The document outlines 11 lessons learned from the experience of building SlideShare into a leading platform for sharing presentations. It emphasizes the importance of speed, focus on execution over ideas, building products for own use, using metrics to guide decisions, hiring design engineers, finding communities, and outsourcing non-core functions. Key recommendations include making the app useful by solving problems well, prioritizing speed, listening to metrics over loud voices, focusing on users not competition, and not spending too much on business development.

1. Rashmi Sinha, SlideShare Fast, cheap and barely in control: 10 lessons from SlideShare

3. SlideShare... best place in the world to share presentations

5. Taking over the world (one PowerPoint at a time!)

6. 1. Make your app useful

7. Solve one problem really well

8. Make app social SlideShare as non social app No virality

9. 2. Speed is imperative

10. Why startups need speed?

11. Small & fast

12. Set the tone for speed In development, design…

13. Be agile (worry about scaling later)

14. 3. Ideas are dime a dozen

15. Focus on execution Can we execute on this? How fast? When can we start work? What will first version take? What metrics to track progress? What will we push back to work on this?

16. 4. What to build

17. We build products we use ourselves

18. 37signals: Build less

19. Add complexity for right reasons Start with less Add complexity (if needed) Remove features Get people used to change

20. To build a feature or not to Listen to loudest? Watch metrics?

21. How to double traffic ?

22. Anatomy of a feature launch

23. 5. How to Launch

24. The Alpha Feedback to the embed No publicity Browser compatibility issues

25. How developed should a Beta be? (Enough to get point across)

26. SlideShare launch Invite only: Before or after launch? Alpha Stealth mode Open to all Launch Invite only

27. Year 1 Open to all Launch Invite only

28. 6. Focus on your users, not your competition

29. 7. Don’t spend too much time on Biz Dev

30. 8. Use metrics to make decisions

31. What metrics? Performance: page load times, errors Traffic: Web logs Database tracking: No. registrations, login, uploads, contacts Customer feedback emails

32. How metrics? A/B testing Metrics Dashboard: Shadow App Daily Email reports

33. Get team buy-in for metrics

34. Metrics and the danger of local minima

35. 9. Hire Design Engineers

36. 10. Find your community

37. Community is a great way to grow Reduce marketing costs, users evangelize

38. 11. Outsource what is not your core competency

39. Outsource complexity Amazon S3, EC2 Dedicated servers instead of colocation Google Ads Google Search Different widgets (Gigya, AddThis)

40. My slides at http://www.slideshare.net/tag/w2e Find me at www.slideshare.net/rashmi www.twitter.com/rashmi