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Adam is a VP on M13’s Propulsion team, which creates codified systems and scalable frameworks to propel our founders’ businesses forward. He was previously a senior brand manager at Unilever. Prior to that, he was in human resources at Target.

Adam Domian

Operator

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As a partner and the head of operations at M13, Lizzie leads the Propulsion team that helps propel our founders’ businesses forward. She was previously the COO of sneaker marketplace GOAT, CMO of Gilt, and founding partner of Brilliant Ventures.

Lizzie Francis

Partner

According to Nielsen Consumer Trust Index, 92% of consumers trust influencer marketing over traditional advertising. It’s this level of trust, along with creative innovation, that has driven growth in this marketing channel over the last decade. 
**What is influencer marketing?** 
Influencer marketing is a strategy that companies use to increase brand awareness or conversions among a specific target audience by partnering with influencers on social media. 
Influencers were born as TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, and Twitter users became content creators themselves, curating and crafting their own stories, photos, and videos to share with their followers. In doing so, they quickly attracted the attention of marketers. 
Today, influencer marketing is a powerful tool that when executed correctly can reach niche audiences to help you accomplish many goals, from building brand awareness to increasing sales. 
Whether you’re new to influencer marketing or enhancing your influencer strategy to take it to the next level, you’ll want to maximize your efforts and avoid rookie mistakes. 
In this guide, we’ll take you through: 
<NumberedBullet number="1" highlight="Defining your goals" />
<NumberedBullet number="2" highlight="Researching the right influencers for your brand" />
<NumberedBullet number="3" highlight="Considering your budget" />
<NumberedBullet number="4" highlight="Exploring 3 influencer marketing strategies" />
<NumberedBullet number="5" highlight="Creating a content strategy to help guide influencers" />
<NumberedBullet number="6" highlight="Tracking your metrics" />
<NumberedBullet number="7" highlight="Hiring an influencer marketing agency" />
<NumberedBullet number="8" highlight="Keeping up with emerging platforms and trends" /> 
Read on for the dos and don’ts of influencer marketing.

Get the most out of influencer marketing with these tips and tricks, plus avoid these rookie mistakes.

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How to Make Influencer Marketing Work for Your Startup 

Check out this M13 guide to building an impactful influencer marketing strategy, including the dos and don’ts of working with social media influencers.

How to Make Influencer Marketing Work for Your Startup |  M13

Novi, M13 mascot, holding up a smartphone with likes and hearts and message icons flying out of it. 

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As a partner and head of talent at M13, Matt coaches our founders on how to scale their organizations—everything from recruiting the best talent to building healthy and high-performing cultures. Matt was previously VP, People at DigitalOcean and Return Path (ranked #1 Best Place to work in NYC and #2 in the U.S.).

Matt Hoffman

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Ashley is a leadership trainer and DEI lead at LifeLabs Learning. Her areas of expertise are in leadership development, communication, and inclusive team dynamics. She has a Master’s degree in Social Systems and Management of Human Services and many years of experience in crisis management.

Ashley Schwedt 

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Theo is a leadership trainer and DEI advisor at LifeLabs Learning, where he specializes in helping leaders develop systems and skills that enable diversity, belonging, and inclusion. He has also helped companies collect data on the impact of their employee engagement and equity initiatives.

