BoS2015 Robert J Moore - Looking Good for Fun and Profit. When Does Your Company’s Identity Matter?
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When Does Your Company’s Identity Matter? How do you create a visual identity for your business when a sense of style isn’t in your DNA? This was the challenge faced by the founders of RJMetrics, who set out to disrupt an industry where appearance is everything. CEO and co-founder Bob Moore will step through the evolution of the RJMetrics brand from attic startup to SaaS powerhouse. The lessons learned along the way go far deeper than just pixels on a screen.
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BoS2015 Robert J Moore - Looking Good for Fun and Profit. When Does Your Company’s Identity Matter?
- 1. Looking Good for Fun and Profit: Evolving A Visual Identity Business of Software 2015 | Boston | September 21st, 2015 Robert J. Moore
- 3. rjmetrics.com “During digestion, your body breaks down the nutrients in food. This causes a rise in blood sugar that triggers your pancreas to release insulin into the bloodstream. Insulin increases the amount of serotonin and melatonin that flood the brain, two chemicals associated with drowsiness.” -Science Hope You Enjoyed Lunch
- 4. rjmetrics.com Willpower Depletion “The longer we work on mentally strenuous tasks, the more mental energy we expend, and eventually we’ll run out and start falling back to these easy — and often wrong — default decisions.” -Also Science
- 5. rjmetrics.com Willpower Depletion “The longer we work on mentally strenuous tasks, the more mental energy we expend, and eventually we’ll run out and start falling back to these easy — and often wrong — default decisions.” -Also Science
- 6. rjmetrics.com If you feel yourself getting sleepy during this talk… Disclaimer
- 7. rjmetrics.com If you feel yourself getting sleepy during this talk… If you feel, with each minute that goes by, you are somehow dumber than before I started talking… Disclaimer
- 8. rjmetrics.com If you feel yourself getting sleepy during this talk… If you feel, with each minute that goes by, you are somehow dumber than before I started talking… blame science! Disclaimer
- 9. Looking Good for Fun and Profit: Evolving A Visual Identity Business of Software 2015 | Boston | September 21st, 2015 Robert J. Moore
- 10. rjmetrics.com At RJMetrics, our mission is to inspire and empower data driven people RJMetrics CloudBI Our Core Product RJMetrics Pipeline Beta Release Date: 10/6/2015 The RJMetrics Mission
- 11. rjmetrics.com We are 130 people who are crazy… about data. We Love Data
- 12. @robertjmoore We started out just like any other company: a few passionate people with a big idea
- 13. @robertjmoore But what happens when you grow?
- 21. rjmetrics.com What Breaks? Communication! Management Style! Recruiting! Compensation! Workflows!
- 23. rjmetrics.com Communication! Management Style! Recruiting! Compensation! Workflows! Office Space! …how about identity? What Breaks?
- 24. rjmetrics.com Company DNA: The most potent attributes of the founding team. Common Convention: this identity sticks with a company forever. My Take: This is a weak metaphor. Company DNA mutates in its own lifetime. What is company “DNA”?
- 25. rjmetrics.com Our story is just one case study on how company DNA can evolve. We’ve changed a lot. We’ve also made a lot of mistakes. I hope you can learn from the story. RJMetrics DNA
- 26. So, what was in our DNA?
- 28. @robertjmoore Frugality. To a fault.
- 29. @robertjmoore Frugality. To a fault.
- 30. @robertjmoore
- 33. What was not in our DNA
- 34. Clown Tie Wrinkled MC Hammer Pants
- 37. rjmetrics.com Fake It Until You Make It What do you do if style isn’t in your DNA?
- 38. rjmetrics.com You buy it! …but what if you’re a broke company? Fake It Until You Make It
- 40. @robertjmoore
- 41. @robertjmoore
- 42. @robertjmoore
- 43. @robertjmoore
- 44. @robertjmoore
- 45. rjmetrics.com We were disrupting an industry as old as software itself The bar for design and UX was low No Pressure
- 46. rjmetrics.com
- 47. rjmetrics.com
- 48. rjmetrics.com
- 49. rjmetrics.com Standards for consumer use impacted expectations for business use “Consumerization of the enterprise” By 2008, Our Founding Year
- 50. rjmetrics.com We grew. We started hiring. Our needs evolved, and our DNA did too. Meanwhile…
- 52. rjmetrics.com We A/B Tested our Want Ads Meanwhile… External Pressure
- 53. rjmetrics.com We A/B Tested our Want Ads Few job hunters are as risk-seeking as startup founders. Frugality gave way to convenience and security. Meanwhile… External Pressure
- 54. rjmetrics.com We Moved to Philly. Founder DNA Evolves, Too
- 55. Act II: Hired Guns
- 56. rjmetrics.com RJMetrics: A Philadelphia Company Still No Designer On Staff Meanwhile…
- 57. rjmetrics.com Borrowing From Our Mentors…
- 58. @robertjmoore Website Redesign “Can you throw in a logo?”
