Figma's Nairi Hourdajian and Greylock's Elisa Schreiber | Startup Storytelling

Hi everyone. Welcome to Gray Matter, the podcast from Greylock, where we share stories from company builders and business leaders. I'm Elisa Schreiber, the marketing partner at Greylock. As always, you can read a transcript of this episode on our website greylock.com blog and you can find all Gray Matter episodes by subscribing on SoundCloud, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you hear, please give us a five star review on your favorite podcast app. Okay, the house has been kept Today our guest is Nayri Hordadajian. Nayri is a dear friend of mine and one of the most exceedingly confident and strategic communications executives working in tech today. She's currently the VP of Communications and content and Community at Figma, an incredibly innovative startup focused on redesigning design. Figma is also a portfolio company at Greylock. Previously, Nayri was the first communications hire at Uber and she built the team there. And later she went on to be the CMO at the venture firm Kanin. She started her career in politics working on everything from Senate campaigns to in house at governmental agencies. And there's a fun fact. Nyri and I actually became close during her side hustle running comms for the all raised launch in 2018. So thank you so much for being here, Nayri.

Alisa, thank you so much for having me.

Well, I'm really excited to have this episode. I know you and I have been talking for a long time about doing an episode on startup communications, and I think we both agree that it's really one of the most important parts of building an enduring company. And yet it's also one of the trickiest things to get right. So today we're going to dig into some key questions. What is communications? How should founders think about structuring their communications team? What is the right stage and the right time to bring someone on internally? How do you use agencies most effectively? What should the communications function own, and how should that role expand over time? And then I also think it would be really helpful to the founders who listen to the podcast to talk a little bit about the traits and characteristics that they should be looking for in a strong communications leader. So would love to hear your thoughts on that as well. And along the way, hopefully we'll hear some lessons from your time at Uber and Figma and venture capital and politics and all the wild worlds that you've dipped your toe into.

It's been an adventure. It's been an adventure.

Exactly. So let's just set the table. What in your opinion falls under the communications bucket.

It's such an important question because if you ill define the function when you build it, then your team will be spending time on things that are not high impact and not important. So every company has to define communications a little bit bespoke to their business and their organizational structure, but I would say painting with broad brushstrokes, external storytelling through earned and owned media, internal communications, how you engage with your employees, and then there are lots of other functions that you can build into it over time. As you mentioned, community, talent, brand and everything in between. So it's really incumbent, I think, as you define the department within a particular organization to understand what's the remit and why and then build from there.

And how have you seen communication structurally operate most effectively within a startup?

It totally depends. In a highly regulated space like we were in at Uber, it made sense for communications and public policy to be married closely together. And so when I joined Uber, we technically actually sat both public policy and communications technically sat under the general counsel. That evolved over time as we brought in an SVP of both public policy and communications. But that's where it started. I would say that for enterprise and SaaS companies it's much more common to have communications sit within marketing. And that's certainly the case at Figma. So it depends on which type of business you're in. If there's a heavy public affairs communications component to the work, then it definitely makes sense to be really closely married with public policy.

And do you have any advice for founders at the earlier stages in terms of when they should start thinking about bringing on that first communications hire? What are the core milestones that they should hit before they think about bringing somebody on full time?

Nailing the right moment to bring on a communications full time team member is a really key question. And for a consumer company, that moment in time is going to be earlier than for an enterprise. There is more external communications that goes along with being a consumer business. You have the ability to generate more earned media coverage. And if you're in a highly controversial or highly regulated space, that's similarly true. I would say for those businesses. Look, it really is a little bit dependent on how much you have product market fit already. So if you feel like you have product market fit at the series A, go for it because then you're ready to start telling stories. If you're still working and iterating on that post, Series B can work too. I joined Uber post Series B. I think Uber could have even done it a little bit earlier and then for SaaS and enterprise companies, you know, post series B for sure at the earliest, I would say. And then it really depends on how important it is to the overall program within the organization. And this is the key question, how much time is the founder willing to give the communications work? And if the answer is not a lot, don't hire someone full time. Don't hire an agency either. But we can get to that.

