"Trust your intuition and be decisive. And start now," with Amanda Greenberg
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Amanda Greenberg is CEO and the co-founder of Balloon (https://getballoon.com), a platform solving systemic organizational issues like cognitive bias and group dynamics by transforming how teams interact. Prior to founding Balloon, she was a public health researcher in DC, developing national behavior change campaigns for the EPA, CDC, and DOE. She graduated from Dartmouth College and completed her graduate degree in public health and environmental engineering at UNC-Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health.
Can you tell our readers about your background?
I grew up in a small town in Ohio called Oxford. My parents were both educators—my dad was a professor of anthropology, and my mom was a science teacher and guidance counselor. With their backgrounds in academia, my parents instilled in me the importance of education, hard work, critical thinking, and curiosity, as well as the values of family, helping others, and doing the right thing. But perhaps the most significant lesson they taught me was to truly believe that there were no limits to what you can do, as long as you’re willing to work hard and be uncomfortable while you try new things.
After graduating high school, I headed to Dartmouth College for undergrad and then to UNC-CH Gillings School of Global Public Health for graduate school. After completing my Masters of Science in Public Health in Environmental Sciences & Engineering, I moved to Washington, D.C., where I worked for several years as a public health researcher. I developed national behavior change campaigns for the U.S. EPA and CDC. I planned to go to medical school from there with the goal of one day being the U.S. Surgeon General, but it was in my role as a researcher that I became obsessed with a problem and decided to take a different path to found Balloon. It was one of the best decisions of my life! I’m not actually sure that it was a decision--it just was it.
What inspired you to start your business?
Our business tools and processes (meetings, email threads, Slack conversations, surveys, focus groups, etc.) don’t address the way our brains actually work in a group setting. More specifically, they don't address how humans share information and make decisions. What these tools don’t account for are louder, more senior voices driving conversations and making decisions, and there are obviously dozens of other types of damaging group dynamics and costly cognitive biases. People also hold back and don’t share because of a fear of failure or judgment. I identified this problem when I was a public health researcher, and after digging into the research, I was shocked to find that the tools and processes that we use in companies every day don’t align with research and science for how you get the best and most information out of a group in the most efficient way possible.
Group dynamics undermine the collective brainpower of teams, and they don’t just block leaders from making informed, innovative decisions—they actually trick decision-makers into taking clumsy and sometimes permanent missteps. I think this is the biggest (and most costly!) unsolved problem and opportunity in the workplace.
Where is your business based?
All over the place! Noah and I, along with about a third of our team, are based in the Bay Area. However, we recognize that talented, insightful people don’t all live in one place, so we’ve always been a distributed team! In addition to the Bay Area, we have team members in Texas, Ohio, New Zealand, and Argentina.
How did you start your business? What were the first steps you took?
We first reached out to Project Olympus, which is a startup incubator program at Carnegie Mellon University. They helped us get some foundational things done, and from there we started applying to accelerators, building our MVP, and testing the market. We were accepted into the DreamIt Ventures accelerator program, which is when we quit our jobs and dove in full time. It wasn’t a straight path. We didn’t know what we didn’t know, but we were curious and resilient and had a lot of chutzpah, and that helped us get to where we are now.
What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business?
Word-of-mouth has always been really impactful for us. We’re an incredibly mission-driven company: Balloon increases efficiency, but it also allows teams to avoid group dynamics like cognitive biases, and it gives everyone a voice in decision-making at work. People believe in our mission, and customers who believe in our product tend to want to share its benefits with their networks, who turn into new customers.
Also, when you’re a founding team that treats their employees and customers well (which I’d like to believe that we do!), people want to help you and become your champions!
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
There are endless challenges when building a company. The world has a certain momentum that isn’t easily disrupted, so doing or creating something brand new is always difficult. We bootstrapped our company for the first couple of years, which was very challenging, but also very rewarding. We've found that being extremely task-oriented is helpful, and that continuous momentum where you get better and better and do more and more every day is the key. Giving ourselves aggressive goals and, especially, building a powerful team that is focused on execution has been critical. I find that when you welcome opportunity, it tends to lead to new, better, and exciting things that result in more opportunities, so being open and flexible is incredibly important.
And at the end of the day, I love a good challenge, always have and will. Founding a company is incredibly challenging, but I say, let’s go!
How do you stay focused?
Balloon’s mission keeps me energized, day in and day out. I so deeply believe that teams and companies need our product to survive and thrive, and that core passion pushes me to stay focused and drives me to execute on whatever task is at hand.
How do you differentiate your business from the competition?
We’re creating a new category called Insight Mobility, which refers to the concept of making space for insights to arise from anywhere, anyone, in a company by removing structural barriers like seniority, group dynamics, and biases in collaboration and decision-making That way, information can be evaluated not based on where it came from, but on its merit.