- 59. @robertjmoore
- 60. @robertjmoore
- 61. @robertjmoore
- 62. @robertjmoore
- 63. @robertjmoore
- 65. @robertjmoore
- 67. @robertjmoore DNA Mutation Frugality Became Efficiency
- 68. @robertjmoore “We need a new visual identity.”
- 69. @robertjmoore
- 70. @robertjmoore
- 71. @robertjmoore
- 72. @robertjmoore
- 73. @robertjmoore
- 74. @robertjmoore
- 75. @robertjmoore
- 76. @robertjmoore
- 77. @robertjmoore
- 78. @robertjmoore
- 79. @robertjmoore Risky click of the day…
- 80. @robertjmoore Risky click of the day…
- 81. @robertjmoore
- 82. @robertjmoore
- 85. @robertjmoore What do we do? Abandon the dodecahedron? Hang our heads in shame?
- 87. @robertjmoore
- 88. @robertjmoore 50,000 uniques 0.1% view-to-SQL 50 SQLs 19.8% SQL-to-paid 10 paying clients $20k ARR ACV $200k of new ARR/year 15x ARR Multiple (w00t!) $3MM of Equity Value
- 89. @robertjmoore
- 93. @robertjmoore
- 94. rjmetrics.com Lesson: Hackathons Are For Hacking
- 96. @robertjmoore
- 97. rjmetrics.com Identity Is a Part of Culture Inputs: • How people treat each other • Your core values Outputs: • Perks • Identity Mixing these up is a common mistake We didn’t find identity until we found ourselves
- 98. @robertjmoore
- 99. rjmetrics.com Doubling Every Year = Perpetual Newness
- 100. rjmetrics.com
- 101. rjmetrics.com At RJMetrics, our mission is to inspire and empower data driven people RJMetrics CloudBIRJMetrics Pipeline The RJMetrics Mission
Editor's Notes
- What we do as a company, quick plug, say we’re proudly 100% based in Philly, etc
- What we do as a company, quick plug, say we’re proudly 100% based in Philly, etc
- What we do as a company, quick plug, say we’re proudly 100% based in Philly, etc
- What we do as a company, quick plug, say we’re proudly 100% based in Philly, etc
- What we do as a company, quick plug, say we’re proudly 100% based in Philly, etc
- What we do as a company, quick plug, say we’re proudly 100% based in Philly, etc
- What we do as a company, quick plug, say we’re proudly 100% based in Philly, etc
- What we do as a company, quick plug, say we’re proudly 100% based in Philly, etc
- We are 120 people… still blows my mind to say out loud In 2014 alone, we grew from 40 to 110.
- People talk a lot about company “DNA” – linked to core values, etc, and cannot change… this is a broken metaphor that is used as a crutch by leaders who refuse to evolve. Corporations are NOT people (sorry Mitt Romney); quite the opposite, companies DNA can change and needs to change in order for them to survive; people shed and rebuild all of their cells every x years.
- People talk a lot about company “DNA” – linked to core values, etc, and cannot change… this is a broken metaphor that is used as a crutch by leaders who refuse to evolve. Corporations are NOT people (sorry Mitt Romney); quite the opposite, companies DNA can change and needs to change in order for them to survive; people shed and rebuild all of their cells every x years.
- Today, I want to tell a story about our company’s DNA at RJMetrics. And its evolution. Now, let’s take a trip down memory lane. Because when you first get started as as company, the company DNA is exclusively the founders’ DNA. I can tell you about something that’s in the DNA of myself and my co-founder Jake and this is us shortly after the company was founded in 2008.
