Jess lee | Polyvore CEO on Startups

You don’t have to be like everyone else to succeed.

After a bit of sound advice from Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said:

Always choose the more challenging route,

surround yourself with the best smart people

The only way to win in startups

#1 Most important thing

Build something the user actually wants.
Build something that delights them, &They love.
Something you wanna tell your friends about.
Solving a problem.

#2nd Core value

Do a few things well.
Focus: You don’t have infinite time or resource, Pick a few things you wanna be remembered for whether it’s a product or you personally.

#3rd Make an impact

Hire amazing smart people, people that you will love being around,
empower them.
Things go wrong all the time, you are constantly failing and winning.

Tips

UX Research

A way to figure out whether the idea is good or not
Maybe go to Starbucks (Any coffee shop),
show users what you have been working on (UI, Prototype, Storyboard).

Fake door testing
(Knowing is it an important feature before spending time working on it).

Connect engineering and Tech with the actual business purpose

Best programmers are those who don’t think only about the technical side,
but why we are building this, what the user wants out of it,
what’s the goal, business goal?

Don’t make side projects

Focus, if you really like them,
make them your full-time passion projects.

Be data driven

See metrics and numbers.
Some would say I don’t like this feature, but numbers would show if users love it.

You have to do something you love

Surround yourself by people you love.
The startup journey is hard, you may fail In the end but enjoy it.

Interview Questions

What’s one piece of advice that’s stuck with you?
“I remember reading a quote a long time ago from John Lilly who was CEO of Mozilla before it became Firefox.

He was talking about the best advice he’d received,

It went something like,

“Look around at all the people that you work with. Find the people you love being around, who get shit done, who you want to help win, and then treat them right, always.”

He was making the point that relationships last and you may be working with those people in 20 years’ time.

Getting that chemistry right is so rare and so critical.

Do right by those people.”

What’s something you learned early on in your career?
“Saying no is super important, otherwise you burn out.

By saying yes to everything, you spread yourself too thin and end up not doing the important things really, really well.

At the end of the day, most people, most companies, most brands are known for a couple of things that they are amazing at.”

Tell us how you jumped from employee to CEO and co-founder of Polyvore?
“Even though it wasn’t necessarily part of my job at the time, I would volunteer to do things outside my role.

Obviously, at a startup you have too many things to do, but not enough people, resources or time. It’s really appreciated when someone goes above and beyond or tries to get that thing done that’s important or annoying, hard or no one else has time for. The constant volunteering saw me push outwards from my defining role and that made my responsibility grow and grow.

Sometimes I’d be good at that thing, and sometimes I wouldn’t.

But along the way, I was definitely learning.”

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from Udacity talks with Jess lee.