she was a 21 year old student at Indiana
University when she co-founded a company
of unique print publications tonight we
are going to learn how fuck up let her
to her and her co-founder to nearly
destroy her business please give it up
for Adrienne well first what is your
problem okay first I just want to give a
shout out to the events amazing events
organizers of this evening and close
friends
Vito Cash and Leo and when they asked me
to speak I was like oh it's September
21st and my birthday is tomorrow so what
better way to kick off celebrations then
tell a roomful of strangers one of your
biggest failures in life like that's
exactly so we're gonna oh my fonts don't
work so surprised
it's okay oh okay okay now we can talk
now okay so I'm gonna tell you about how
one likes small mistake literally almost
cost me my company um so how it all
began
I'm from Indiana and we went to Indiana
University and I make a joke here a lot
about how I treated cornfields for rice
fields um so I was there I was studying
journalism in marketing and met my
co-founder Evan and Evan and I were both
in Greek life and fraternity and
sorority x' and we saw that no one was
really talking about the things that
were going in our community things that
we cared about so we decided you know
why don't we start a print publication
that's a great idea
literally the same week that we decide
this the headlines of New York Times
Boston Globe Chicago Tribune is thank
you Mickey I'm about to eat this
microphone it said do not start print
publications print is dying we're
cutting pages were firing staff but
Adrian go ahead and start a paper that's
a really great
yeah um so we did within the very first
week it took off like wildfire we had
campuses from neighboring universities
that were asking how they could start to
Odyssey at their campus and we had by
the time that we were ready to graduate
we had four publications at for
universities and these were all unique
16 page full-color papers so we're
sitting there in my kitchen table trying
to figure out you know we're about to
graduate are we going to stick with this
or get real jobs because that's what our
parents want us to do and we're like
yeah we're just gonna do this cuz that
sounds like a better idea
so we graduate four days later we move
to Indianapolis and we move into our new
office and we are so excited because
what would you expect in a tech space in
a brand new office come on
this is volunteer participation thank
you ping pong and like sweet chairs and
like fireball a bar and like nice
glasses like just like oh just so swanky
right nope we moved into a bagel factory
an actual working bagel factory a
hundred feet from my desk was a hot tub
size of honey it regularly smelled like
apple cinnamon bagels fell off the truck
we were often the taste testers for the
factory it was kind of wild but we loved
it we loved that it was scrappy we loved
that the it we didn't have air
conditioning one summer it was 95
degrees um and we were just following
something that we loved and like Tiago
saying like we working 18 hours a day
just like hustling and we're hiring more
people and we're getting to year so went
too fast for the year for because once
we graduated we had four publications
then we had 18 then 27 and then your
four were at 33 publications that are
completely unique printing every single
week during the year we have more than
500 people around these campuses writing
things that they're passionate about and
then we have 15 employees we're starting
to get major traction in our community
in the
we are having stacks and stacks of
papers now the kind of paper that I
wanted that time but papers and then um
we closed our we closed our first
six-figure client and we're just like
killing it obviously you know America
there's fireball on that bus by the way
um and just having like the greatest
time we're let me what we're doing we're
loving people we working with
so it's about this time that you would
cue the fuck up right so we had this
thing that Chris you're gonna really
appreciate this we had this thing that
we were taught in school get the 4.0
have the best internships get the best
experiences land the best job and so he
took that same principle that we were
taught and use that for our hiring set
so we only hired people that had the
four O's that came from the best
universities that were 10 years older
than us and had all this experience in
the company and we started to see the
shift where they're the culture started
to get really odd we were having to
really fight with people to get basic
essentials done there was water cooler
talk there was even secret lunches to
talk about Evan and I okay so it got to
the point that Evan and I didn't even
want to come into work anymore
think about this I've worked for we've
worked for four years blood sweat and
tears type of MBA
you've worked 80 90 120 hour weeks
you're taking no pay and you can't even
like fathom coming into work anymore
that week we went from 15 employees to
five ten people were high fired or quit
and we're in the middle of our
production season so the remaining that
we had four people on the executive team
and a lovely designer that was still
with us today but we had the four people
we literally locked herself in a room
and we were trying to figure out what
the hell happens we followed all the
