Sabina is an award-winning marketer with over 15 years of experience. She is currently the co-founder of elocance, an audio application for busy professionals. She leads all things marketing and growth at the startup which is incubated in Paris’ Station F, the largest startup campus in the world.
Prior to this, Sabina served as the Head of Strategy at WP Narrative in New York, an agency that lives at the intersection of storytelling and technology, and was acquired by famed film producer, Will Packer in 2017. Her work leveraged emerging platforms, consumer insights and innovation to create meaningful campaigns and communications for brands. It also focused on bringing awareness to important issues like police brutality through public service announcements and mobile campaigns.
Over the course of her career, she has worked with some of the world’s most well-known brands including Expedia, GlaxoSmithKline, Hershey’s, Aetna, Kohler, Danone, Gant, Revlon, Showtime and more.
Sabina’s work has been recognized by the Webby Awards, SXSW Interactive Festival, One Show, NY Festivals, Cannes Lions, Clio Entertainment Awards, Communication Arts and the Shorty Awards.
What is elocance all about?
At a basic level, elocance is a productivity app that turns all your content to audio, instantly. But it’s so much more than that. It’s an invaluable time-saver because it allows our users to multitask and listen to all the things they would normally read. It’s their audio superpower, helping them get ahead at work.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your company?
I spent most of the last 15 years working in advertising with big global brands, helping them position their products and communicate with consumers. Later in my career, I got the chance to start working with startups by either trading work for equity or through consulting. I loved the culture and “survive at all costs” mentality, regardless of whether you have resources or a roadmap. In late 2019, I started my executive MBA at INSEAD which involved a lot of late nights reading case studies and articles. I needed to maximize my time and so I started to explore text-to-speech technologies and tools that could help me. I needed to listen to content while doing other things like commuting to work or running errands. I noticed that the existing services weren’t very “user friendly” and lacked key features for a busy professional like me. At the same time, my now co-founder was in the process of pivoting his audio startup. That’s when we decided to join forces and create elocance.
What was the biggest problem you encountered with your business and how did you overcome it?
While we had a really clear idea of what we wanted to build, there wasn’t an easy way to understand the market opportunity. We were leveraging an existing technology (text to speech) with a large b2b footprint, yet the b2c applications were generally unknown and unused by the general public. Our competitors were still generally small, indicating that the market was small but we felt strongly that audio would continue to grow and that people would listen more than they read in the future. Getting investors on board with this thinking was another story. Instead of focusing on VCs who were mostly interested in seeing rapid growth or a huge market opportunity, we targeted passionate business angels with like-minded ideas on audio and that’s how we funded our first 2 years of development.
What were the top mistakes you made starting your business and what did you learn from it?
The things you should do when starting a business are completely counter-intuitive to what you want to do. You might want to pressure test your idea with friends and family but you won’t get a good sense of whether the idea will work with other audiences. Or, you may want to rush in and start building something, thinking about the brand and putting capital into making it. Again, it’s way too early to do this. I learned from previous businesses I tried to start that testing all your hypotheses around the idea, potential product, target and message are critical to success.
With elocance, we put in the work of speaking to hundreds of users before and after our MVP and then again before and after we built our commercial app. We continue to reach out to users directly on a daily basis to understand their needs and troubleshoot their issues directly. We have the liberty to go faster and break things along the way because we’re very clear on the value we bring to our users and what they expect from us. These insights are at the center of feature development, updates, and of course, bug fixes.
What is one thing that you do daily to grow as an entrepreneur?
I’m in hyper learning mode because the industry is constantly changing and I’m a relatively new entrepreneur. I like to dedicate about two hours to learning per day, usually in the morning, while the rest of the day is focused on execution.
My learning habits are audio-centric which allows me to get in a workout while listening to an audiobook, podcast, Clubhouse Room, etc. I’m also active on Lunch Club and learn a lot from fellow entrepreneurs, investors, and marketers I meet on the platform.
What are three books or courses you recommend for new entrepreneurs?
- In terms of books, The Lean Startup is a no-brainer for how to test, learn and develop your idea; Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares will help you understand how to think about attracting users and customers and No Rules Rules by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer will help you think about the type of culture you want to build and how to prioritize creativity and innovation.
- The Business analytics course on Coursera by Wharton is great, especially if you don’t have experience or background in measurement.
- Not a course or a book but I would join The Hustle Trends group. You’ll learn more from their Facebook group than anywhere else. You also have a built-in network of people ready to jump in and help you, crowdsourced answers from experts, and access to early adopters across every industry.
What is the one thing you wish you knew before starting your business?
When I pivoted to being an entrepreneur, I assumed it would be hard because of the unpredictability factor. I soon learned that, actually, the most difficult part that I wish I understood better, was that you have to create structure for how to work and be your own source of motivation. In previous jobs, my team members, clients, bosses, and employees were a constant barometer of performance, provided positive feedback and motivated change and improvement throughout my career.
As an entrepreneur, you’re on your own and have to create mechanisms, develop habits and identify motivators to keep you going. It takes a lot of mental stamina so I now understand why so many entrepreneurs are simultaneously into health, wellness, meditation, and keeping their bodies fit. It all plays a part.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?
We decided early on that we wanted to build something for and by our users. Their feedback guided us but we also had big ideas and hypotheses about what would surprise and delight them. To understand more about them, we launched a campaign called Call a Co-Founder and included a direct line to myself and my co-founder, from the app. It allows our users to call us whenever they are having a problem and it allows us to understand and troubleshoot problems in half the time. It’s also had a positive impact on driving word of mouth and organic growth because our users are amazed that they have access to a senior representative of the company so easily.
If you only had $1000 dollars to start a new startup, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
You actually don’t need capital to start a company these days. Gone are the days when you needed to go to the bank or beg friends and family for money to get started. Now, you can start a company with a few hundred dollars and minimal capital. For example, here’s a potential budget for creating the foundations of your business:
- $50 for a domain name and web hosting
- $200 to set up an LLC (ranges depending on your state)
- $30 on coffee to keep you going
$280 dollars later, you have a company. There are a million free tools out there to help you go through the necessary steps to test your idea, share it with potential users, collect feedback and gain traction well before you even have a real product. Once your idea, market and value proposition are validated, you can start raising money and putting some real manpower behind the venture.
What’s your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
Go into your project pretending you are a researcher and don’t quit your day job until you have a clear conclusion. To do this, write down all your hypotheses and then test them one by one. Ask yourself these questions to get to started:
- What value does this product bring?
- Who needs it?
- Who is willing to pay for it?
Then try to answer them objectively by gathering data, talking to potential users and understanding more about what could deliver value to people.
What is your favorite quote?
Be a voice, not an echo
– Einstein
It’s important to have a point of view and be concise about what that is. Even if you may need to change this point of view at some point, having a clear vision helps unify teams and give purpose and direction to your work.
- PhantomBuster for marketing automation, lead generation and growth hacks.
- HARO – Help a reporter out to kickstart free PR and connect with journalists who are looking to talk about subjects in your domain. Great for the business as well as personal branding.
- Talent sheets for Influencer marketing: One tool I love that we’ve been using a lot is Talent Sheets. It’s perfect if you’re new at this and don’t have any expertise on how to go about finding, engaging.
How is running a tech company different than what you thought it would be?
I didn’t realize that every time you build something new, you might be breaking something old. The unforeseen issues with building complicated code put you in a constant state of problem-solving and stabilizing. This is both exciting and completely unpredictable at times.
How can readers get in touch with you?
I’m reachable at sabina@elocance.com or on Instagram and Clubhouse @sabinak617
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