Theo Haber

In a year of transformational changes across the landscape of work, having an intentional focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) has emerged as one of the most important things that a company can do to be successful. This is a long overdue development since the research has been overwhelmingly clear that companies that prioritize DEI—on the leadership team, org level, and board level—see better returns. 
[McKinsey](https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/business%20functions/organization/our%20insights/delivering%20through%20diversity/delivering-through-diversity_full-report.ashx) recently released a report stating that “companies in the top-quartile for ethnic/cultural diversity on executive teams were 33% more likely to have industry-leading profitability. That this relationship continues to be strong suggests that inclusion of highly diverse [teams]—and the myriad ways in which diversity exists beyond gender (e.g., LGBTQ+, age/generation, international experience)—can be a key differentiator among companies.” 
That should not be surprising. Companies with more diverse teams are able to take a broader and more empathetic perspective of their customers. They’re more likely to generate unique ideas and innovate faster, manage team conflict better, and—by reducing groupthink—make higher quality decisions. 
But of course diversity alone is not enough. To leverage your company’s diversity and to keep attracting, engaging, developing, and retaining talented and passionate team members, companies have to prioritize a culture of equity and inclusion. 
Beyond the clear financial impact of focusing on DEI, it can also ensure you’re creating a workplace where every employee can feel [psychologically safe](https://hbr.org/2017/08/high-performing-teams-need-psychological-safety-heres-how-to-create-it) and do their best work, regardless of their background. Organizations with strong DEI cultures are more likely to have employees with: 
<DotBullet text="greater job satisfaction" /> 
<DotBullet text="higher degrees of trust" />
<DotBullet text="overall higher engagement" /> 
And yet when working with the earliest stage companies, many founders still believe that a focus on DEI is a “nice-to-have,” something they can work on when the company gets larger and more mature. We’re here today to tell you that isn’t true. 
Just as with culture and values, you want DEI to be built into the very architecture of your People Systems at the earliest possible stage. It will help ensure a strong foundation of shared beliefs, and it will make it easier to incorporate best practices into your systems later on as well. What’s more, diversity begets diversity—so the sooner you start, the easier all future hires become. (We cover the topic of [hiring and recruiting](https://m13.co/guide/a-5-step-guide-to-startup-recruiting-and-hiring) in a separate guide.) As a thought experiment, imagine hiring your first Black and/or female engineer onto a team of three White males versus a team of 30 White males. The time to prioritize DEI is now. 
Read on and we’ll guide you through: 
 <NumberedBullet number="1" highlight="Defining DEI" />
 <NumberedBullet number="2" highlight="Setting DEI metrics" />
 <NumberedBullet number="3" highlight="Designing inclusive systems" />
 <NumberedBullet number="4" highlight="Auditing the FAIRness of existing People Systems" />
 <NumberedBullet number="5" highlight="Takeaways & next steps" />

Discover how to develop diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies that can make a difference.

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Building Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Into Your Startup

M13 and LifeLabs Learning share helpful tips and strategies for startup founders looking to define and set diversity, equity, and inclusion metrics.

A Startup Founder’s Guide to Diversity, Equity & Inclusion | M13

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Christine is a partner and the head of brand at M13. She previously worked directly with Sir Richard Branson and executives to build Virgin Group’s North American portfolio of branded companies as the head of communications at Virgin Galactic and head of brand and communications at Kitty Hawk.

Christine Choi

When you’re building awareness about your company, it’s helpful to first map out the company story and what editorial content you want to share with the world. That requires a regular cadence of news and stories that you produce and promote on your owned channels. From there, pick out a few timely pieces of news that you can use to pitch the press. 
But how do you know if your startup is prepared for the spotlight? 
In this guide, we’ll answer top questions, including:
<NumberedBullet number="1" highlight="What's the role of a PR firm?"/>
<NumberedBullet number="2" highlight="When is the right time to seek media attention?"/> 
<NumberedBullet number="3" highlight="What are common PR mistakes by early-stage startup founders?"/>

​​Is your startup ready for all that media attention? Here are the telltale signs to track.

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When to Hire a Public Relations Agency for Your Startup

Ready to let the world know about your startup? M13’s guide to hiring a public relations agency can help founders like you navigate media relationships and more.

When to Hire a Public Relations Agency for Your Startup | M13

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Tania is the co-CEO of LifeLabs Learning. She is also a psychology researcher, leadership trainer, and co-author of the book, “The Leader Lab: Core Skills to Become a Great Manager Faster.”

Tania Luna

With almost every early-stage company we meet with, the first and most common question we get is around recruiting: How do you attract and hire great talent? 
And it’s an incredibly important question! Startups—no matter how good their ideas, and how innovative their products—are nothing without fantastic people to execute against those ideas and build those products. 
###### Define the role
Before you start to fill a role, take a step back to look at your entire organization and assess the broader needs. 
<DotBullet text="What are the overall skills you are missing today?" />
<DotBullet text="Will those be the most important problems to solve down the line?" /> 
<DotBullet text="What is the right level for this hire?" /> 
Without asking these questions, startups tend to over-hire for critical roles, meaning they bring in the most experienced person they can find. But sometimes, especially early on, they’re better off bringing in a tactical leader who can build and grow, rather than a more strategic leader who needs a team under them to execute. 
_Want help defining the roles you need? Review our guide on [organizational design](https://m13.co/how-to-design-an-organizational-structure-for-your-startup/)._ 
Ultimately, great recruiting is about so much more than filling roles with top talent. It’s about filling the _right_ roles with the _right people._ In a high-growth environment like we’re experiencing now, there is far more demand than supply for world-class candidates. 
That's why in this guide, we’re going to show you how to level up your entire recruiting processes to make them more effective, more efficient, more collaborative, and more impactful with these lessons: 
<NumberedBullet number="1" highlight="Create structure" />
<NumberedBullet number="2" highlight="Identify outcomes" />
<NumberedBullet number="3" highlight="Extract the job criteria" />
<NumberedBullet number="4" highlight="Develop your assessments" />
<NumberedBullet number="5" highlight="Create your scoring system" />
<NumberedBullet number="6" highlight="Calibrate with your interview team" />
<NumberedBullet number="7" highlight="Find the right people" />
<NumberedBullet number="8" highlight="Engineer the candidate experience" />
<NumberedBullet number="9" highlight="Takeaways & next steps" />

Here’s how creating an efficient, fair, and scalable interview process can help you recruit top talent.

