a href="https://www.notion.so/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.notion.so/</a>
• Zapier: <a href="https://zapier.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://zapier.com/</a>
• Computing Taste: Algorithms and the Makers of Music Recommendation: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Computing-Taste-Algorithms-Makers-Recommendation/dp/0226822974" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.amazon.com/Computing-Taste-Algorithms-Makers-Recommendation/dp/0226822974</a>
• Ancillary Justice: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Ancillary-Justice-Imperial-Radch-Leckie/dp/031624662X/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.amazon.com/Ancillary-Justice-Imperial-Radch-Leckie/dp/031624662X/</a>
• The Happiness Lab podcast: <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-happiness-lab-with-dr-laurie-santos/id1474245040" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-happiness-lab-with-dr-laurie-santos/id1474245040</a>
• Gastropod podcast: <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gastropod/id918896288" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gastropod/id918896288</a>
• Everything Everywhere All at Once on Showtime: <a href="https://www.sho.com/titles/3493875/everything-everywhere-all-at-once" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.sho.com/titles/3493875/everything-everywhere-all-at-once</a>
• Extraordinary Attorney Woo on Netflix: <a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/81518991" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.netflix.com/title/81518991</a>
• Figma: <a href="https://www.figma.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.figma.com/</a>
• Webflow: <a href="https://webflow.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://webflow.com/</a>
• Clay: <a href="https://www.clay.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.clay.com/</a>
• MKT1 Newsletter: <a href="https://newsletter.mkt1.co/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://newsletter.mkt1.co/</a>
• Emily Kramer on Lenny’s Podcast: <a href="https://www.lennyspodcast.com/how-to-build-a-powerful-marketing-machine-emily-kramer-asana-carta-mkt1/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.lennyspodcast.com/how-to-build-a-powerful-marketing-machine-emily-kramer-asana-carta-mkt1/</a>

In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) How VaccinateCA helped bridge a gap in infrastructure
(05:00) Zoelle’s lessons from her time at VaccinateCA
(18:04) How Zoelle broke into the tech industry
(19:01) Flocking patterns
(24:21) What Block Party does
(24:32) Zoelle’s storytelling
(29:15) Tactics for punching above your weight as a small startup
(31:30) The importance of having a highly detail-oriented person on staff
(33:33) Why Airtable used billboards
(36:43) Growth and marketing strategies at Airtable
(42:29) Using data provided by your customers to build features that help future customers
(50:59) Why customer success and marketing should be one team
(52:56) Things to avoid in marketing
(58:04) The power of templates
(1:00:58) Why Airtable did not prioritize templates for top-of-funnel revenue 
(1:02:04) Why just getting PR to “get PR” is not a good strategy
(1:04:57) The importance of getting customer feedback and investing in customer success
(1:05:51) Simple strategies for getting customer feedback
(1:07:53) Lightning round

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Lenny Rachitsky

Lessons from Airtable’s unconventional growth strategy | Zoelle Egner

Airtable

Brought to you by OneSchema—import CSV data 10x faster: https://oneschema.co/lenny; Pando—always-on employee progression: https://www.pando.com/lenny; and Lenny’s Job Board—hire the best product people, find the best product gigs: https://www.lennysjobs.com/talent. — 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 [&hellip;]