Janine Popick, CEO VerticalResponse | San Francisco Womens Journal

Beyond the Silicon Ceiling: Janine Popick’s Tech Company, VerticalResponse Soars to Success!

Janine Popick, CEO VerticalResponse

Janine Popick didn’t get the memo. The one that says women don’t start up successful tech companies. Not that it would have mattered!

by Deborah Burstyn
SF BAWJ Feature Writer
(This article is available in the SF BAWJ magazine.)

Popick, the 42 year-old entrepreneur and CEO would still have shattered that silicon ceiling. Her company VerticalResponse helps small businesses and non-profits stand tall with affordable ways to create, send and track professional-looking email newsletters, direct mail postcards and online surveys.

In less than a decade since she launched VerticalResponse in San Francisco, Popick has grown the company to over 75,000 customers, $18.6 million in sales and 90 employees – plus she offers 10,000 free emails per year for non-profits. And she blogs: for Inc. Magazine and of course, for VerticalResponse.

VerticalResponse Growth and Success Soars ahead with…
Customers, Revenue and Awards!

Popick and VerticalResponse have racked up numerous awards and accolades acknowledging the growth and success of the company. In 2009, VerticalResponse was Ranked #244 on Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500and #52 on the San Francisco Business Times List of “Top 100 Fastest Growing Companies in the Bay Area”.

The VerticalResponse Marketing Blog for Small Business was also recognized by the Web Marketing Association with the 2009 Award for Blog Standard of Excellence. Most recently Popick was named the 2010 San Francisco SBA Small Business Person of the Year!

A Conversation with Janine Popick…the Past, Present and Future!

The SF BAWJ sat down with Popick to talk about her amazing journey, and the twists and turns that led her to where she is today!

On Early Exposure: My dad was a tech guy at IBM. He was a lone worker bee for 35 years. He developed some cool stuff, and had a few patents. IBM had family days and we’d all get to go in and look at main frames. I loved it.

On Work Ethic: I was not one of those kids who went backpacking around Europe. The day after I graduated from college, I went to work at WCBS-TV in New York. Radio and TV were my passions.

The VerticalResponse Team

On Changing Gears: At a certain point I knew that was as far as I could go in TV. So I jumped ship and started doing ad sales for a newspaper in Brooklyn. I was going door to door. I realized it wasn’t for me when I got mugged. So I got a job in direct marketing.

On Heading West: I had a bad relationship with a boy in New York. I came out here with a friend on a trip and decided someday I’d be back. A short time later I got a great job in direct marketing for a small ad agency on the peninsula.

On Love and Marriage: People who say you’re never going to meet a guy in San Francisco are wrong. I met my husband four weeks after moving here. The attraction was instant. We’ve been together for 15 years. We still always manage to tag along on each other’s business trips. We are a rare breed that really likes to hang out together.

On Inspiration: My husband and I once found ourselves not working at the same time. So we moved to Paris. We talked about how everyone was giving out their email addresses. We’d both worked in big companies. How were small companies handling this? They were using Outlook. There had to be a better way.

On a Typical Day: I get up 6:30 a.m., do a half hour of email, check Tweet Deck, get on a treadmill for an hour and switch between VH1 and The Today Show. I do my sit-ups, some weights and get to work. There I focus on what’s going on in the market, our customers and our competitors.

Between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m., I walk home and grab a glass of wine with my husband to wind down. He has an agency that has a lot of wineries and in our spare time he has a food and wine blog called VinDivine. We have a lot fun. One of us cooks while the other works. Then we go to the couch with our computers and watch TV. We loved Flight of the Conchords, Madmen and The Office.

On Reading: Right now my favorite books are ReWork by Jason Fried and David Hansson and The Referral Engine by John Jantsch.

Reviewing the VerticalResponse postcard product.

On Success: The more smart people I can have around me that know things I don’t know the better. That’s a big reason behind my company being successful.

That’s our strength as women. We understand our deficiencies. We accept that we are not going be perfect in every aspect. Women are great at leaning on other people.

On What Comes Next: I am going to continue growing VerticalResponse. We have a great company that I am happy to come to every day. Anything next for me is going to be in non-profit. During the past two years I’ve set up formal company volunteering events, where we helped cleaned up the beach, read to second graders, rebuilt a playground and helped clean up the zoo. That’s a great day for me!

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