An Unlikely Source of Inspiration
People who move to New York City do so for the same types of reasons that compel people to move to any other city, generally a combination of love, work, school, family, or longing. When it comes to work and school, they can often go hand-in hand. Silicon Valley seems like a great example of this. They have Stanford and Berkeley among other institutions, and seemingly as important, they also have a natural outlet for those graduating to find employment in the area, especially if they want to work in some form of connected technology. The hottest companies are in that area, and it may be a result of the fact that the vast, vast majority of funding also resides there. Intentional or not, you have the perfect funnel for attracting talent, funding talent, and keeping companies in the area.
Ask anyone in our industry about some of their biggest challenges, and that word comes up again, talent. Finding good people is really hard. Finding people who actually know what they are doing, i.e., have experience is even more difficult. That’s why historically, especially in the performance marketing space, it was common to find companies hiring smart people and banking on them picking up the vertically specific skills. In other words, even though companies wanted people with line of business experience, they would settle for those with an ability to pick up line of business expertise. That is not the same for more universally applicable skills such as finance or human resources.
Getting the right talent has not become any easier, but enough people have filtered through the performance marketing ecosystem that you’ll find graduates of the space in unlikely (read: mainstream) companies. It doesn’t solve the problem of bringing in new talent, but it’s pretty good news still, because it means that our skill sets have value outside the space. And by skill sets, we’re talking about an understanding of performance-based customer acquisition – where to buy, how to buy, tricks to buying, conversion optimization, analytics, etc. Every company needs this, and it makes those in our space more valuable than we think. We saw this first hand while visiting a company whose office was not their own. Instead, they shared space with many other companies.
The idea of shared space and companies renting out space to others is not new. Those who have too much space often lease out desks to other startups. What feels different, or we should just say new to us, is seeing this concept of shared space applied with greater rigor. Whereas before you might find a few companies together because of shared connection – investor, friend of friend – today we see models merging. There are two examples that come to mind. In one, the space acts like a lead generation tool for a venture firm. They offer you space for free for up to six months. In certain cases, the space comes with a condition of including them in the venture process. In others, no condition exists, but by virtue of proximity – someone from the team also works out of that space – they have formed a relationship with the startup such that the startup would want a continued relationship. The second is much more inspiring.
Think of some of the best online businesses today, so many fall into the category or flash sales or group buying. And why not? a new one pops up every other day, one gets sold every month (Yahoo just bought an Australian site for $40mm), and LivingSocial just sold more than $12 million in one day. What they all have in common are customer acquisition metrics familiar to performance marketers. They are also curated. The deals are selected and crafted, not just to maximize revenue to but create an experience. It’s why one site might offer a family friendly deal where Thrillist Rewards on the other hand sells a steak and lap dances. Imagine applying that sense of curation to a startup friendly space. This is what General Assembly in New York has done, and the result is nothing short of amazing. Sitting in the same office space is a collection of amazing talent – companies that you may have heard of, many that you will end up hearing about.
In addition to the companies being curated, the entire office has been curated, designed to be the perfect space for what startups need – white board meeting rooms, a quiet zone, plenty of non traditional seating, a collaborative work area, and more. This isn’t space for big companies. It’s a space to be outgrown, but while spending time there, the companies will absorb collective learnings. Each though, needs the DNA that performance marketing firms have. While it can’t work in every city or market, imagine if instead of investing profits from windfall years into personal extravagance , that money went towards fostering innovation. By creating a curated space for companies to use, it means doing what those in our space do best – providing rocket fuel. Innovation doesn’t happen from within the performance marketing space. Performance marketing is a catalyst for others’ growths. This model provides a new way to act as the catalyst not to mention a great way to absorb talent if their ideas fail.