- What was in our DNA was frugality: a desire to not spend money on things that could not be directly, quantifiably tied back to a return on investment for our business. We were broke and we were bootstrapping. Tell the story of the argument about paper clips
- What was in our DNA was frugality: a desire to not spend money on things that could not be directly, quantifiably tied back to a return on investment for our business. We were broke and we were bootstrapping. Tell the story of the argument about paper clips
- What was in our DNA was frugality: a desire to not spend money on things that could not be directly, quantifiably tied back to a return on investment for our business. We were broke and we were bootstrapping. Tell the story of the argument about paper clips
- What was in our DNA was frugality: a desire to not spend money on things that could not be directly, quantifiably tied back to a return on investment for our business. We were broke and we were bootstrapping. Tell the story of the argument about paper clips
- What was in our DNA was frugality: a desire to not spend money on things that could not be directly, quantifiably tied back to a return on investment for our business. We were broke and we were bootstrapping. Tell the story of the argument about paper clips
- What was in our DNA was frugality: a desire to not spend money on things that could not be directly, quantifiably tied back to a return on investment for our business. We were broke and we were bootstrapping. Tell the story of the argument about paper clips
- Here’s what was not in our DNA: style.
- Here’s what was not in our DNA: style.
- People talk a lot about company “DNA” – linked to core values, etc, and cannot change… this is a broken metaphor that is used as a crutch by leaders who refuse to evolve. Corporations are NOT people (sorry Mitt Romney); quite the opposite, companies DNA can change and needs to change in order for them to survive; people shed and rebuild all of their cells every x years.
- People talk a lot about company “DNA” – linked to core values, etc, and cannot change… this is a broken metaphor that is used as a crutch by leaders who refuse to evolve. Corporations are NOT people (sorry Mitt Romney); quite the opposite, companies DNA can change and needs to change in order for them to survive; people shed and rebuild all of their cells every x years.
- We used a site called Elance, hired a team, and went through this process…
- Talk about this process: there are huge stock vector files of generic logos– they slap your company name into them in a few minutes, turn that around to you, and you pick one
- We had too many options… that bottom left one was getting somewhere….
- We iterated and iterated and iterated around that look….
- And we landed on this monstrosity… Weird underline Kerning issues Reflective surface Gradient stroke Dull colors
- And now we have assets tied to this thing, but we’re a small company and there aren’t many of them. They’re mostly digital. Website, business cards, but that’s it..
- People talk a lot about company “DNA” – linked to core values, etc, and cannot change… this is a broken metaphor that is used as a crutch by leaders who refuse to evolve. Corporations are NOT people (sorry Mitt Romney); quite the opposite, companies DNA can change and needs to change in order for them to survive; people shed and rebuild all of their cells every x years.
- People talk a lot about company “DNA” – linked to core values, etc, and cannot change… this is a broken metaphor that is used as a crutch by leaders who refuse to evolve. Corporations are NOT people (sorry Mitt Romney); quite the opposite, companies DNA can change and needs to change in order for them to survive; people shed and rebuild all of their cells every x years.
- People talk a lot about company “DNA” – linked to core values, etc, and cannot change… this is a broken metaphor that is used as a crutch by leaders who refuse to evolve. Corporations are NOT people (sorry Mitt Romney); quite the opposite, companies DNA can change and needs to change in order for them to survive; people shed and rebuild all of their cells every x years.
- People talk a lot about company “DNA” – linked to core values, etc, and cannot change… this is a broken metaphor that is used as a crutch by leaders who refuse to evolve. Corporations are NOT people (sorry Mitt Romney); quite the opposite, companies DNA can change and needs to change in order for them to survive; people shed and rebuild all of their cells every x years.
- People talk a lot about company “DNA” – linked to core values, etc, and cannot change… this is a broken metaphor that is used as a crutch by leaders who refuse to evolve. Corporations are NOT people (sorry Mitt Romney); quite the opposite, companies DNA can change and needs to change in order for them to survive; people shed and rebuild all of their cells every x years.
- People talk a lot about company “DNA” – linked to core values, etc, and cannot change… this is a broken metaphor that is used as a crutch by leaders who refuse to evolve. Corporations are NOT people (sorry Mitt Romney); quite the opposite, companies DNA can change and needs to change in order for them to survive; people shed and rebuild all of their cells every x years.
- People talk a lot about company “DNA” – linked to core values, etc, and cannot change… this is a broken metaphor that is used as a crutch by leaders who refuse to evolve. Corporations are NOT people (sorry Mitt Romney); quite the opposite, companies DNA can change and needs to change in order for them to survive; people shed and rebuild all of their cells every x years.
- The office was so nice that Jake moved out of his crappy apartment
- People talk a lot about company “DNA” – linked to core values, etc, and cannot change… this is a broken metaphor that is used as a crutch by leaders who refuse to evolve. Corporations are NOT people (sorry Mitt Romney); quite the opposite, companies DNA can change and needs to change in order for them to survive; people shed and rebuild all of their cells every x years.
