Pushing Paper and Tweeting Tweets

So I’ve been in California for almost two months now. Since week two I’ve thought, “Hm. I should write a blogpost.” But, I’m always either too physically tired in the morning or mentally tired at night, and of course I’m working during the day.

That is, after all, what has brought me out here: work. In January the founding engineer at Mint.com, Poornima Vijayashanker, began her own startup: BizeeBee. Four years ago, roughly the time she was churning up Mint, I was working for a Sassy Tails, a startup in Greenville. Since then, my boss from Sassy Tails (Liz Wiltsie) has moved to San Francisco and now works for BizeeBee. When a business development internship opened up there, Liz invited me to interview. (Or she opened one up for me, I’m not quite sure.)

Sassy Tails…BizeeBee…perhaps one day I’ll be employed at a company with a normal name. (And more than 6 employees.)

However, the small business culture is a fantastic one. Many people have asked what I do every day. Well, officially my card says “Business Development”.

I’m certainly not licking envelopes and pushing paper. (Actually, I asked for staples last week and Poornima said, “We’re a software company…I don’t understand why we need things on paper.” No pushing paper here—there isn’t any.)

The second day here I was handed a list of current projects, projects a real employee was working on before I showed up. Now they’re my projects to handle.

I don’t just update our Twitter several times I day, I’m supposed to help figure out how it fits into our marketing scheme. (Yay trial and error!)

And, while I’m doing that I monitor the conversation of small biz on the web (Facebook, Twitter, OPENForum, LinkedIn, Intuit, blogs, etc.).

Meanwhile, we’re stalking cities across the nation to find the best places to launch.

Below the surface of all of that, we’re looking for key partnerships (and figuring out what “key” means for us).

Then after dinner, we’re chatting about the grand marketing plan. (It’s top secret, of course.)

And my boss expects more than just compliance, she expects me to infuse creativity and invigoration into these projects. I love it.

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~ by Kley Sippel on July 14, 2010.