Cody Brown talks Scroll Kit, Starting a Company, and "Snowfall"
Cody Brown is an entrepreneur who graduated from NYU in 2010. I’ve been following his work for a few years - first, a startup that he did called Kommons, then Nerd Collider, and now with Scroll Kit. Scroll Kit enables people to make web pages without having to write a line of code. His work tends to always revolve around publishing in some way, and if the waves that he’s created with the New York Times legal department are any indication, he has a hit on his hands with Scroll Kit. Let me explain the Snow Fall controversy quickly for anyone unfamiliar. The New York Times released a widely-praised, multi-part journalistic endeavor in December titled “Snow Fall.” It featured a stunning mix of graphics (seriously, look at it) and storytelling. The Times saw huge traffic. John Branch, the man responsible for “Snow Fall,” received a Pulitzer for his work. In other words, it was a tremendous success. It came with major investments in terms of both time and money for the Times, though. It was a massive effort, and while it paid off, it’s not the sort of piece that the Times could run every week any time soon. Enter Cody Brown and Scroll Kit. Seeing his chance to put his startup on the map, Cody made a replica of “Snow Fall.” It took him an hour. He posted it on Scroll Kit’s home page, hoping to show publishers that they can “Snow Fall” (it’s a verb now) their pieces, too. The New York Times promptly sent him an email asking him to take the page down. He complied. That wasn’t good enough for the Times, as their legal department sent him another email, requesting that he take down his sentence that mentioned “Snow Fall.”
Cody didn’t comply with this latest request, and he wrote about the incident on Medium. His post received more than 100,000 views and spawned other posts (like here, here, and here) around the Internet criticizing the Times’s handling of the situation. Scroll Kit saw more traffic than ever.
I was able to talk with Cody about how he got started, where Scroll Kit’s business is going, and what transpired due to “Snow Fall.” You majored in film…but have you always had an entrepreneurial itch?
I’ve been pretty broadly obsessed with publications, technology, and filmmaking since I was like 12. The thing that got me most into it - going way back - was making stop motion animation films, with a webcam, with our Compaq computer. I got very into Adobe Flash, and that led to learning about programming.
Is there one major lesson you’ve learned from each company you’ve started?
Knowing when to pivot your company is the hardest thing you’ll do. It’s so easy to run toward a new direction but it looks easier than it is at first, and then you realize it’s a huge deal. When Kate and I first started doing this, it was 2009 or 2010, I had learned Rails over Christmas break. But my knowledge of programming and web development was really limited. So, in some sense a lot of what we were doing was experimentation and us getting our programming knowledge up to a level up to where we could execute on the ideas we were having. So when we were first starting, something like Scroll Kit was an incompatible project for us, in terms of how hard it’d be to build that.
So did you look at Kommons as more of an experiment than as a company?
So, no actually, and that’s funny. The only reason we were able to learn as quickly as we did is because we always assumed that we were on the verge. We were always a month away from some huge goal, which is why we worked crazily. For a lot of people, programming is not fun. What’s most exciting is the goal they’re getting to. You really need that to be alive in your head if you actually want to have tangible results.
Is it a challenge to articulate use cases for Scroll Kit because it’s such a dynamic product?
That has been the single hardest thing about Scroll Kit, and something that we’re constantly thinking about. I remember seeing the demo for the first time that Kate put together of the technology, and all I could think was that this was the future, in terms of being able to lay out content as you see it. That was in 2011. It really came down to just being able to see the changes as you were making them. It was something that was pretty familiar, because I had grown up using InDesign, so seeing this in the browser was pretty special, and it was pretty special after I had spent so much time in WordPress for NYULocal, and publishing that way. That kind of publishing after a while feels like you’re doing your taxes. So, we were very giddy about this technical insight we found, and we knew it was the future. At that point, we started thinking about all the ways we could make this more accessible to other people, and to give them the freedom that we previously had in InDesign. The thought that we had was that other people would immediately see this and get this and go crazy with it, and make things that we could only imagine. And so when we pitched at the New York Tech Meetup in 2011 for the first time, we were stuck on our use cases being “You’re laying out a web page,” as our main thing to pitch. And what we found out is that that idea demos very well, because it has a “wow” moment. Helping people once they land on the site understanding what they want to make, and giving them direction, is much, much harder.
So how are you combatting that?
