Back in January, we bombastically proclaimed 2015 to be the year of DISTRO EVERYWHERE.
How exactly are we doing on that?
Apparently, fuzzy ideas + sharp ambitions = REAL STUFF HAPPENING.
Since then, we’ve given “DistroCamp”-style workshops to 50+ startups in Hong Kong and Taipei, joined up with General Assembly to put on a video marketing panel in Los Angeles, and recently announced a $10 million DistroFund to put our money where your growth is.
We’ll also be at 500’s Weapons of Mass Distribution conference on startup growth, giving on-stage talks and doing hands-on growth office hours — the event is TOMORROW.
But the purpose of this post was only kind of to blatantly promote and side-mote our various DISTRO happenings.
The real reason I’m writing today is to shine light onto the not-very-numerous team of people on 500 DISTRO who are making DISTRO EVERYWHERE possible, all while supporting the 30+ companies in every 500 Accelerator Batch with everything from growth strategy down to everyday hacktics.
Today’s post is an ode to the friends / colleagues / entrepreneurs / sales hackers / DistroFund Partners / comedians on 500 DISTRO — thanks for making me feel like this:
WHO’S “500 DISTRO?”
Tammy Camp
Tammy started coding at age 6, when data was still saved on cassette tapes (and she lived in the Deep South). Today, she’s a 500 Distro Hacker-in-Residence and also the founder of Palytte.
Here at 500, she helps companies on a whole bunch of different things, but is especially game-changing at analytics, sales hacking, and video ads.
She’s a graduate of Singularity University at NASA Ames and a YEA 2013 United States G20 Delegate.
She’s also a world-class kiteboarder on the side, nbd.
Motto: Test. Measure. Analyze. Iterate. Repeat.
Dominic Coryell
Dominic has Co-Founded Garment Valet (in college where he won the Global Student Entrepreneur Award) and Talkable.com (500, YC). Outside of doggedly helping startups with traction, he loves mountain biking and animals.
Motto: Smoke ’em if you got ’em — use smoke tests to validate ideas & identify unique advantages BEFORE building product.
Matt Ellsworth
When Matt’s not helping 500 companies grow through sales & marketing automation, he’s most likely eating a large, delicious meal or telling a loud, bad joke. Most recently, Matt was the VP of Growth at Storefront and before that lead enterprise sales teams at multiple startups.
Motto: Don’t worry I’m sure your product will sell itself, happens all the time.
Mathew Johnson
Mat likes to help startups through customer acquisition, metrics and testing, and most recently led the launch of the DistroFund.
He previously worked at General Assembly, Charles River Ventures, Grockit and Socrata. He loves interesting ramen, trail-running, and has lived in Kenya, Cairo, and Copenhagen.
Motto: “There’s no sense in being precise when you don’t even know what you’re talking about.” – Von Neumann
Justin Mares
Justin is the co-author of Traction book and the former Director of Revenue at Exceptional, a software company that Rackspace acquired for 8 figures in 2013.
He previously founded RoommateFit, a company that allows you to find a compatible roommate, much like an eHarmony for roommates. You can guess how this idea came about. During my senior year, RoommateFit was accepted into Pittsburgh’s startup accelerator, Alphalab.
Motto: Always test multiple acquisition channels, then double down on what works.
Andrei Marinescu
Andrei is a product- and user-focused growth marketer with expertise in media, subscription, and mobile, and hardware businesses.
He’s extra passionate about digital media, hardware, quantified self & healthtech, fintech, mobile, productivity, SaaS, e-commerce, behavioral economics, the lean startup methodology, design, and UX, among other topics.
Before 500, Andrei led marketing at Ring Labs, Hulu, and Viddy.
Motto: Engagement & retention > Acquisition
Susan Su
Susan’s an email marketing diehard and a longtime Ashtangi with a lot of stamps in her passport.
Before 500, she specialized in email marketing and content at AppSumo, Inside Network, and I Will Teach You To Be Rich.
She’s a lover of airports who’s lived in India, France, Turkey, Canada, China, Indonesia, and of course ‘Murica!
Motto: Email = $$$. Always be collecting, don’t be random, measure what matters TO YOU.
By the way, we’re growing our team. Talk to us at distribution@500.co.
We’re almost to 2015’s halfway point, and we’re really excited for what’s coming the rest of this year. Time to turn this up, like
