The world of communication is mysterious, and at times, it feels at odds with journalism. So to hear that there is an effort to help more commissions trade notes, share stories, and prepare crowdsourced responses, I have a selfish fear that it will reduce exposure from founders and executives in the startup world.
But, Shawn Garrett, the first head of communications and marketing at Twitter, is trying to convince me otherwise. Garrett built Twitter’s communications team and helped the company develop marketing, public affairs and government relations strategies. He also advised the Obama White House on digital strategy and communications Slack and created two other communications consultants. All the background that makes the latest bet even more interesting: MixingBoard, a startup that brings together communications and marketing leaders in one place to help clients avoid the “BS PR stuff.”
The Mixing Board brings together current, emerging, and experienced marketing leaders to share tips on trading, whether it’s messaging startup secrets or how to introduce stealth trading to the world. It offers a variety of programs based on different needs, but focuses primarily on executive recommendations from Airbnb, American Express, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Netflix, Obama White House, Otley, Slack, Twitter, Virgin Group, and more. To date, there are over 200 people in the community.
The company doesn’t want to be an alternative to a PR agency, but instead wants to help people in an organization grow through mentorship support and perhaps get a wider range of ideas beyond the singular perspective of their immediate network. In other words, his clients aren’t startups, he’s a comms leader in a startup.
Now, it’s free to join the COMMS Leaders Mixing Board. The startup gets its money through a crowd-sourced recruiting operation where companies pay to help with the exec search. The startup splits the finder fee 50/50 with the member who pitched the idea, and as Garrett explains,A far greater return than the karma points we’ve all accumulated doing this kind of thing for free over the years….tIts success (as well as the current economic current) is the reason why we are adding fractional/temporary and advisory roles to our portfolio.
Unlike a decade ago, when communications professionals were mostly stuck in their own lane and competing more than they could be, Garrett thinks the current market presents a key opportunity for team building. “One of the biggest changes, obviously, that’s happened in the last few years is the increasing relative power of workers. “People talk a lot about the impact on social justice issues, it affects organizing but it has an impact on reality,” he said.
Employees are some of the best resources for organizing for change or venting corporate grievances to the press. For him, that devolution is an opportunity for companies to focus on their reality and for commissioners to be better and stronger at their jobs.
Another thing the mixing board wants to capitalize on is the evolution of a comms person in charge compared to when they first started. When I run this story, we often think of comms as media relations. It’s part of the job, but Garrett emphasizes that so is editorial strategy, community moderation and events. Basically anything that someone talks to or supports the audience with can have a comms person behind the scenes, making sure things run smoothly.
“What has really changed is that the comms are now in such a leadership structure and it’s becoming more and more. And even I have many peers who love our commissioner leaders who are marketed below them,” he said. “You’re not reporting to the CMO anymore, the marketing team is reporting to the commission person, right? It means that the work is more important… the thinking and attitude goes into the executive strategy.
Garrett gave me the example of a comic board to help comms drum up the best ways to handle layoffs. Members talk about “how to communicate with employees, how to contextualize this. Be direct, be clear. Don’t promise. Don’t do things like that, say this is the last time we’re doing this because if it’s not.. you’re really screwed.”
“Obviously it’s focused on that internal audience and obviously there’s an external audience as well, but if you can get that internal audience right, it’s going to go away, and it’s okay,” he said. “You remember when people treated you humanely and when people treated you kindly… Inward focus should really be the rule and [what will] your middle”
Another complementary effort in the network world is coordination, a fund and network built by operators. Both business endeavors are aggregating advice, bringing experts together in one vertical, and building on founders’ desire for more tailored advice (especially in a world where they’re not hiring as much). The difference is that the Coalition is trying to expand that advice externally by pairing companies with experts, while the Mixing Board is trying to grow the profession internally.
The founder also mentioned Reforge, which sells group-based programs for founders seeking advice on how to navigate a particular business problem. “We are just scratching the surface of how to unlock professionals who are currently stuck in organizations. Once we do that, we can use it to create talent development and opportunity that will lift all boats,” he added.
All companies often want to produce something informal, share advice, something difficult to force, building a real community.
Recent examples have shown that startups selling community access can struggle to balance efficiency with venture capital incentives. Mixing Board works with 200 members but what does it look like when it hits 2000 members? 20,000? We know that networks can scale – ahem, YC – but we also know that there is buy-in, proven value and natural synergy to make them work.
Now that the Mixing Board has officially launched, the group is making a difference by building a community. To build a strong foundation, Mixing Board raised $350,000 in a pre-seed round from Bloenberg Beta and others. The startup is now profitable, Garrett says, but more importantly, it has time to monetize, digitize and provide self-service tools, and raise additional external financing.
