December Challenge: Give the gift of Retool

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December Challenge: Give the gift of Retool!

Retool builders are entrepreneurial, passionate, and collaborative. You creatively and proactively solve business problems. You earnestly seek to create value. And we’re constantly heartened to see you supporting one another in identifying what to build, and how to build it successfully.

We’re excited to announce a new challenge – December Challenge: Give the gift of Retool! We’ll be celebrating and rewarding top community members who participate in the Retool Referral Program and grow the Retool community.

Over time, we’ve seen you share Retool with others and help friends and colleagues navigate the product. Now, both you and those you refer to use Retool can receive a monetary thank-you.

What is the Retool Referral Program?

  • The Retool Referral Program is a way for you to earn cash for referring new businesses to Retool’s Team or Business plans.
  • You earn 20% of all payments for 6 months–and your referred customers get 20% off for 6 months too!
  • You can start referring customers in just 2 clicks from within the product: 1) Access the referral widget on the homescreen of the product, 2) Copy to share your referral link directly with your network.
  • Anyone on a Cloud-hosted plan can participate in the program!
  • Learn more about the program here or on the docs.

Rules:

  • For the month of December 2023 (December 6th 2023 - Jan 6th 2024), we challenge you to give the gift of Retool and invite as many customers as you’d like to join Retool using the referral program.
  • A sign up completed using a referral link = a successful referral. Customers do not need to start paying to count as a successful referral.
  • There will be 3 winners with the top number of referrals made.
  • Winners will be announced by January 10th.

Prizes:

  • 1st place
    • Opportunity to speak with our CEO, David Hsu, for 30 mins on the topic of your choice
    • $750 in credits on your future Retool invoices*
  • 2nd place
    • $400 in credits on your future Retool invoices*
  • 3rd place
    • $200 in credits on your future Retool invoices*
  • Bonus prize: most number of social media posts made about the Referral Program (posts will be tracked with #RetoolReferralProgram)
    • $500 in credits on your future Retool invoices*

*credits expire in 1 year on Jan 10, 2025. Credit prize can be applied to the Team or Business plan purchased self-service via credit card. Alternative prize available if credits aren’t applicable.

How to be successful:

The spirit of this program and challenge is to enable you to do what you’ve already been doing: sharing Retool with other builders, leaders, and operators looking to solve problems, fast. Following that philosophy, to be successful with the program, we suggest:

  • Casting a wide net in sharing Retool. With a broad set of use cases, almost any business can find value in Retool. You never know where you’ll hear, “I was looking for something just like this.”
  • Explaining the value of Retool clearly. That “aha” moment is special. Telling your personal story with the product and the impact it’s had on your business will help deliver that. (We’ve also included some downloadable graphics in the referral widget to help tell that story).
  • Help your referrals build their first Retool app. Consider helping them here on the forum or pointing them to our Office Hours! If you’re excited to build and share your knowledge, helping them get familiar with the platform you know well can help them find their footing and a path toward reaching their goals.

Questions? Reach out to us at referrals@retool.com with any questions you have.

Let the gift giving begin!

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Hot take:
We're not your sales people, and this is done in poor taste :frowning_face:

The whole spirit of your monthly challenges has thus far been to encourage a sense of community, and promote existing Retool users to partake in the new and growing forum.

I fully understand the for-profit nature of Retool, and the need to acquire net new customers for continued growth.

However, trying to weaponize your community forum as a guerilla sales force feels sleazy, and a quick turn off for community contributors.
I might be the only person who feels this way, but I wanted to voice my opinion regardless. I love Retool, and hope for it to become the best platform that it can be - hence the critique.

Hopefully the future challenges can be more community-centric :slightly_smiling_face:

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Hey @TomRizz, thank you so much for your input! I'm grateful for your feedback and your support in making Retool the best it can be, especially as we aim to refine our community programs. We've been taking this to heart and discussing across teams.

Understanding your perspective on how the previous challenges aligned better with the community spirit means a lot. Our goal is to foster a welcoming environment that celebrates participants and makes this forum an engaging and enjoyable place for learning and sharing about Retool.

You're right to point out that Retool does have business goals, and I understand how emphasizing engagement with referrals might not resonate well here in the community forum. While this challenge aims to spotlight a chance for any Retool user to spread the word and receive recognition here whether the referred user subscribes to a paid plan or not, I can fully see how it feels sales-oriented. We had discussed this exact topic a bit internally before launching, around whether this aligns perfectly with the forum's focus, and it's helpful to hear your clear feedback that the two don't feel aligned.

Your feedback deeply influences our planning for upcoming community challenges in the new year. We'll keep this current challenge running to honor those participating. However, your post highlights a preference for challenges geared more towards learning, problem-solving, and recognizing Retool experts contributing here, which resonates with our team and likely resonates with many other contributors. Rest assured, your perspective will shape our future initiatives!

Thanks again for taking the time to share the valuable input! :star2: :slightly_smiling_face:
-Kayla, Retool Community Support Eng Manager

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Thank you to everyone who participated in the December community challenge last month!

We’re super excited to announce:

  • Coming in first place, we have Adrian Ching! :1st_place_medal:
  • In second place, we have @amit! :2nd_place_medal:
  • And in third place, we have @sophie! :3rd_place_medal:

Congrats to all our winners! We’ll be in touch with you directly and you’ll receive your prizes (as described above) soon. Adrian, we hope you enjoy your conversation with David Hsu, our CEO :slightly_smiling_face:

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