Intercom, a customer communication platform, hired me to develop an editorial product that would increase the company's mind share among entrepreneurs, investors, designers, developers, and other tech enthusiasts. The conceived idea was to be separate from Intercom's existing editorial offerings (e.g., blog, podcast, digital books, and email newsletter), which it has already built up a reputation for.

Called "Memo by Intercom", the original specifications called on this to be in two parts, with the first phase being an email newsletter. After that, a blog would be composed to focus on longer-form articles. The thinking was that the newsletter would determine how much traction "Memo" would receive and therefore dictate next steps.

The "Memo" newsletter grew organically and each email contained an average of the five most important tech stories of the day. But beyond that, we included commentary from Intercomrades (what we called our team members). In doing so, we hoped to differentiate ourselves from other newsletters, showing that advice was coming from those in the trenches, not pundits or analysts.

Stories chosen differed in genre, meaning we included news around virtual reality, acquisitions, customer service, social media, financial earnings, information security, enterprise, developer news, and more. The goal was never to replace what reporters had covered, but to provide enough insights to "Memo" readers that they could have enough knowledge about the day's events to talk about it around the proverbial water cooler.

As the Senior Editor at Intercom, my role was to take this idea which was created by the company's cofounders and make it into reality. This included crafting up specifications, working with graphic designers on the branding and functionality, curating the news and soliciting commentary from Intercomrades using an internal Slack channel, and producing the newsletter daily. Each issue would be delivered using MailChimp at 5:00 p.m. Pacific time.