- People talk a lot about company “DNA” – linked to core values, etc, and cannot change… this is a broken metaphor that is used as a crutch by leaders who refuse to evolve. Corporations are NOT people (sorry Mitt Romney); quite the opposite, companies DNA can change and needs to change in order for them to survive; people shed and rebuild all of their cells every x years.
- It was time for a website redesign, and we hired a firm called X-team in Australia to do this one– basically we paid them for the website and had them throw in the logo for free as part of the deal. Again this shows this systemic lack of respect for design and branding, it leaves them as an afterthought.
- But we had evolved a bit… we were able to give some better guidance to these designers, because we told them that we wanted to logo to somehow invoke charts, analytics, etc. Maybe bar chart or something could be built in?
- We go through a somewhat tighter process with this team and we end up with this guy: the swoosh (show the swoosh logo) and this was our logo for quite some time, basically from May 2010 for several years. And we were proud of it
- People talk a lot about company “DNA” – linked to core values, etc, and cannot change… this is a broken metaphor that is used as a crutch by leaders who refuse to evolve. Corporations are NOT people (sorry Mitt Romney); quite the opposite, companies DNA can change and needs to change in order for them to survive; people shed and rebuild all of their cells every x years.
- June 2012, almost 4 years into the life of the company, we’re about a dozen people, and we make a decision to hire a designer, this guy Zach Kozac. And Zach comes in and almost immediately tells us that we need a new visual identity. And we say no. We tell him no. And he asks again. And we tell him no again.
- What was in our DNA was frugality: a desire to not spend money on things that could not be directly, quantifiably tied back to a return on investment for our business. We were broke and we were bootstrapping. Tell the story of the argument about paper clips
- June 2012, almost 4 years into the life of the company, we’re about a dozen people, and we make a decision to hire a designer, this guy Zach Kozac. And Zach comes in and almost immediately tells us that we need a new visual identity. And we say no. We tell him no. And he asks again. And we tell him no again.
- And Zach's got a good bag of tricks to persuade us; for one thing, our logo bears some resemblance to at least a few other brands out there, but more importantly that there is a huge difference between a logo and a visual identity.
- And this is one of many moments in the history of RJMetrics where our hackathons suddenly play a huge role in teaching us what’s possible and changing our strategic direction. Spring 2013, Zach’s been on board less than a year, and he goes for broke. He gets up in front of our company, which is about 25 people at that point, and tells a story…
- He tells us about patterns in nature and patterns in business, and that progress depends on the human ability to interpret patterns in the world, and act on the information gathered. This applied to us because at RJMetrics, it is our mission to enable you to identify the patterns in your business, and make the smartest decision possible.
- He also told us how Plato used geometric shapes to understand the universe. The most interesting of which, the dodecahedron. Which represents an understanding of all the things in the world that appear too complex.
- Oh. Then we got it. Hook, line, and sinker. And we started immediately on the process of rebranding, of establishing our new visual identity around this dodecahedron… and we build the new logo–
- this is the new RJMetrics, and it’s not just a picture of a 12-sided shape– it’s who we are, it’s got a story, and it’s us. It’s uniquely us. We roll out the new logo on our website, on our twitter, and we start building other assets around it. And this is where the story takes a somewhat interesting turn.
- Our twitter icon looked like this– and around that time we were seeing really good returns on Twitter ads, so in addition to our followers, we were buying promoted tweets that were shown all over the world– thousands of new people were seeing our logo every day; and if you know anything about social media, no punches get pulled.
- We start seeing tweets like these... And you get one tweet like that and you say “…hmmm that’s funny, what a weirdo”
- …and another, and you start to worry. Guy like me sees a tweet like that, any my immediate reaction is “what the hell is a Y-Front”
- … but then you get another,
- …and another, and you start to worry. Guy like me sees a tweet like that, any my immediate reaction is “what the hell is a Y-Front”
- …and another, and you start to worry. Guy like me sees a tweet like that, any my immediate reaction is “what the hell is a Y-Front”
- Yes, the comparison is a bit of a stretch, but we decided it wasn’t worth denying.
- Yes, the comparison is a bit of a stretch, but we decided it wasn’t worth denying.