When you spend too much time worrying about what others are doing and not enough time focused on your own company, you start to lose all of the creativity, strategies, and core ideas that make you and your vision unique.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?
Like I said, never underestimate word-of-mouth. We want Balloon to be such a great product that users want to tell their network about it because happy customers generate more happy customers. This has been most effective for us! Also, content creation and thought leadership has been very effective.
What's your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
Trust your intuition and be decisive. And start now. I don’t know one CEO that wishes they’d waited to start their company because no one is ever actually ready for the huge leap of faith necessary to become an entrepreneur. So start now, because you’re as ready as you’ll ever be.
One thing to keep in mind as a new founder or entrepreneur, too, is that everyone is going to want to give you advice, and everyone thinks their advice is the best. But ultimately, no one else is you: No one else will ever know you as you know yourself, and no one else has walked the same path you have, and that’s what led you to create whatever it is you’re creating. Only you will ever know what’s best for yourself and for your company, so trust your gut. The only decisions that I regret making as a CEO were the ones I felt uneasy about beforehand.
What's your favorite app, blog, and book? Why?
Is it too obvious to say my favorite app is Balloon? Ha! I am also really liking Clubhouse. The community of knowledge, connection, and humanness that they are building is really incredible.
I don’t really have a single favorite blog. I tend to get my information from a ton of different places, from formal publications to social media to word-of-mouth.
I was really moved by Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink. It’s a non-fiction, science-backed look into what makes people do the things they do, and I think it’s an absolute must-read. It explains how human beings are innately driven to be autonomous and engaged, and how understanding and uninhibited that that drive is the key to achieving more in every way. Drive greatly impacted how I work, how I lead, and now, how I parent.
What's your favorite business tool or resource? Why?
It’s not one specific tool, but rather the huge resource of our fellow founders, advisors, investors, and network that we tap into for advice, guidance, gut checks—all of it. The collective brainpower among the group is immense, and Balloon wouldn’t be even close to where it is today without it.
Who is your business role model? Why?
There are so many, but one person who comes to mind is Sara Blakely. The origin story of Spanx is so incredible; the company’s success had so much to do with Sara simply building a great product and putting in the work to get it into the hands of customers. I try to keep that approach in mind during the inevitable, difficult moments that come with building a business. And, of course, her now-famous attitude toward failure is downright enlightening.
How do you balance work and life?
I don’t see a stark separation—for me, Balloon is my work and my passion, just as my family and children are my work and my passion (no one can tell me that building, raising, and nurturing a family isn’t work!). Both fulfill different aspirations, and they all add up to my full identity. So it might seem controversial, but I don’t really believe in the concept of the work-life balance, because trying to mentally separate things that are so enmeshed just sets people up to feel stressed and overwhelmed by trying to achieve some impossible, “perfect” state.
Maybe this doesn’t resonate with everyone, but I think it would with a lot of founders I know. It takes a lot to grow a company—a lot of time and a lot of energy and a lot of what some would call sacrifices. But when people ask me if I work hard at the expense of my family, I tell them I work hard for my family. Our kids need to see us working hard, contributing to the world, and building something we believe in, because then they’ll believe in their abilities to do the same.
What’s your favorite way to decompress?
One of the best parts of my day—and I think Noah would agree—is going on evening walks with our kids. Our younger son was born in April of this year, so we’ve only recently been able to start doing it with the whole family, but it’s been a wonderful little tradition these past few months. Getting outside and breathing some fresh air can really make a difference after a busy day in front of the computer.
My other truth, however, is definitely watching reality shows. Ha! Luckily, too, a few other people at Balloon love to talk about them with me (we actually have a Slack channel dedicated to it), and even Noah gets sucked into the storylines! I also have a best friend who loves them as much as I do. She even got me a Real Housewives of New York mask!
What do you have planned for the next six months?
First and foremost, I’m planning on staying at home, wearing a mask while I’m out, and working hard to keep ourselves and others safe! I’m also planning to vote. Of course, we have so many projects in motion at Balloon, I don’t think I’ll have trouble keeping myself occupied! It’s going to be a busy second half of the year.
Other than that, my older son starts remote kindergarten this fall, and our 4-month-old is growing bigger, smarter, and cuter every day! So I guess that a lot of chubby cheek kisses are planned for the next six months? I think, for my family, fall 2020 will be really focused on continuing to create a home full of laughter, happiness, calm, and love. Especially with everything else going on in the world, I think building a warm, safe space for my boys to grow up in is incredibly important. I know that they will remember this time forever, especially the five-year-old, and they will remember how Noah and I reacted during this time. I hope that soon our new baby can meet his grandparents. That is my very personal wish for the rest of the year.
How can our readers connect with you?
They can follow me on Twitter, @akgreenberg, but I’m also active on our company social media, which is @balloonplatform on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook.