Lessons learned from Google to Brit + Co

Five questions for Brit Morin

GV
GV Library
Published in
3 min readSep 9, 2015

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Brit Morin is the founder of Brit + Co, an online media and e-commerce platform that provides tools to teach, inspire, and enable creativity among women and girls. Brit sits down with Google Ventures to share the lessons she has learned through founding her company.

1. What is the most important thing you’ve learned as a founder?

“A/B test everything. It’s something I learned at Google that I’ll carry with me throughout my entire career.”

Brit learned to use metrics to guide the way early in her career at Google. Now, at Brit + Co, measuring everything and using data to move quickly is her most important strategy for competing against bigger more established companies. “We have to compete with speed and innovation — we have to be the first to try new things and new platforms for distribution.”

2. What’s the key to helping a startup stand out?

“60% of our traffic comes from social media, so we decided to create content explicitly for those channels.”

It’s no accident that Brit + Co creates a lot of content that can be shared across different social media channels. To get noticed, Brit produces content explicitly tailored to what users want to see on different channels: “Content that we know Facebook users like lives on Facebook, Pinterest on Pinterest, and so on. It’s been a strategy of our business at Brit + Co.”

3. What is the top trait to look for in hiring?

“You can hire smart, capable people; you can hire hungry people that will work hard; but if they don’t believe the core of your mission, they’re not going to stick around.”

Brit + Co is on a mission to foster creativity among women and adults. Above all, Brit hires people who care about that mission because those are the employees who will stick around. “At Brit + Co we have a high employee retention rate because the people here truly care about our mission and want to see that change in the world.”

4. What are your tips for maintaining work/life balance?

“I stack my meetings back to back as much as I can and I say no to meetings that I don’t need to be in.”

After having her first baby last October, Brit has adopted new strategies to become more productive in the office. Taking a page from Sheryl Sandberg’s book, she notes, “I ruthlessly prioritize everything about my day.” Sometimes that means saying no to meetings if her input is not needed, and focusing instead on the most relevant priorities.

5. How can a company build meaningful relationships with customers?

“We host a 10,000 person festival every year to have human, face-to-face interaction with our community.”

Even for tech companies, face-to-face interaction is key to building strong relationships with customers. Companies like Birchbox and Warby Parker have opened physical retail stores, and Brit + Co runs a shop, hosts classes (“Soul Cycle for DIY”), and throws an annual 10,000 personal festival called Re:Make to bring their community together. “We do it every year because we see the value of those relationships. Those attendees have become our power users.”

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