Do Everything Better: A RiffRaff Post-Mortem
When I first moved out to San Francisco, I had no idea what the year would hold for me, but I was hungry for adventure. The first half wasn’t the best, but I learned a lot about myself. In the second half I produced more work than I ever thought I could, for a startup I truly believed could be huge.
When you read the word riffraff, what do you think of?
I was hired to be the UX designer for the sharing economy startup in a roundabout way. Flooded with tons and tons of job listings for designers in the Bay Area, one day I decided to let employers find me. I posted on Craigslist that I was a junior designer looking for work experience. (On a job board I had also put my phone number up publicly on my résumé—don’t do that.) Surprisingly, I got hits right away, and after a couple phone calls, one stood out above all the rest. All I had to do to “apply” for the job would be to take some wireframes and a general idea of what the platform would do, and iterate on it. I took it very seriously and sent my work back promptly. I learned after, during my in-person interview that followed, that previous applicants would ghost the CEO and not even attempt to show off their skills. The CEO knew the design would make or break the platform, and saw I was willing to make an effort, even if I was unexperienced. I accepted the job offer.
We didn’t have an office, so for the first few weeks, it was just me and the CEO, working from home, a coffee shop, or working from one of the common areas in my apartment building. Over time, we picked up a brand manager, a community manager, a CS intern, and the occasional outside designer to help us out. Our “office” was a local co-working space that allowed us to mingle with other small, and early-stage startups.
Our name took a word that has a negative connotation and turned it into something comforting and homey. RiffRaff was the community of everyone around—all supporting the idea that everyone has something to share, everyone has something to learn, and everyone could do free time better. Who cares if the person teaching you guitar has a music degree or not; if they’re just part of the riffraff that make up the general public. That means they’re on your level and can empathize with you, as a beginner to the thing they love!
I picked up a lot of my UX arsenal from my time at RiffRaff. Some things aren’t around anymore, like UserTesting’s fabulous Peek test, and some things are the same: I still prefer to wireframe in Adobe Illustrator. I look back fondly of the few months we had funding to keep chugging along, and what could have been if something went differently. Losing funding meant I would need to find a new job, something I didn’t want to do, it felt like leaving home. But, I moved back home to Savannah, Georgia for the cheaper cost-of-living and to take solace in being able to find sweet tea whenever I needed it.
Overall I learned to always try to do everything better.
