Polyvore’s Head of Marketing: Grace Ko ’10

Nathalie and I spoke with Grace Ko ’10, Head of Marketing at Polyvore. Currently there are 23 people at the organization and it is very flat. Grace is currently managing 3 product marketing managers. They are driving user acquisition and retention.

Polyvore is the leading community site for online style where users are empowered to discover their style and set trends around the world. The company collaborates with prominent brands such as Calvin Klein, Diane Von Furstenberg, Lancôme, Net-a-Porter, Gap and Coach to drive product engagement; and its user-generated fashion campaigns have been judged by Lady Gaga and Katy Perry. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Polyvore is funded by Benchmark Capital and Matrix Partners.

Grace conducted a search in both small and large fashion companies. She recommends that MBAs do their research and find a space that interests them. Look for companies using Tech Crunch, blogs, set up Google Alerts.

When you approach a company, show that you did your research, know why you are a fit and interested in them. Even if these are conversations with classmates, they could pass you along to a CEO.

Polyvore’s Upcoming Growth

• May have needs in  6-9 months in marketing and sales, may need more experienced hires
• Do research and 390 project to get up to speed
• She would be open to a Trek to Polyvore from MBAs

MBAs at Startups

• Be humble and flexible
• Make connections with people, show you can work cross-functionally
• Prove that you can get things done – even if you only did that at school organizing events, conferences, etc.
• Look at the leadership team to see if they have any MBAs
• Having understanding or experience with engineers helpful; you will need to earn respect and learn how long it takes them to produce or launch things.

Advice

• Show initiative
• Grace put together a powerpoint presentation in her 2^nd round interviews that included a strategic plan. She made a proposal beyond the scope of the role. She was able to show that she is self directed and entrepreneurial.
• She spend three days researching and talking to potential customers. It was like a case study. In your first meeting, be able to think about the company, ideas, and articulate those.
• There is a bias against MBAs at some small startups. See MBAs as not wanting to get hands dirty

Up Next – We’ll talk to ModCloth

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 25th, 2011 at 3:41 pm and is filed under Consumer, Outreach, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.