A Conversation with Tina Sharkey, Co-Founder of Brandless
Tina Sharkey has driven innovation in media, commerce, and community for more than two decades, pioneering the development and adoption of pivotal consumer brands and platforms that bring data and technology together. A C-suite executive, entrepreneur, investor, and change agent, she has created, led, and scaled global brands and businesses that have transformed the way we communicate, shop and share.
As its co-founder and founding CEO, Tina built and operated the consumer products company Brandless, assembling and leading the team that developed from scratch a direct-to-consumer powerhouse named one of Fast Company’s most innovative retailers two years in a row. She scaled Johnson & Johnson’s BabyCenter to become the largest platform in the world for new and expectant mothers; oversaw AOL’s defining transition from a closed network to the open web; served as president of the renowned Sesame Street Digital Group, and co-founded iVillage, a pioneering online destination for women that became one of the most popular sites on the internet. Her success in creating relatable brands and vibrant, engaged communities has been a throughline in her otherwise diverse career. Tina emphatically believes in building brands with soul, purpose as an imperative, and that taking the high road will always deliver a better view.
Business Today (Grace Xu): What originally sparked your interest for working with media and technology companies?
Tina Sharkey: I was always interested in how to make complex things simple and how to make everything easier for everyone. Through media and technology, I found that I could not only create magical experiences for people to find products that will help them live their best lives, but more importantly, I could connect individuals to their passions. This is why I became so interested in online community-building.
BT: When you’re building a new startup or you’re looking for new ventures, do you have a specific set of interests, goals, or missions that you tailor your search to?
TS: I would say that I’m passionate about helping people live their best lives. Sometimes that comes through the form of connecting people to their passions, sometimes that comes through the form of surprise and delight, and sometimes that comes through the form of unlocking joy, even if it’s in an enterprise setting. I’m interested in software, applications, and experiences that make things easier, connect individuals to other individuals, and give people the opportunity to explore their affinities and the things that they care about. These are the goals that I’ve been committed to for my whole career, and they tend to be the filters I use when looking for new ventures.
BT: In 2013, you jumped from working at BabyCenter to working for a venture capital firm, Sherpa Capital. What prompted you to make the jump? How do you think working at Sherpa Capital ultimately helped you with founding and managing Brandless?
TS: Leading BabyCenter, the largest global media platform for new and expectant parents was wonderful, but I really wanted to cross-train in my career and explore other categories and industries. I wanted to use my experience of operating and building brands and global businesses to help up-and-coming entrepreneurs and founders, as well as larger boards and businesses. I enjoy being a player-coach and learning the business from the other side. It was part of my own cross-training, as well as trying to codify the other side of the founding of companies: understanding financing and structuring, as well as identifying, helping, and supporting entrepreneurs accelerate and execute their plan for their brands and their businesses.
I’m also an amateur cultural anthropologist—I like to study people and consumer insights and behavior. I look at the market through different lenses. Where is the next opportunity? Where will the mass market and changing habits of consumers converge? What are the macro and micro changes in the local, national and global landscape that will make room for the next great product? I study major consumer behavior shifts and insights. The millennial consumer does not want to buy and consume the brands they grew up with. Wellness and sustainability have emerged as table stakes for modern consumption, but it was near impossible to find high quality, more affordable products and brands that stood for values beyond just the products themselves. In creating Brandless, I saw a rare opportunity to disrupt a market where we could democratize access to high-quality products at terrific value with community-driven principles at its core.
“We’re living in a world where everyone is a publisher, and everyone is a network of one. ”
BT: Could you speak a little bit more about self-branding and how decentralized media feeds into that?
TS: We’re living in a world where everyone is a publisher, and everyone is a network of one. You need to understand that you control your own narrative, and what you do, what you say, and how you choose to live, support, and engage in various affinities, passions, brands, and circles informs your engagement in the world. When you’re thinking about your own branding, it’s important to not only authentically tell your story, but also to follow and support people who you respect, admire, and are interested in the things that you are interested in. Through open-source platforms like Twitter or Instagram, you’re able to follow these stories, be inspired by those people, and be a click away from individuals whom you respect and admire. And vice versa—those people are also able to discover and follow you!
BT: Let’s move to Brandless. Can you talk a bit about the products Brandless focuses on, and why Brandless chooses to focus on those products?
TS: Brandless is thinking about how you can live your best life: how you can provide the very best life for your family, for your home, and for your community. When you think of that sweet spot in your life, it starts with the stuff you reach for every day; the items you use all the time; and then the things you use with your family, your home, and your community. Those rings around you, viewed with a wellness and sustainability lens, were some of the first categories that we tackled. Now we’re tackling more. We’re looking at the tools you need to live your best life, whether that’s a fantastic blender that we launched just yesterday or great high-quality cookware.
BT: Can you talk about brand loyalty and the role it plays in Brandless? How do you promote brand loyalty and build community amongst your users?
“Loyalty is the way you’d be loyal to a friend—by creating the products that they love, by being in ongoing dialogue and communication with them, and by building things that they’re asking for and having them share those with their friends.”
