✨ Welcome to the Startup Marketing Stars series! Here, we bring you the untold stories of AU and NZ startups’ marketing strategies. What worked in the early days? What didn’t? And what can we learn from them? Join us, as we share the experiences of startup founders and their teams. ✨
Startup bio
Name: Grapevine.
What they do: Grapevine is a not-for-profit, working to create a more equitable startup ecosystem in Australia for everyone. They provide advice based on lived experience and general legal know-how to reshape power dynamics for a safer, more inclusive environment.
Who they are: Grapevine is a collective of volunteers, specifically a bunch of women from the Australian startup community, who got together with a shared goal of empowering individuals in Australia's tech scene by spotlighting personal stories and insights.
We have been keen to feature Grapevine in our marketing stars series not only for the shared marketing learnings, but also because we are wholehearted supporters of their cause.
Growth focus: With submission numbers continuing to grow, they want to provide more practical support as well as content, so keep an eye on Grapevine as they work on building this up.
The powerhouse team behind Grapevine
We spoke to one of the eight Vinemakers (aka co-founders) of Grapevine, Paloma Newton, who amongst other things is Elita Genetics co-founder, a podcast producer, and one of our marketers-for-hire too. ✨ ✨ ✨
Paloma has worked across the spectrum in the startup world, including building a marketing department for a product-led LiDAR startup, developing the brand for an NFP aimed at founders, and building out Blackbird VC’s marketing campaign structure. Driven by constant learning, creativity and collaboration, Paloma is focused on an ecosystem where people are celebrated for being complex, nuanced, sophisticated and thought-provoking, rather than “difficult” for having opinions. Hear hear!
Along with our interviewee, Paloma, check out the others on the team:
- Kirstin Hunter: MD at Techstars
- Lucy Wark: Co-founder at Fuzzy and Normal
- Misha Garg: Co-founder of a startup currently in stealth mode
- Emma Earley: Head of Acceleration Programs at Remarkable
- Sam Garven: Founder at Canopy, and Fractional Head of People
- Jessy Wu: Partner at AfterWork Ventures
- Margot Kilgour: MD Australia at Tandem Innovation Group, and Director at Discrete Data Science
That is what we would call a stellar lineup! So how did the group get together?
After writing on LinkedIn about their own experiences of inequality and inappropriate behaviour and realising how big a problem it was in the startup ecosystem, they quickly realised if they wanted to change anything, it had to be now. The group got together on WhatsApp, after another wave of negative news made headlines in the industry, and knew something needed to be done ASAP. Let's see how they did it.
Launching like the proverbial startup rocket
The launch plan
Launch date: Tuesday 12 December 2023. The team settled on this date to act on the momentum of recent negative news stories, but avoid being too close to Christmas and getting lost amongst the noise. SXSW 2023 had just ended, and a pivotal story kicked off that brought to the forefront a lot of the issues the Vinemakers had been fighting against for years.
This drove the launch plan, in which the team was strategic about who would launch the main posts, and staged a kind of LinkedIn takeover. They made sure everyone was set up to comment on all posts, changed their LinkedIn titles to include Grapevine emojis and headers, and decided to launch with half manifesto (why they exist) and half story (what they were going to do). They set strict rules including no negative comments, and had conviction early on that progress was more important than perfection. By pushing the movement’s positive side they believed they could create change rather than yell into the void about problems, with no foresight on a solution. LinkedIn was the target initially, then Instagram, where there is a slower burn but steady growth.
Putting plans into actions
On launch day, the team didn't just repost the same thing as often seen from startups. They each did their own unique post, and interacted with each other’s posts to gain momentum. Check out one of the launch posts from Jessy Wu. They each leaned into their own tone of voice and allowed members to write their own thing – they believe this is why the launch worked so well. It was authentic and real.
The results
Another great post from Jessy on LinkedIn states “Grapevine is the most successful campaign launch I've ever worked on”. And that's saying something.
Check out some quick stats from the first 10 days from launch:
- 2000 followers on LinkedIn
- 200,000+ LinkedIn post impressions
- Press coverage from major mastheads such as The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian Financial Review
- 20 story submissions from brave individuals
- 80 people expressed interest in joining the supporter community
While we are looking at some fairly impressive stats here, Paloma says LinkedIn metrics can sometimes be for vanity and make us feel good, but the real metrics Grapevine wants to focus on now are more about moving the needle on meaningful change. Still growing by more than 100 new followers per week, and seeing the impact of how many stories they receive, they believe that means the word is getting out and hopefully having an impact.
Why it worked so well
What Grapevine did particularly well was moving quickly, but thinking deeply. The team worked hard to ensure diversity of voices in their content, which meant they needed diversity in their own thought group. They stuck to their manifesto, and were ruthless on what needed to be done to make the ecosystem better for everyone. Grapevine gives advice from most powerful to least powerful, and all these things make it resonate across the startup ecosystem.
What they learnt 🧠
What were the learnings from the well-planned and executed launch? Paloma says the thing that surprised her (nicely!) was how many men jumped on board and were vocal early on, as the team thought they might need to push harder for that.
They’ve also been learning along the way and making tweaks when needed, even around what they name people in their anonymous true stories. Rather than “victim” or “perpetrator”, they have chosen names to protect people’s anonymity, and not just John/Jane because someone in the group rightfully pointed out many people won’t want to only see Anglo names. They decided to carefully choose names to ensure diversity across their content, and learned it’s key to understand different viewpoints and always check in with their own team to help with this. Sometimes people forget to ask themselves these kinds of things when they are rushing, but it’s so important to stop and think, even if time is of the essence.
Where to next for Grapevine? 👀
There is a fair bit going on, and there seems to be no end in sight to the stories being shared with the team. They are currently working through what their next stage looks like, with a focus on providing more practical support rather than just content, and are in the process of working out how to deliver that. Whether it's through services, or how they diversify their offering, there is plenty more to come from Grapevine and more opportunity for people to get involved. We wish the team so much luck and can’t wait to see them continue this important work.
Have a story to share on the Grapevine? You can do that on their site, and make sure to follow them on LinkedIn or Instagram to stay across their empowering work. ✨
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✨ Keen for more Startup Marketing Stars stories? See you there. ✨
