CommonGenius
Community to Book 1-on-1 Video Meetings with Top Experts & Influencers
Title
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Co-Founder, COO/CMO
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2018-2019
Roles
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Product
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Marketing
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Partnerships
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Series A Fundraising
Awards
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Forbes Top Startup
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South-by-Southwest Partner
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Startup Grind Runner-Up
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Collision Beta Track
Team
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Roman Grimaldi
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Diana Santiguida
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Steve Cundari
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Orun Bhuiyan
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Peter Odryna
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Jennifer Tacheff
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Tami McQueen
There is not an easy, efficient way to buy & sell intellectual capital and expert knowledge.
Marketing Home Page
Expert Profile
Brand Identity
I wanted to create a professional brand that felt authentic and steered away from the tropes of corporate B2B marketing.
What we designed was a polished brand that drew inspiration from authority media like WSJ or NYT and seamlessly interwove concepts of creativity, exploration, and the artists journey.
Product Overview
Key Features
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Discover Experts by Areas of Expertise
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Book 1-on-1 Video Consultations
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Transparent Pricing & Subscriptions
Featured Startup
Runner-Up at Startup Grind 2019
Invite to Partner at TCD 2019
Partners with Morning Brew
Top Startups 2019
Partnership with Broadway NYC
Pilot Program with CAA
Partner with SXSW 2019
Marketing & Growth Strategy
- Establish Credibility:
Build a polished brand that would attract top experts. - Seed Expert Community:
Partner with organizations & media with pre-existing user bases. - Grow User Community:
Leverage and cross-market expert communities and partner organization networks. Build viral loops through product gates, content, and exclusive experiences. Work towards owning organic google search through lattice concentrations. - Build habit triggers:
Leverage subscriptions to create repeat purchasing and upsell behaviors.
Results
It is amazing what this team of 12 accomplished in a little over a year. We launched an awarded product and brand that drew the attention of major media, influencers, and partners. We featured thousands of top experts including Nir Eyal, Ryan Holiday, Brian Kelly, and Alex Lieberman and were on track to do thousands of meetings per month.
A key learning that we found early-on was companies were very interested in the product as a benefit to their employees and augmentation to their workforce. We accelerated our plans soon after launch for "CommonGenius for Business" based upon our learnings and advice from top venture capital.
In September of 2019, we were preparing to launch our B2B offering at TechCrunch Disrupt, where we were to have the largest showing of any startup and feature executives from Google, Facebook and Airbnb, when we were completely blindsided by an unforeseen issue which led to most of the team, including myself, being let go.
Even for veteran entrepreneurs like myself and Roman, this one hurt because we had done such great work and were close to a breakthrough. To watch it all slip through you fingers because of circumstances outside of our control was a quite painful learning opportunity: always put emphasis on de-risking your blindsides.
Following this collapse, I needed some time to lick my wounds and gather my thoughts. I took an operational role at another start-up, Pinger, to lead marketing on their portfolio of products as well as those coming to market.
