Matt Brezina, Entrepreneur at Sincerely Inc.Thanks for all the kind comments. I don't have the audio from my talk, but I did add much more detail on my blog. You should read more here http://www.mattbrezina.com/blog3 years ago
Are you sure you want to
Tyler CrowleyNice deck Matt, love the play by play on the upswing chart3 years ago
Are you sure you want to
LoveMyToolGreat presentation. My own experience is that no one cares about your startup, especially not your customers. It has been said that the key to success is to sell solution and not technology. But it turns out that you need to do more. You need to sell solution that solve existing problems for your customers that fit within the constraint of their “current” job description. In other words, the most important thing is to make sure that your customers can buy your products without stealing other people’s budget and without fundamentally changing their own career. If you do, then they really don’t care. As far as your customers are concerned, life is just too damn short. http://www.startupforless.org3 years ago
No One Cares About Your Stupid Little StartupPresentation Transcript
No one cared about my stupid little startup(and they don’t care about yours either) Matt Brezina Co-founder, Xobni Matt@xobni.com Twitter: @brezina
Xobni’s Path To 3 Million Downloads(a 3.5 year journey) Paid Drivers Nerd Scarcity Invite Beta Public Beta Private Beta Iteration GA Stealth
Stealth
Only 50 users
Very boring website: No screenshots, product descriptions
Traffic from blogging – problems with email & entrepreneurship
Personal relationships with press and demo under embargo
(ask for help before you need it) 1.5 years 50 users Paid Drivers Nerd Scarcity Invite Beta Public Beta Private Beta Iteration GA Stealth
Private Beta
Launched at TechCrunch50
“Too much demand”
Added 10k users in 1 day – everyone else sign-up
2 months 10k users Paid Drivers Nerd Scarcity Invite Beta Public Beta Private Beta Iteration GA Stealth
Nerd Scarcity
Leveraged excited early adopters
Badge program
Added users from beta list when we needed lab rats
3 months 12k users Paid Drivers Nerd Scarcity Invite Beta Public Beta Private Beta Iteration GA Stealth
Invite Beta
Users could invite 5 friends
Maintained forgiveness of beta users
Nearly 100% conversion on clicked invites (users were self selecting people who’d want xobni)
3 months 50k users Paid Drivers Nerd Scarcity Invite Beta Public Beta Private Beta Iteration GA Stealth
Iteration
Needed product/market fit before exiting exclusivity
Wanted to accelerate WOM & virality for upcoming pop
100k user beta list
Focused on performance, user ed & virality
3 months 60k users Paid Drivers Nerd Scarcity Invite Beta Public Beta Private Beta Iteration GA Stealth
Public Beta
Hired PR firm 6 weeks before launch
Officially launched Xobni open beta in NYT
95k web visitors on day 1
70k visitors on day 2!!
Used demand for private beta as proxy for need of a solution to info overload and the value of a people focused inbox
1 year 1.5M users Paid Drivers Nerd Scarcity Invite Beta Public Beta Private Beta Iteration GA Stealth
Exit Beta
Reliable product
With product/market fit
That encapsulated our vision
Resulting in:
Strong WOM
Official adoption in enterprises
The ability to start charging
3 months 2M users Paid Drivers Nerd Scarcity Invite Beta Public Beta Private Beta Iteration GA Stealth
Paid Drivers
PR & virality aren’t predictably scalable
Ain’t nothing wrong with spending money to make money
Need business model to make the sausage machine work
6 months 3M users Paid Drivers Nerd Scarcity Invite Beta Public Beta Private Beta Iteration GA Stealth
When we got PR help In-house & PR Firm PR Firm PR Contractor (but mostly me) Me Paid Drivers Nerd Scarcity Invite Beta Public Beta Private Beta Iteration GA Stealth
No one cares about your stupid little startup5tips to make them care
Tip 1. Tie yourself to a bigger trend For us it was: The web inside your inbox Facebook crossing into the business world Email is the oldest online social network Enterprise software is now going bottoms up Email overload is drowning the information worker
Case Study: Email Me Instead Wehad 10k users and new blog/press relationships from our facebook app, before Xobni was even in public beta
Tip 2 Take every opportunity to meet a journalist in person Get product feedback Social events Make introductions Base your company where the media is
Case Study: WSJ
Tip 3. Engage heavily with users – positive WOM is even better than press coverage
Case Study: Xobni Our 5th employee was customer support Elite Alpha forum of 500 users Phone call (and blog) with one user per week Special twitter handle for customer support Engineers do tech phone calls with users We send out a lot of tshirts
Tip 4. Journalists are lazy. Help them be lazy
Case Study: Xobni.com
Tip 5. Be a source of data
Case Studies: Tivo, Trulia, Facebook
Now, 3 million people care about my stupid little startup Matt Brezina Co-founder, Xobni Matt@xobni.com Twitter: @brezina
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