2. Product over advertising
Though she describes herself as a “marketeer at heart,” Grede believes that no product will succeed if it’s not high quality—even when it’s backed by the most effective inventive on the planet.
“We do ourselves a little bit of disservice when we think that the whole idea of what it means to be an entrepreneur and founder is about the forward-facing part,” she mentioned. “You will be better off obsessing with distribution and logistics and product excellence than social media and influencer strategy and digital marketing.”
At the tip of the day, you probably have a product that works and may get it right into a buyer’s palms rapidly, “everything else sorts itself out,” she added.
“You can get obsessed with what it looks like on the outside, and it’s just the wrong focus. It’s not that it doesn’t matter. It just isn’t the first thing. It’s the cherry on the icing, not the cake, and you focus on the cake.”
3. Don’t over-rely on the metrics
Grede doesn’t view virality as a sign of long-term success. “From an investor standpoint, I would never look at a brand that is tracking on social and invest off of that basis,” she mentioned.
While social virality is a “signal that something could be interesting,” entrepreneurs are additionally on the whims of platforms and algorithm adjustments that would flip issues on a dime. “That is not something that you can control,” she mentioned.
Instead, when investing, Grede seems for various indicators: “product excellence and a founder with a level of insatiable tenacity that can’t be dampened.”
4. The cues are within the feedback
The feedback could be a scary place, but it surely’s mandatory to interact if you wish to actually perceive and reply to your viewers. Grede spends time within the feedback sections of her numerous enterprise accounts each Sunday, “sometimes happily, sometimes very tender-hearted, because you better be ready,” she mentioned.
She views taking cues from the feedback as vital, as a result of “there’s no point in taking it back into your organization and making excuses for the things that you found.”