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A 5-Step Guide to Startup Recruiting and Hiring

In this recruiting guide for startups, M13 and LifeLabs Learning explain how early-stage founders can create an effective, fair, and scalable interview process.

A 5-Step Guide to Startup Recruiting and Hiring | M13

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Helping individuals and companies improve their well-being and performance through sustainable, science-backed solutions.

Tonal

Intelligent technology, expert coaching, and personalized guidance to help you be your strongest.

Aly Orady

Capsule

Capsule is rebuilding the pharmacy industry from the inside out, with an emotionally resonant consumer experience and technology that enables customized outcomes for doctors, hospitals, insurers, and manufacturers.

Eric Kinariwala

ClassPass Inc. is an American company which provides access to different fitness classes such as yoga, strength training, barre, martial arts, pilates, boxing, and indoor cycling classes, as well as use of health clubs.

ClassPass

A subscription marketplace for finding and booking fitness classes.

Payal Kadakia Pujji · Founder & Executive Chairman at ClassPass

Payal Kadakia

Rho Business Banking is the only finance platform built from the ground-up to help business teams work better together.

Alex Wheldon

Everett Cook

A marketplace for home chefs to find nearby customers.

Shef

Joey Grassia 

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Founders frequently use the terms “go-to-market plan” or “go-to-market strategy,” but it can mean very different things depending on who you talk to. 
At the highest level, your go-to-market strategy brings together all of the key elements that drive your business: brand development, consumer insights, competitive understanding, sales and marketing, pricing, and distribution. It’s a living, breathing thing that evolves as your learnings deepen and your business evolves. 
In this six-step guide, we’ll walk you through how to:
<NumberedBullet number="1" highlight="Define your marketplace" />
<NumberedBullet number="2" highlight="Identify your target audience" />
<NumberedBullet number="3" highlight="Clarify your offering" />
<NumberedBullet number="4" highlight="Fine-tune your brand positioning" />
<NumberedBullet number="5" highlight="Focus on your channels, distribution, and marketing" />
<NumberedBullet number="6" highlight="Create an effective marketing strategy" />
There’s value in taking the time to learn and master these six steps. After all, you can apply this iterative thinking to new business and product launches as well as existing products and services that aren’t quite landing the way you’d hoped. You can also turn to these steps whenever you need to pivot based on consumer, category, or competitive changes. 
Let’s begin!

From launches to pivots, elevate your go-to-market strategy by turning to these six tried-and-true steps.

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The Ultimate Go-to-Market Guide for Startups

Whether you’re ready to launch a new product or needing to pivot, M13’s six-step guide can help you take your startup’s go-to-market strategy to the next level.

The Ultimate Go-to-Market Guide for Startups | M13

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Christine Choi meets with Emerge founders in an M13 office.

Investing in Emerge: Introducing touch to XR

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Set up Manager System →
Set Goals → Assess Performance → Give Feedback → Support Development 

PEOPLE SYSTEMS FOR CATALYZING PERFORMANCE

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Since the early days, M13 has a key asset—from helping us overcome the small, internal hurdles to developing big-picture strategy.

M13 is an early-stage consumer tech venture capital firm. Our founding teams execute better by accessing our full-time operating partners, resources, and network.

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About | M13

M13 is one of the brightest star clusters in the Northern sky. It’s full of remarkable individual stars. But when those stars come together, they create something that’s truly greater than the sum of its parts. That’s the M13 advantage.

M13 is a full-service venture engine with a platform of experts and resources that helps our founding teams proactively navigate risks through all stages of growth and excel at execution.

We’re brighter together

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The Ultimate Go-to-Market Guide for Startups

How to Make Influencer Marketing Work for Your Startup

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How to Make Influencer Marketing Work for Your Startup

Building Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Into Your Startup

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Building Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Into Your Startup

When to Hire a Public Relations Agency for Your Startup

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When to Hire a Public Relations Agency for Your Startup

A 5-Step Guide to Startup Recruiting and Hiring

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A 5-Step Guide to Startup Recruiting and Hiring

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