On the TechTO stage ×2
Annalea Krebs of SocialNature presents My Worst Day as a Successful Entrepreneur
Watch on YouTube ↗Valuable advice from a longtime builder | Annalea Krebs
Watch on YouTube ↗First seen on a TechTO stage in 2016. Every TechTO talk is searchable — ask the archive about Annalea ↗
In their words
The other thing I learned is not to hire a technical co-founder on Craigslist.
I learned a hard lesson, which was: do not provide services for free. The best way is to ask the customer to pay for something as early as possible, and you will really find out what their real pain point is.
My first mistake was believing that high demand equals product-market fit. It can be really easy to be fooled when you have this constant stream of customers and users signing up — but when you looked under the hood, they weren't sticking around.
More from TechTO ×2
Quick answers
What is Annalea Krebs known for?
Founding Social Nature, a product-sampling platform for natural and organic brands with more than 1.2 million community members. Before it she built ethicaldeal, a green daily-deal site she bootstrapped and sold in 2015.
What did Annalea Krebs do before Social Nature?
She incorporated her first company out of school in 2008 with $25,000 of scholarship money and launched thechange.com, a directory of local green businesses. When those businesses wouldn't pay for listings but would pay for customers, she pivoted to ethicaldeal — a green daily-deal site — and sold it in 2015.
What does Annalea Krebs say she got wrong?
Two things, on the TechTO stage in March 2025: giving services away free instead of asking customers to pay early, and reading high demand as product-market fit when Social Nature's retention was weak. Fixing retention meant narrowing the ideal customer profile and starting to say no.