Let me paint a picture for you. 🌌 It was January of 2014 — and I was running an 8-person with absolutely traction. company zero Just a few months prior, we had just started — it was just me — and I literally had no idea what I was doing. Breather and a few other guys and girls We had just raised $1.5 million, and I had hired a : a designer, an iOS developer, a senior engineer, an NYC operator, and a few others. I could feel all of their eyes on me as we waited for precious “traction,” “users,” and “product/market fit” to appear. small, tight-knit group There was just one problem — how to create any of these things. I had never even run a . I had no idea startup Hell, I didn’t even know if my service . would work What a difference this is from today. It took two more years, but now, is of all of the “networks of office space” startups — those seeking to do for commercial space what Airbnb or Uber did for homes and cars. Since then, we’ve raised over $30 million. We have , we are growing rapidly, and we’re building our network and user base more rapidly each month than last. And of course, the market is . Should we execute, an impressive outcome is pretty much a certainty. 🌠 Breather the most funded amazing, supportive investors huge But back then, I knew . In December of 2013, I had literally zero actual customers and a dwindling bank account. none of the above Turning it around literally made my whole company possible. And this is the story of how that happened. Step 1. 🌡🌡🌡🌡🌡 It all started with the focus that can only come from . desperation Already, a big part of our runway was gone. Breather barely had any spaces in our network — maybe 3 rooms, total. . We didn’t even have the locks we needed, after our lock partners failed to materialize. 🗝 No one was using them In the fall, our CTO we could use, with an API we could plug into. For the first time, our rooms could now be opened with the app we had built. It felt like we were off to the races. finally found locks But by December, we still had . I had asked (begged) friends on Facebook to try the service, but they . A few of them had given me money for a few hours of office space, but I was pretty sure that, if I hadn’t pressed them for a “donation,” I never would have gotten anywhere. nothing almost never returned I remember , on December 26th over a beer, with giving me advice. “Just pick a number and grow it 8% a week,” he said. sitting in a bar another CEO “Really? But then how do I actually grow the number?” I asked. “You’ll figure it out.”🍻 I came back from the holidays on Jan 2, probably half my runway gone by then. I put a number on the wall — . I told my team we were going to grow it. 8%, every week. “How?” They asked. hours booked per week “I don’t know. But we’re going to figure it out.” Step 2. 😅😅😅😅😅 Asking more friends. Giving it to them for free. Telling people to meet me themselves, in my own spaces… but having book it. Whatever it took! I was going to get 8% more hours per week. I was trying everything. them And it was working! But . Each idea was both exhausting, and losing its value — fast. I was running out of ideas Around this time, — a market we knew that we had to win, if we were going to be anything at all. This aggressive launch turned out to be ; it was a milestone that later helped us raise our Series A. we launched New York prescient But of course, that didn’t matter until we actually got traction. Step 3. 🔑🔑🔑🔑🔑 It first started to turn right as my sense of desperation . I started offering free hours on Twitter — to . I didn’t care if I was desperate. I was going to get 8% hours a week, and because of my prior successful weeks, it was getting . I hadn’t failed once yet, and I wasn’t going to start now! deepened literally anyone harder and harder to succeed at doing this Miraculously, the idea of actually giving hours away on Twitter . People were like, “Wow! What’s this new service?” I gave them directions to download the app, which they did. I gave them free hours. Then, some of them booked. All of these people were strangers, and even crazier, some of them ! actually started really working actually liked it Some even came back! At this point, with evidence of people liking our service and the method working, I started hitting this angle hard. The flowchart you see to the left is what I built. I started from scratch, but over time, it became a machine. Step 4. 💰💰💰💰💰 Soon, it began to hit the next level. My original Twitter audience was ~40,000 people (I was in the first 10,000 Twitter users, so my follower count started growing early). But . So I took the next step: I made an ad out of my offer using Twitter’s early ad tools. I was running out of audience (they were all basically the same idea): Here is one of the ads I wrote Do you see above how many retweets and favourites this ad had? Well, it got so successful that . I got a call from Twitter HQ : “What are you doing with your ad? We’ve never seen anything like this before.” Twitter : “What do you mean? Just trying to get people’s attention.” Me : “It doesn’t look like an ad at all — and you’re asking for replies? Why? Most people want retweets or follows, don’t you want followers?” Twitter : “Nope. I want replies. I want to start a conversation.” Me I just looked back a moment ago. During those months, in my inbox, there is evidence of that came from this method alone. over 1,000 conversations Yup, 1000. Well, it turns out that this trick got me … and beyond. It worked in New York, SF, Canada, and more. Eventually, we found better tactics, and we evolved our team so it had in it ( ), not just some schmuck that had written a few . 😜 all the way to a $6M Series A actual marketing people we’re hiring btw marketing books I remember standing in the RRE partner meeting, where led our Series A. (now at IVP) was questioning this tactic. Naively, I told him this would . It didn’t, of course. But it did work long enough for it to . Schlaf Tom Loverro work forever matter In case you’re interested, here is the graph that the tactic above created (from our Series A deck). It kind of still blows my mind that this is what got me here. Looking back, I was . very, very lucky I had a service people (i.e. product market fit). actually liked There was nobody else really competing in this space. We had a lot of money from the get go, so we could try crazy shit. We had a great team of people that made sure everything worked along the way. I don’t know if I can think of any particular lessons here, other than the usual cliches: Starting up is like building a plane . You never know ahead of time what’s going to work. while falling off a cliff Some experiments will be intelligent. Others will be dumb. . You just need a lot of experiments and tons of dedication. It doesn’t actually matter (of basically any kind that isn’t bullshit) is what’s really needed to raise a Series A. Creating a hockey stick And finally, I hope you know — . Every week at Breather, even now, is filled with experiments like this. And we’re never going to stop. It’s one reason what we’re doing is working. it doesn’t actually stop there Anyway, thanks for reading. I hope you learned something, or were inspired to try some stuff at your own startup. 😁
