When we launched The Muse, I reached out to my contacts via email to ask for word-of-mouth support, which led to significant initial traction.

To build The Muse, we focused on creating valuable career content to attract users before we had job listings, which helped us establish a marketplace.

When launching The Muse, I offered Forbes career content in exchange for traffic, which took several attempts to finalize.

The Muse's first website, launched in 2011, was not great, but it attracted 20,000 users in the first month, indicating we struck a chord despite its flaws.

Creating great content on career issues helped us grow our audience and generate buzz around The Muse, as it appealed to a wider audience than just job seekers.

The initial version of The Muse didn't look like a billion-dollar company, but getting it out there was essential for our growth.

We launched our first version of The Muse using a WordPress site, providing career advice targeted at women in their twenties, despite investors claiming it was a small market.

We organized a marketing event with bloggers who seemed like the kind of people that would enjoy Pinterest, and they introduced the service to their audiences.

Building The Muse was incredibly challenging, especially in the early days when I was cold emailing 800 student groups to gain our first users and pitching to over 150 VC firms, receiving 148 rejections in six months. Despite the struggle, I learned that while it never truly gets easy, the risk of failure diminishes as the company grows.