- Since we promote our tweets globally, it seemed odd that only people from the UK would make these comments. I needed more data, so I built two Google Consumer Surveys, one targeted at the US and another at the UK. They each asked a single question to 1,000 random participants. Here’s what we found. And I know what you’re thinking – 2.6%, that’s not a very big number. Let me tell you something that only someone who has been through this situation can tell you: when 2.6% of the world thinks your logo looks like underpants, it feels like the whole world thinks your logo looks like underpants.
- Since we promote our tweets globally, it seemed odd that only people from the UK would make these comments. I needed more data, so I built two Google Consumer Surveys, one targeted at the US and another at the UK. They each asked a single question to 1,000 random participants. Here’s what we found. And I know what you’re thinking – 2.6%, that’s not a very big number. Let me tell you something that only someone who has been through this situation can tell you: when 2.6% of the world thinks your logo looks like underpants, it feels like the whole world thinks your logo looks like underpants.
- Since we promote our tweets globally, it seemed odd that only people from the UK would make these comments. I needed more data, so I built two Google Consumer Surveys, one targeted at the US and another at the UK. They each asked a single question to 1,000 random participants. Here’s what we found. And I know what you’re thinking – 2.6%, that’s not a very big number. Let me tell you something that only someone who has been through this situation can tell you: when 2.6% of the world thinks your logo looks like underpants, it feels like the whole world thinks your logo looks like underpants.
- It was at this point that we decided to take a second, look back, and laugh at ourselves. And I wrote a blog post doing exactly that, called “our logo looks like underpants: a case study in internationalization” It was #1 on HN– and it ended up landing us real customers and huge amounts of traffic; that transparency and sense of humor was so central to our brand and our image;
- It was at this point that we decided to take a second, look back, and laugh at ourselves. And I wrote a blog post doing exactly that, called “our logo looks like underpants: a case study in internationalization” It was #1 on HN– and it ended up landing us real customers and huge amounts of traffic; that transparency and sense of humor was so central to our brand and our image;
- It was at this point that we decided to take a second, look back, and laugh at ourselves. And I wrote a blog post doing exactly that, called “our logo looks like underpants: a case study in internationalization” It was #1 on HN– and it ended up landing us real customers and huge amounts of traffic; that transparency and sense of humor was so central to our brand and our image;
- It was at this point that we decided to take a second, look back, and laugh at ourselves. And I wrote a blog post doing exactly that, called “our logo looks like underpants: a case study in internationalization” It was #1 on HN– and it ended up landing us real customers and huge amounts of traffic; that transparency and sense of humor was so central to our brand and our image;
- And another fun side effect was that people started reaching out to us who had made the same mistake! But that’s not all who reached out… explain NYT and Forbes freelancing gigs that resulted
- And another fun side effect was that people started reaching out to us who had made the same mistake! But that’s not all who reached out… explain NYT and Forbes freelancing gigs that resulted
- And another fun side effect was that people started reaching out to us who had made the same mistake! But that’s not all who reached out… explain NYT and Forbes freelancing gigs that resulted
- Our graphics team proposed a simple fix: change the angle at which the dodecahedron is being viewed and shrink the white lines that separate its edges so they look less like elastic bands. The result was that only four of 1000 survey respondents saw y-fronts or underwear. Not only had our logo revision eliminated the y-fronts issue, it had actually increased recognition of the actual shape! One problem, it just didn’t look as good. Our designer continued tweaking the angle and color until we ended up with the iteration that we know (and love) today.
- And another fun side effect was that people started reaching out to us who had made the same mistake! But that’s not all who reached out… explain NYT and Forbes freelancing gigs that resulted
- I want to be clear as I wrap up here that I don’t view this as a “here’s how we screwed up” presentation. I do those from time to time, and I have plenty of those stories, but I think the more important lesson here is about the evolution of a company as it grows. Sometimes you have no money and no skills and no common sense and you settle for a giant purple logo– it doesn’t mean that you’re going to fail… what’s going to hold you back is not killing your darlings, not letting yourself and your company evolve and leaving room for innovation and new ideas, even when it feels like it’s in an area that doesn’t directly pay dividends. I’m really proud of who we are today and I hope you’ll all remember this story the next time you see that big dodecahedron around town. Thanks.
- But that’s just an aside– here’s the point: our identity wasn’t broken anymore because we had a style. What came next: a style guide, a voice guide, and lots and lots of collateral Show examples of SEPTA Ads, white papers, our website, t-shirts, data warehouse, and any other visual collateral that involves our dodeca that we’re proud of
- What we do as a company, quick plug, say we’re proudly 100% based in Philly, etc