TS: When you’re in a conversation with your community all the time, you need to think about how you engage in that conversation. The relationships built with the Brandless community deepen when the products come into your life, when you’re sharing it with your friends or when you’re giving us the feedback of the recipes you’re using. I don’t believe that direct to consumer is just a channel—direct to consumer is a relationship! Loyalty is the way you’d be loyal to a friend—by creating the products that they love, by being in ongoing dialogue and communication with them, and by building things that they’re asking for and having them share those with their friends.
BT: What kind of advertising does Brandless do for itself? Do you rely on word-on-mouth, or something else?
TS: I think it’s a blend—there’s roles for capital-M “Marketing,” where you’re creating awareness, and lower-case-m “marketing,” where it’s viral networks, social marketing, and amplifying stories. Then there’s telling people what Brandless stands for and getting them involved with the brand. For example, the third of every month is Brandless day. When you check out at Brandless on any given day 365 days a year, we support the nation’s largest hunger relief organization, Feeding America, and buy a meal in your honor. You can see it in your shopping cart and you can track how many meals you have helped us donate on your account page. But when you check out on the third of each month ( a day we call Brandless Day) , we triple that—and so some people wait until the third to buy from Brandless because they want to give more, even though we’re doing it in their honor. Our customers understand that Brandless is bigger than any individual product we sell and that by buying at Brandless they are helping us help others as well. That is all part of being part of our community.
BT: Since you’ve worked extensively in media and social media, what kind of media does Brandless use to promote itself?
TS: Brandless communities and activations live across all platforms. We look to be in constant conversation with our audience. We test and learn on all media platforms, including television, as great storytelling and awareness can happen in broader-reach media. And media can have capital-M, lower-case-M, or SM (social media), where you are not only creating things, but you’re actually asking questions and getting people into the conversation, or you’re amplifying their stories, and you’re pulling them into your brand and community stories.
BT: Brandless is an e-commerce company. I have two questions about that: Do you think e-commerce will one day completely replace brick-and-mortar stores, or do you think there’s still an opportunity for both of them to exist in the same industry?
TS: We’re actually going into wholesale channels because that gives us access to more people, so they have more access to the products we sell. We’re very, very open to all forms of retail. Television did not replace radio—in a funny way, radio is coming back through podcast—online did not replace television, and print is still alive—they just all play different roles. It’s important to have a Brandless.com channel where you can directly engage with all our products, but we also have our Brandless communities on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. One day, you’ll find some of your favorite Brandless products in your neighborhood! Some things make more sense to be sold on the web; others may be more conveniently purchased directly from the store.
“We’re all overwhelmed with the amount of media and commerce that we get exposed and marketed to us. It can’t just be marketing, marketing, marketing—it has to be conversational.”
BT: In general, how do you market startups, so they gain traction at the beginning? How do you incentivize and capture attention?
TS: At the very early stages, even before you launch your product or service, it’s critical to find “your people.” These are the early adopters, and you want to engage them in conversation. This can start offline with five people, then go to ten people, a thousand people, five thousand people, and more. Start building your community early. As soon as you garner any attention, you must ask permission to stay connected to your early fans and friends. You can create your own media channels like email newsletters and stories on social platforms, so you can have direct conversations with your community.
What you send and share has to be something that feels of value—it has to be additive to people’s lives. It can’t just feel promotional or you will get unsubscribed, unfollowed, and tuned out. We’re all overwhelmed with the amount of media and commerce that we get exposed and marketed to us. It can’t just be marketing, marketing, marketing—it has to be conversational. It has to be give and get.
BT: How do you build and develop talent and elevate people to be at their very best?*
“There needs to be an active, inclusive co-owned heartbeat in the company from the get go.”
TS: Build a culture of shared values and shared intentions. Diversity and inclusion are not afterthoughts; they start on day one. Every team member needs to know what those values and intentions are. There needs to be an active, inclusive co-owned heartbeat in the company from the get go. That doesn’t mean that companies don’t evolve, make mistakes, or pivot and change. Nobody’s perfect, but a culture of transparency and shared ownership of goals, roadmaps, metrics, milestones, and critical success factors gives all team members the opportunity to weigh in, move quickly, and course correct when needed. People have lots of hidden talents beyond their resumes, and a team that co-owns the company’s success will stretch beyond their training and surprise you in what they are capable of. Celebrate those moments and highlight those team members who make the work fun, who go the extra mile, and who work to help their teammates and the company execute the plan.
I have seen so many companies spend an enormous amount of time recruiting great candidates and then completely drop the ball when they arrive. Onboarding is a real thing. It is critically important to document the companies’ best practices and actively train and communicate how the company operates and functions—in particular, who does what and how to get things done. Set up buddy systems for folks outside of their departments, so they can meet other people and accelerate their onboarding and hit the ground running. An informed and engaged employee base is one that will go the distance and help create a culture that is like a family, a place where people are invested in and want to be a part of: like a second home.
*Question submitted by Ibrahim Rahban of National Institute of Information Technology in India