Well, let's talk a little bit about that. So what are if you're still too early? Oftentimes what we find, at least within the Greylock portfolio is we invest very, very early stage seed series A. And so it doesn't make a lot of sense for the portfolio to bring somebody on full time right away. But we try to find people who are more strike force kind of contractors who can help with that first fundraising story or help with the first launch story. But those people don't give enduring support. And it also is a tax, it's a burden on the founder or the CEO because they have to manage the outside agency. I'm wondering if you can share a little bit of your perspective on that.

I'm very supportive of the freelance model for this type of early, early stage communications work. It does take executive time period. It just simply is the reality of it. At the early stages a founder is so much a part of the story. They are one of the pillars of that startup's reason for being and so they have to give it the time for sure. Over time the efficiency goes up. If you have headcount internally that you can rely on doesn't mean you can't use agencies over the years. But you would never have a non lawyer manage a law firm. So it's much better not to have a non comms expert manage a communications agency.

So how do you bifurcate the role of the internal team versus the role of the agency? Especially as a company gets to scale, oftentimes you need both. So how do you think about the different roles and responsibilities and how that work is kind of doled out?

Yeah, I have somewhat of an unpopular view here in that I would rather not over index on agencies. I do agree that there are moments in time for IT and important gaps that they can help fill when your comms team internally is not going to grow to more than just a handful of people. For me those are the gaps are some international markets in particular where you're not going to hire full time headcount right now. The other is just sort of arms and legs, the blocking and tackling Work of execution. But the strategy, the story, the executive engagement, if that's not driven by the internal team, it will never be successful.

I completely agree with you. Actually. I think no one's ever going to care about your story as much as you do. And so making sure people are fully bought in and eating nails 24, 7 on your story is a really important part. And then being able to give that direction to the agencies and let them know what they're accountable for is key. So can you talk to us a little bit about your process for working through positioning? And granted, it's going to be a little bit dependent Right. On industry, but I think you've had such a broad scope of experiences that maybe you can distill down to a couple learnings that you can share with founders. Sure.

I find that this conversation bubbles up the most when a company, a startup, is getting ready to launch and they need a website, the website becomes the foil to have the positioning in the brand conversation. And so that's actually a really helpful exercise. You do need a website. If you're gonna launch from stealth, where are you gonna send people to understand what you're all about? So I find that that's sort of like the pointy edge of the stick that you can work backwards from, but essentially your startup's reason for being already incorporates positioning. You've already looked at the landscape, you've seen a gap, and you've decided that you're proactively going to fill that gap. That is part of your positioning. And so that research that you've done along the way, the competitive analysis, that's all part of the inputs that aggregate and process in order to spit out on the other side. How am I going to articulate my positioning? How does that look visually? How does that manifest across every brand touch point, including, by the way, product, including events, including social, and including, of course, the look and feel of the brand. So I would say the key things here are no rubber necking, because if you base your positioning on a competitive analysis, that competitive landscape will change. So no rubbernecking for other businesses. Don't base your brand off of others. Focus on your differentiators, number one. Number two, take the time to do the research, do the work and be really intentional and then build the rest, the messaging, the visual identity from there.

I love that framework. No rubbernecking. Find your North Star. So what have you seen founders get wrong when they're going out and working through what their competitive positioning is?

Look, it's tough to be in a competitive space. It really is. And it's important to stay on top of what's happening. But I think I've been lucky to work for founders who have a true north star. Both Travis Kalanick and Dylan Field, who's the CEO of Figma, have had really clear points of view on their vision for the world and how they're building their companies to achieve it. I think at the earliest stage, it's a little bit easier, some of the founders that I've worked with when I was in the venture world to get distracted by what other companies are doing and not focus on your own roadmap and your own strategy. And I think that is true across product and every other part of the business, too. So that's the biggest mistake. We've already touched on it a little bit. I think the other one is you know your business so well. As a founder, you need to really dumb it down for your audiences. If someone goes to the website of your company and doesn't understand the hero copy there, it's because it's filled with jargon or only understandable to, like, a very core subset of people that may work for, like, very niche businesses. But I guarantee you, your venture investors are not trying to build a niche business here. So really, like, strip it down. What do you really mean? And use words and language that are accessible to a much broader population.