We spent about a year pushing a consumer, more amateur use case. Profile pages, birthday cards…we did a lot of specific press pushes that were particularly about that. With all these pushes we did, we found some success with each one. It was challenging because we felt like we needed to double down on one. We were seeing competitors at the time who did double down, and that gave their products more clarity. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. So, it built to the point for us to where we got into a partnership with one of the world’s biggest domain registrars, which is name.com. We got into a partnership with them, where you would buy a domain name, and right away connect it with Scroll Kit. We saw an insane number of referrals from incoming people, and we saw the scrolls that they would make, and were usually not happy with what they were making. We realized that if we wanted to go down a more consumer track, that we would need to be a lot more paternalistic in terms of what we would allow them to do on the page. That wasn’t something that was really suited for our platform anyway, and what we found was that every now and then, someone would come to Scroll Kit, and they would have a strong visual eye, and they would make something unbelievably good. So, that’s where we’ve been in the last number of months. We’ve doubled down on a much more pro use case. Obviously we don’t stop people from coming in, just fooling around in the sandbox. That’s how you learn, anyway. But we’ve doubled down on design. Scroll Kit is a professional product.
Did you foresee the sort of reaction that you got for the Snow Fall controversy?
I didn’t really know what they would do. So, let me just tell you about what happened with Snow Fall. We were excited about two things with Snow Fall. First, that the New York Times would actually take the time and make something like this was awesome. It was an awesome endorsement of what we were doing. It came out that they spent eight months working on the project, but we spent a lot longer working on Scroll Kit itself. So we had been doing this stuff for a while. The second thing that we were really excited about was the response to it. People went nuts over it. It got an incredible number of pageviews, a Pulitzer, all the fucking attention that they wanted. It also brought the Times a lot more new traffic. It was a big olive branch to some degree, it brought in a lot more people. This is the kind of piece that raised the brand of the New York Times, and made it more powerful and cool on the web. So, we were really excited about that. So, remaking it in Scroll Kit was just a no-brainer for us to do. It drops on the site, then we got the cease and desist. Honestly if we only got the cease and desist - that one letter - and not the follow-up ones, this would not have been a story.
What did your friends at the Times think of it?
We have a lot of shared values. I don’t think they were too concerned. I think they think it’s cool. You can talk to them, I can’t speak for them. I can say that I had a couple people from the Times reach out to me and say, “Hey, this is stupid, I like what you’re doing.”
Was the controversy a net-positive for Scroll Kit?
It was one of the greatest gifts that they could’ve given us. The Medium post got more than 100,000 views. All of the sudden, the publishers that we were cold-emailing were cold-emailing us, and asking how they could Snow Fall their stories. So we heard from people who we like and respect. We’re still sorting through the responses after all this time.
Can you share anything about what business model you have in mind for Scroll Kit?
I can say it’s pretty typical SAAS, but we do some other things that are a little different. We’re still trying to find the right way to price this, and there are a lot of opportunities. But what I can say that we do have customers and we are making money.
What is your job within Scroll Kit?
It’s just us two at this point. It’s a very big app for two people, there’s a lot to manage inside of it. Kate has been pretty amazing about that. She takes all the major engineering roles for us, and I do design and marketing, and getting people to know about Scroll Kit and to pay for it.
Like any founder of a startup, you have to play a ton of different roles. Do you have a favorite?
Hands down, it’s product. I love product. Making things more simple, that is the most fun.
Anything you thought you’d want to delegate but it turns out you actually like it?
Something that I didn’t think I would like because I assumed it was a lesser position was customer service, and just talking with people, and trying to fix their bugs. It’s totally worthwhile and very fun to do sometimes. They’re using your thing, they’re usually really nice about it, and it’s awesome because you can go off-script, and just like, get insight into what they’re trying to make with Scroll Kit, and learn more that way.
I hear you say you love product, and that makes sense to me that you like customer service…what better way to learn about your product?
Of course.
Are there any advisors that are really crucial to Scroll Kit’s success?
Yeah. So, Clay Shirkey is an advisor. I’ve known him since I snuck into his ITP class when I was in college. He’s always good for feedback and thinking about this stuff. Jeremy Mims, who is the founder of this company called OwnLocal, has been really helpful. He also received money from Knight, so we met that way. Jeremy Mims has been really helpful.
What is the single best piece of advice you could give to someone just coming out of college?
The single piece of advice for someone coming out of college if you want to do a startup is don’t wait. Jump into it. The thing that will happen is that once you accept a position somewhere else, you then just get your first paycheck that is pretty nice, and then adjust your whole standard of living. And the longer you stay in that, the more significant the decision is to do your own thing. It’s way easier to start a year out of college than three or four years after.
Thanks for reading!