Sarah Judd Welch

Let me say, the past few months have been eventful! In August, I transitioned from Catchafire to TaskRabbit’s team as the Founding City Manager of NYC. For the ladies (and gents) who came to the Promise Party that I threw with TaskRabbit in mid-October, thanks for coming out! It was a great party, and I hope that you had a good time. I’m sad to say, however, that it didn’t work out at TaskRabbit…That sucks!
 
For those of you who cautioned me against this role, I admit that I totally deserve an “I told you so,” right? Go ahead and say it. I definitely got the learning experience that I was seeking. To be honest, the worst part was not the personal blow but the punch-in-the-gut realization that our tech community is failing at scaling. We’re messing up big time, and it’s a little heartbreaking.

As I started sharing my learnings one-on-one with several community members, I realized how much bigger this issue is than my personal story. A single blog post turned in to four full-length essays about lessons learned on scaling, with a specific focus on location-based online-to-offline marketplaces. My conclusions are based on interviews and conversations over the past two weeks with founders/employees/former employees at Meetup, Uber, Yelp, Seamless Web, Yodle, Redbeacon, Her Campus, and even a non-tech franchise business. This is in addition to my personal experience at TaskRabbit and Catchafire and various conversations with Skillshare and Airbnb and at least a half dozen other entrepreneurs at other startups.

The overarching themes align with the common mantras in our community: manage your investors, trust your users, build great teams and make people fall in love. However, the lessons learned were surprising, and I’m certain that not everyone will agree with my conclusions. I’m posting these essays Tuesday through Friday of this week:

1. Don’t chase markets. Let (the supply side of) markets chase you.
2. Don’t hire city/general managers. Hire community managers (if anyone…).
3. Slow down! Perfect your product at home.
4. Coffee dates aren’t scalable. But warm and fuzzy feelings are.

I personally found this research and writing process to be fascinating as I realized that scaling is fundamentally rooted in behavioral economics and psychology - isn’t business just about people, after all? But don’t expect these essays to be a coffee break read. The material is content heavy and specifically targeted towards marketplace-focused startups.

To be clear, I’m not an expert in scaling. These essays are based on an aggregation of experience and information and are intended to be valuable and constructive to other startups. I certainly welcome discussion, feedback, and comments in the coming week. As a note, no proprietary information will be revealed, and I have permission to share the few numbers included. I hope that you’ll find these lessons valuable!

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So, what am I doing next? I haven’t made firm decisions for the long-term just yet. But I do know that I’m revising, accelerating and executing the shit out of my Learning Plan while I determine my next steps!