I love that advice. Sometimes I'll look at websites and I'll say, I can see how that was part of, like, 30 tries on a whiteboard.

And it's hard. You know, you're in this myopia of I'm building my business. I know it in and out, left and right, and so does everyone around me. But it's why it's so important to have, like, a little cohort of outside advisors who aren't as close to your business that you can sort of go and pressure test stuff with, and they can say, whoa, hey, I don't understand. That's not inspiring. Doesn't connect with me. Or that's too cute. Or it's too cute. Exactly. It's not landing. Don't memeify your website. So it's such an important muscle in motion. And by the way, that's like an early form of brand marketing research, is.

To see what's resonating, see what resonates.

Yeah. And then you can build that function over time as well.

Yeah. So let's transition to press a little bit, because I think it's one of those things that everyone reads the news so everyone thinks they understand how the news gets made, but there's actually an art and a science to it. And what I wanted to dig in a little bit in this kind of bucket of external comms is first, just what are some best practices or some principles that we can share with founders about when is the right time to seek press and why?

A very natural moment for founders and startups to seek press is around a funding moment and milestone. The problem with that approach is it's a one and done. And so it's fine. It's good to get on the radar, good to establish a foothold. But if it's just this one spike and then you've gone completely quiet, that's not a very strategic program either. And so I really, really always encourage founders to think about what are your business goals for the next six months? Does communications have a role to play in helping you achieve those goals? If yes, then go for it. But don't build a moment in time. Build a roadmap of a strategy and then if the answer is no, hold off. You don't have to announce your first funding round if you're still iterating on product in an alpha with a couple of like big marquee customers. If you don't have product market fit, it's probably too soon, soon, I would say for consumer based businesses though, you're going to want to get that word out pretty soon. So for consumer companies, earlier is probably better.

Yeah, but also for consumer companies, the value prop is not the funding.

That's right.

Right. So it's also leading with what is the story you need the market to hear. And it could be I need the market to hear that we're hiring, we're trying to get talent in the door, or that we are open for business for customers and you have a couple of case studies or archetypes of the type of customers that you're looking for. I often think founding is like the excuse you give yourself to put out some news, but it's actually not the news. The news is product, customers, talent, et cetera.

It's a hook to tell your story. And look, media does need some sort of timeliness or news hook, so it can be useful from that perspective. But money's cheap. Even still, even with the shifting macroeconomic environment, lots of people can raise money. What's special about your story?

That was a really good framework for thinking about when and why to think.

About getting some press.

But how, how do founders start to build those relationships with reporters? What are some effective ways to build trust and relationships. So it doesn't become transactional when you have news to share.

I mean, I think that's actually the biggest misunderstanding when it comes to working with the media and actually the biggest illustration of disrespect for the, the craft of journalism, which is, I don't know you, we've never met, you don't know my business. I or my agency are going to cold pitch you. Even worse, we're going to cold pitch you along with 50 other reporters, none of whom are likely to cover the story. And the likelihood of success there is exceedingly, exceedingly low. So I always liken this to corp dev work. So if you want your company to one day get acquired by Amazon, you would never start building that relationship. When you're ready to sell, you would build that relationship over the years. And the same is true for building relationships with the media. You can't only reach out when you're trying to pitch a story. You have to appreciate the importance of real human relationships. Reporters have a job to do, founders.

Have a job to do.

Sure, but find the ways to build those points of connection. Go to the events where the media will be. Become a source, a thought leader source. You don't have to be dishing gossip in order to be a source for reporters. I had a reporter ask me this morning, hey, what should I be covering in this particular space? They're interested in understanding what's top of mind for the leading builders in Silicon Valley. And so you can build a relationship that way, even if it's not yet time for you to tell your own story. And that's how you build trust over time.

What role does then owned content play in the mix? If you're thinking about holistically what your external communication strategy is, I mean, you led with the tip of the spear. Is the website, right? That's like the mother of all owned content is what you put in your hero copy. How do you think about and structure your plans around blog posts and the social elements that you own? And how does that kind of feed into the overall external communications plans?

