Dominic Coryell, Distribution Hacker-In-Residence, 500 Startups

1. SMOKE TESTS
HUSTLE YOUR EXPERIMENTS w/o DEVS

2. WHO IS THIS GUY DOMINIC?
● Co-Founded 2 Companies
● GSEA In College
Now I’m @DistroDom @500
Startups investing time and $ in
promising startups #500STRONG
@DistroDom - #WMD2015

3. WE’VE ALL
BEEN HERE

4. == Product

5. Growth Is SLOWER than we want

6. Product Backlog is LONGER than we want

7. Product Backlog is LONGER than we want

8. YOU EXPECT….

9. But you get….

10. SO WE STALL
#ProductDilemma

11. KILL THAT SHIT
Grow Without Waiting For Product - Get Hacky

12. MY OWN FUCKUP (one of the many)

13. MY OWN FUCKUP (one of the many)
ONE ENTIRE YEAR WASTED

14. WAITING ON
ONE
MODULE

15. SMOKE TEST

16. WTF is this Smoke Test?
WAY TO PROVE THAT YOUR PRODUCT
BACKLOG IS WORTH IT
+ VALIDATE
+ LEARN
+ ITERATE

17. AN EXAMPLE

18. “TYPICAL” PRODUCT WAY
BUILD a New Feature
Called “Add To Box”
(~2 Weeks)
PLAN a New Feature
Called “Add To Box”
(~1 Week)
TEST & RELEASE a
New Feature Called
“Add To Box”
(~1 Week)
ONE FUCKING MONTH POTENTIALLY WASTED

19. “TYPICAL” PRODUCT WAY
LAUNCH
(THAT DAY)
PLAN
IDEA => HACK
(~1 hour)
MAKE $$$$
BOoooOM
:)
And the RESULTS….

20. FIRE

21. BUT EVEN IF WE LOST….

22. RESULTS?

23. LET’S GET TACTICAL
1. What is the Absolute Bare Bones Minimum Proof You Need?
2. How Can you get that proof with NO ENGINEERS?
3. Get Traffic to your site
4. Get Leads
5. Get Referrals
6. Measure Conversion
7. Analyze and Optimize
8. Make a decision
9. Plan Operations

24. LET’S GET TACTICAL

25. dom@500.co
@DistroDom
www.facebook.com/dominic.coryell

26. RESULTS
<= 30% of visitors
entered their
zipcode
&
25 % of people
entered their
email =>
&
10% shared

27. Vs. This Design
- Asked for email
and zip before live
- Had a <3% Email
Capture Rate
Less than 2x as many
leads