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11/14/12 | Uncategorized

PITCH NYC 2012: Facebook Director Sarah Personette Talks About Failing Hard And Iterating Faster

Live from PITCH NYC 2012 Conference & Competition –
By Angie Chang (Co-Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Women 2.0)

At the 2012 PITCH NYC Conference, Facebook director Sarah Personette talks about Facebook being smaller and leaner than most other large companies. “In an environment where you are super constrained in terms of human resources, you think about how to scale your message – to create ambassadors in your audience,” said Sarah Personette.

She talks about being strategic in your prioritization of goals. She talks about scaling your efforts: “Agencies can do that [scale] because they represent a portfolio of brands and businesses,” said Sarah Personette. She talks about leveraging the concept of scaling and being efficient in your lean efforts to pitch your brand or product to many, instead of pitching one to one. You can simply address more influencers with a pitch by talking to an agency.

Sarah Personette advises entrepreneurs to commit to six months for an early-stage startup – “to go hard against this mission, set up this team, and then reassess.” Going hard for six months and getting buy in is critical to getting the freedom to do what you need to do from friends and family.

Along with “fail harder”, there is a popular saying at Facebook that is “iterate fast” – this is also known as “shipping it”. This is the belief that “done is better than perfect.” You can see whether you are seeing results, and allows you to iterate and change off that.

“Success is continued reassessment of how we are growing – monetization is a big part of my team. We look at growth numbers constantly. We are also looking at how agencies are using Facebook to create new jobs for their teams. How are they thinking about building better businesses for their brands to drive healthy return on investment?”

Women 2.0 readers: What was your biggest takeaway from Sarah Personette’s talk at PITCH NYC Conference? Let us know in the comments.

Angie Chang is Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of Women 2.0, a media company offering content, community and conferences for aspiring and current women innovators in technology. Our mission is to increase the number of female founders of technology startups with inspiration, information and education through our platform. Previously, Angie held roles in product management and web UI design. Angie holds a B.A. in English and Social Welfare from UC Berkeley. Follow her on Twitter at @thisgirlangie.

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