Yeah, it's so interesting because a lot of how I think about this goes back to my work in politics and we use slightly different language there than we do in tech. But essentially when you're working in politics, you have your earned channels, your owned channels and your paid channels. And just to elaborate on what those are for a minute, for those who may not be aware, earned is basically press. You have to earn it. You have to work hard so that other people are willing to give it to you, you have to earn it. You cannot create it for yourself. Owned is anything you control on your own channels. You own your social channels, you own your website, you own your blog post, you own your email. And then paid is anything you put out into the world with money behind it, ads, et cetera. And so all three are important, and all three are important for early stage companies too, and for owned content in particular. You have to decide where you're going to invest because you cannot do it all at the early stages. You don't have the resources. So is your blog going to be the thing, the place? Then you better have a really strong cadence of articles constantly coming out. They better have a really strong point of view, a compelling way for people to learn about what, what problem your product solves for them, and also just get to know the brand of your business. I often think that both for owned and paid companies, over index on conversion, immediate conversion. But if you're building a long term brand here and you're trying to build an enduring business, every piece of content you put out is a way of building connection and fostering trust with your audience. And so it's really important to take a long view.

It's such a wonderful segue into community, actually, and I know that's part of your purview at Figma. Can you share a little bit about how Figma invested in community in the early days and what the results of that have been and kind of how you're continuing to invest in community? And I'll just say anecdotally, I think Figma is one of the most interesting companies in terms of how you have been able to successfully create such a strong and vibrant community around the product.

Thank you. It is one of the most special parts about the space that we're in and about the work that we do. From day one, the early team at Figma was asking for feedback from the community of designers that were out there constantly and sometimes especially early on, that feedback was not positive. Dylan often tells the story about the early days when we first introduced this idea of collaborating in a design file and how some designers said, if this is the future of design, I'm changing careers. It was a revolutionary way of thinking about the work. And the early team continually asked for feedback, was always available and wanting to understand what's your experience like, how does this feel? And essentially that early cohort of designers took a bet, made a bet on Figma that they would give it a shot, and it really did transform the way they worked. It elevated the discipline of design within their organizations. And that early journey really happened together and in tandem. And so that's part of why the community engagement is such an important part of our current work at figma. It really is. When you talk about brand, it is a universal ethos of our brand across how every single part of the company operates.

So we've talked a lot about external facing comms and how you think about sharing your story with press on your own channels, through blogs and then with your community. I'd love to transition into internal communications. In some ways, everybody at a startup is the storyteller for that startup. And you want to make sure that your team, when they're out at cocktail parties or talking to their family, that they're saying the same thing that you're saying to reporters or other folks outside of the company as well. So how do you think about the overlap between internal comms and external comms? And I guess the second question on that would be where do those stories diverge and how do you kind of make those choices?

If you rewind back to pre Covid days, internal communications was not sufficiently appreciated. It was often an afterthought. It was a box to be checked. And if anything, the pandemic totally educated every company leader on the value of internal comms, of strategic internal communications, and the fact that it's really much more than just copy paste information sharing. I really think of internal communications as a brand function. Again, if you think of a brand as eliciting response from your audience, how do your employees feel about working at your organization? How are you surprising and delighting them? How are you making very clear what they need to know and understand and have at their fingertips? And so internal communications is external communications. You need to look no further than X Fang company in the spotlight to know that everything that happens inside leaks outside. So it's really important to think of it that way. It's also, to your point, critical to understand your employees have a really important role to play as brand ambassadors for the business. When they're out with their friends, what does it feel like to work at the organization? How are you making them feel when they come to all hands? And now some of that comes much later in a startup's life because in the early days you're just kind of working through it and the leaders who are there are sharing information in a cadence that feels right to them. But at some point it's important to get more organized and think about the key messages, the key values, the way you're Going to evangelize culture over time, how you're going to operationalize that culture, because it can't just be words, it has to be built into all of your processes. And so those are some of the ways that I see the internal communications work really being important.

I'll just take the Figma transaction as an example. The idea that, like, there were things you couldn't tell the internal team, how do you kind of manage through that in a way that that still is. Is true to the values of the company and true to how you've always behaved, but also protects kind of the story in a macro environment from other externalities that you can't control.