basic structure of business we hired
these smart people and what we came to
figure out it was the culture we did not
hire for culture we hired only four
skills
so this was our fault as much as I would
like to blame the other people there it
was our fault we were the leaders of the
company we did not identify we didn't
leave so we spent the remaining of the
weekend essentially locked in this room
to figure out a way that we can make
build a tangible culture something that
was institutional something that we can
continue so we came up with a list of
values and principles and actually put
together an odyssey code of culture and
it was a six foot tall four foot wide
board that sat in office and contain
things like work on yourself always
loose lips sink ships make the client is
our priority the you know your work
together as a team like things that are
basic principles but that we had just
forgotten and that dictated everything
for the future from hiring to firing -
whether we took on a project and we
didn't only just do that institutionally
like inside our full-timers but I was
still we were finding ways to bring that
culture to the creators and to her sales
team on all these campuses so I was even
writing notes on a weekly basis to our
team to remind them of the mission to
tell them how excited we were about
their success and to keep it going
and so we started to really see some
progress and one really big moment for
us that we saw that really meant a lot
to us was that we raised some money
which is always nice and business
especially when you're eating a lot of
PBJs so we raised 2.4 million in
convertible deck which means that we
didn't lose equity but we had some
things to copy ourselves and we also got
some move out of the big old Factory and
get the sweet swanky tech office which
was nice um and we started to continue
to focus though on the culture we had
this money so we ended up opening an
office in New York we started hiring a
ton of people to help further the
business because at this point we had
only done print and we were making the
shift to being an online platform as
well because we wanted to service more
communities and give more
people the opportunity to share their
voice and things that they're passionate
about so for this small print but if you
don't have your glasses on and we had an
employee that nicknamed our culture
squad C and it started to be prevalent
everywhere we started doing morning
cycle riots we did retreats we were
going out for dinner and drinks on a
frequent basis we were hiring this team
of interns that was all based off this
and our interns were crying when they
found out they got the internship we had
really established this culture of that
we were fun we all enjoyed working
together but we're still making progress
we're still hitting our deadlines we're
still hitting our numbers so it wasn't
an either/or situation so now we get to
like fast for two years later to April
2016 and we have about we've masks we've
like focused solely on the platform and
we have hit 30 million uniques which is
a lot if you don't know those things and
it was all done organically we did zero
paid promotion of content and we had 30
million uniques in less than two years
we had more than 14 thousand creators
creating content on a weekly basis that
averaged 40,000 pieces of content we had
more than a hundred employees and we
were having a great time and we were
starting to work with clients that I
could only dream of working with fortune
100 fortune 500 Victoria's Secret pink
Starbucks although we did not get free
Starbucks and we're also being notarized
in the community and in the industry as
thought leaders as people that are
pushing
not only good business but good culture
at the same time and this was all done
in less than two years which is pretty
insane while we were launching the
platform so so much progress and we were
like we really needed something to cap
it off we wanted something to work for
and then this is supposed to be bigger o
be praised
we raised 25 million dollars in venture
capital funding 25 million dollars so
you can see we celebrated a little bit
it was
very exciting to get some money it's
real I kind of really like verify and a
credibility of what it is but even more
so what was exciting is that our lead
investor which is known in the industry
has had two and a half billion in exits
wrote a LinkedIn post about us when he
invested and he said two things that
really stuck with me one is that it was
the most exciting company that he had
seen her since investing in BuzzFeed
which that really sets the table height
right but then more importantly that
Odysseys business is strong but it's the
people that drew him to the business so
really solidified that focusing on that
culture really made a difference on our
bottom line and just our overall
happiness so I know there's a lot of
digital nomads in the group tonight so
not a lot of you are having larger
companies where you're part of one but
at the end of the day it doesn't matter
because you have to make culture a
priority and to really trust our gut
instinct I don't care if you're hiring a
freelancer having a contractor you're a
contractor or you're working in a
company of 10,000 you have to trust your
instinct because at the end of the day
culture is king thank you