Yeah, needless to say, we couldn't share with the team before the news was public or much before the news was public, but we did do it simultaneous to that news being public, which was about as good as we can get in that scenario. And the answer to your question is transparency. Here's why. Hey, we couldn't share this sooner. Here's why. Here's what you need to know about our point of view on X thing that's happening. And so that transparency and authenticity just goes a really long way. Employees have a ridiculously high bullshit detector, more so than anyone externally, because they know you better, they know the internal brand better. And so it won't work, it won't fly. You just gotta keep it super real and you gotta be fast. You can't let things fester if you know you have sort of hotspot from a communications standpoint internally, you got to get all over it, and you got to get all over it really fast. And there has been no shortage of those over the last couple of years that companies have had to navigate through.

I've had some other conversations with communications leaders like yourself who were prepping companies for various transactions, whether it was an IPO or an acquisition. And specifically on the ipo, what always struck with me was making sure that people understand upfront, like, hey, this is the process that we're going through. These are the things we are going to be able to share with you. These are the things we're not going to share with you. And this is why. So exactly to your point, just maintaining that maximal transparency around the why, even though you can't tell them the what. I think engenders a lot of trust and people feel like, okay, I get it. Also, expectation setting can be really helpful.

Exactly what you just said. If there's a gap between expectation and reality, that's when you start to have problems and so exactly as you described, setting the expectation of what employees can look for is really, really key. And then I think education internally about what is internal communications. It is not editing a benefits email. And I think it's really important for executives and founders to understand that and get ahead of it.

Yeah, for sure. Well, let's go into crisis. If you get big enough, you're going to have a crisis. And so I think you've had some really interesting experiences, specifically given the fact that you started your career in politics and then went to the super easy world of Uber. But. So maybe we can talk a little bit about how founders and CEOs should be thinking about communications when they're going through a crisis. Thinking about or maybe right before they're about to go through a crisis. Do you have like, top three tips for founders as they're entering into something that might be a challenging news cycle or a challenging event for the company?

Absolutely. You have to find your OR so that you can row through it. So what is your OR O overcorrect A action R retreat. So first you have to overcorrect if you're going to be in a crisis scenario. That's existential and quite significant. Whatever you think you need to say or do, you have to do more. Trust me, you have to do more. You've seen a lot of companies over the last 6, 912 months do multiple rounds of layoffs. They should have just done one and they should have done it bigger action. It can't only be words. Talk is super cheap. And so if there's action tied to how you're navigating it, it will go much further, both internally and externally, and finally retreat. You have to know when it's time to just take a step back. You make your moves, you navigate through it, but then you do what David Plouffe, who was Barack Obama's first campaign manager and I had the pleasure of working with at Uber, he always used to say, sometimes you just have to do your time in the barrel. When you're in the barrel, you stay in the barrel and then you slowly come out of it. But I think there's an inclination to rush through the crisis cycle and try to start putting some points on the board. You saw that recently with Peloton. They had a big Wall Street Journal story that the CEO later publicly said that he was disappointed in. Well, the reality is they were laying off 500 people. It was not going to be a positive story. So you really need to know when it's time to try and put some points on the board.

What is one of the worst things that a CEO or founder can do in a crisis?

Lie. Never, never lie. It will come back to bite you.

I totally agree.

Yes.

You can't say something truthful. Don't say anything.

Don't say anything. Do not lie. Don't lie to yourself founders. Don't lie to yourself either, or your team or the press, anybody. Even in your own head, though, because you have to keep it real. And look, the thing about crisis is there are two kinds. There are the kinds you kind of know could be a risk over time that you can prepare for, take the time to prepare for it, figure out who's strong within your organization, who can help you navigate through some of those preparations. That's actually a great example of a project where you can bring in an outside communications expert if you don't have yet internally. But then there are the kinds that you don't expect. Those are harder. They happen, though. And then you got to just be fast. You have to be willing to drop everything else. And that's when the OR framework comes into.

Yeah, I love that framework. And I also think there's something we haven't really talked about, but as we're talking about this crisis moment, it occurred to me how important, like the founder and communications lead relationship is and how important it is to have a trusted relationship with that person, because your communications lead is going to help you get through it, and they're going to be the person that's checking you on the lies, that's checking you on the action that you need to take and telling you when you should retreat.

Look, there's a reason why I went into Venture after working at Uber and with Travis for three and a half years. It's because it's like a marriage and you can't get divorced and remarry the next day. So it is a very intense relationship. To your earlier question about what the attributes are that you need to look for for comms leaders, you need to be hiring someone who's willing to call you on your bullshit. And if you can tell they're not willing to do that, they're not the right hire for you.

What are some other attributes that you've seen in really successful, strong comms leaders?

An ability to educate without being patronizing. So there's a lot misunderstood about communications work. And part of a communication leader's role is to bring the whole company along on that journey of, hey, here's where we are in the life cycle of our brand building. Okay, now we're having a bit of a hotspot. Here's what to expect, here's how we're going to navigate through it. And so doing that in a way that is supportive to everyone who's probably just or many people who are probably doing things internally for the first time is really important. Storytelling is key because at the end of the day, all of the things we're talking about here is storytelling. Marketing is storytelling in different forms or in media is storytelling in different form. And so how can they be story miners and storytellers in chief really for the organization. Yeah.

I have one last topic that I want to make sure that we hit on, which is much to my chagrin. We've been both at this while, but the media landscape has changed in that time. I mean, I started my career when I was faxing press releases to newsroom. So just to give you a sense of how things have drastically changed over the last two decades.

A lot.

A lot, a lot, a lot. I mean we've had this like rise of influencer culture. We have social platforms, people communicating vis a vis meme. It's really my opinion, you may disagree, but I think it's permanently altered the way people think about communications and the way most people get and consume information. So I'm curious what your thoughts are and how your approach has changed given kind of this new landscape that we're living in.

Yeah, it's funny because everything is becoming more ephemeral. News stories are becoming more ephemeral, social's becoming more ephemeral. If anything, I almost feel like that's going to knock us back into the past where some of the earlier, the older ways of story telling, like really deep, beautiful profile stories with through earned media or really like strong op EDS that are written in a company's voice, may come back as providing like longevity to a brand staying power because everything else is just so, so ephemeral. It's a good time to have fun if your brand is one where you can show up in a way that's fun and light hearted. Experiment. You know, it's so important to run experiments on TikTok on, you know, whichever social platform is right for your brand, whether it's Instagram or TikTok or Twitter or LinkedIn, which has become a content platform all on its own in the recent few years. So have fun, run some experiments, stay close to the trends. But I think that if you try to get too trendy, it often falls flat. So be careful and just have fun with it.

I think that's great advice. And actually, I want to close out on some advice. If you had to go back in time and give Nayri five years ago advice, what would be the advice you'd give Nayri?

I think I'd go back just a little further, if that's okay. I came to Silicon Valley completely uneducated about what it meant to work in tech, and I brought a lot of my political experience here. And part of that was this idea that you're constantly making hard and fast recommendations to your boss, to the principal, to the candidate, to the senator, and articulating that in a persuasive way. And then in Silicon Valley, the ethos is a little different. It's a little bit more dialogue, it's a little bit more, hey, let's jam on this problem together. And so it took me a little while to adapt to that cultural nuance. And so the advice I would give myself, which I now give to anyone who works for me, is asking for help as a sign of strength, not failure. And going to your founder and saying, hey, I'm really wrestling with this. Let's talk about it. You know, some of my best conversations with Travis Kalanick were like that, hey, we have this thing. Let's like, talk. Let's talk about it. And it's okay to not always have all the answers, especially in communications, which is not a sort of binary path that you need to decide from.

Well, that is fantastic advice.

It's such a treat to be here with you, Elisa, because I know you and I share so many of the same world views around all of this work and how it's so important and so often misunderstood. So thanks for shining a spotlight on it.

Of course. I've been so excited to have this conversation. I think it's going to just create so much value for people who are building companies and who don't have access to an IRI on a daily basis. To just get some of your tips and some of your frameworks will be really helpful. So thank you so much for spending the time with us today. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

All right, well, that concludes this episode of Gray Matter. If you liked what you hear, Please subscribe on SoundCloud, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to find all our content, please check out our website reylock.com and follow us on Twitter reylockvc. And if you like what you heard, drop us a five star review on your favorite podcast app up. I'm Elisa Schreiber. Thanks for listening.