- Dropbox was founded in 2007 and launched in 2008 with the goal of making it easy to share files across computers and with other people.
- They applied lean startup principles, launching with a minimum viable product and getting feedback early, which helped them avoid mistakes as they grew rapidly from 100,000 to millions of users in 18 months.
- Early experiments with paid marketing like AdWords failed because the costs were too high for acquiring users. But organic growth from word-of-mouth and a viral referral program worked very well as the product solved real user problems.
Learn the tips and tricks to Win (or Lose) a Hackathon, from someone who's done both, many times! Whether you have an idea for a mobile app, a web site or service, these tips will help you avoid common pitfalls and be successful!
Creating Your MVP (or Startup Validation Hacks)Abby Fichtner
My tech talk at Harvard Innovation Lab.
Do you have an idea for a startup but aren't quite sure where or how to start on your product?
Creating Minimum Viable Products allows you to quickly test out the assumptions you’re making about your business, validate that customers are indeed interested in – and willing to pay for – your solution, and help you to prioritize your product’s features. Hear case studies on what other, successful startups have done and learn a number of MVP tools you can use to quickly get your startup on the path to viability.
Get set for content success: Preparing your organization for content work Melissa Rach
Workshop presented at the Ragan Content Summit, June 2013 by Melissa Rach and Julie Vollenweider, Dialog Studios
Content is a great way to attract and keep customers—but most organizations aren't set up to support the content process. Planning, creating, reviewing, approving, publishing, maintaining, and archiving content takes time and requires constant attention.
To get the right content online and keep it relevant, you need an effective content workflow that addresses all facets of content—people, processes, and tools.
In this session, we'll discuss how to create a successful content practice in your organization, including how to:
- Align on shared values and goals for content
- Identify what content tasks need to be completed
- Assign content roles and responsibilities
- Establish content processes and structures
- Prepare your organization for change
- Measure success and create ongoing room to evolve over time
Learn the tips and tricks to Win (or Lose) a Hackathon, from someone who's done both, many times! Whether you have an idea for a mobile app, a web site or service, these tips will help you avoid common pitfalls and be successful!
Creating Your MVP (or Startup Validation Hacks)Abby Fichtner
My tech talk at Harvard Innovation Lab.
Do you have an idea for a startup but aren't quite sure where or how to start on your product?
Creating Minimum Viable Products allows you to quickly test out the assumptions you’re making about your business, validate that customers are indeed interested in – and willing to pay for – your solution, and help you to prioritize your product’s features. Hear case studies on what other, successful startups have done and learn a number of MVP tools you can use to quickly get your startup on the path to viability.
Get set for content success: Preparing your organization for content work Melissa Rach
Workshop presented at the Ragan Content Summit, June 2013 by Melissa Rach and Julie Vollenweider, Dialog Studios
Content is a great way to attract and keep customers—but most organizations aren't set up to support the content process. Planning, creating, reviewing, approving, publishing, maintaining, and archiving content takes time and requires constant attention.
To get the right content online and keep it relevant, you need an effective content workflow that addresses all facets of content—people, processes, and tools.
In this session, we'll discuss how to create a successful content practice in your organization, including how to:
- Align on shared values and goals for content
- Identify what content tasks need to be completed
- Assign content roles and responsibilities
- Establish content processes and structures
- Prepare your organization for change
- Measure success and create ongoing room to evolve over time
How To Maximize Dropbox For Your BusinessJorina Banes
This is a Tutorial regarding the basic of Dropbox and how you can Maximize it on your Business. This also includes features of Dropbox that makes it more user friendly, very simple user interface that even fit for those who has a bit knowledge about internet.
NCS Business Solutions is a Certified Dropbox Solutions Provider – which allows us to provision, support and manage the Dropbox for Business file sync and collaboration solution for our clients.
Launches, SEO, Adwords, Twitter, Blog, Search Engine, Keyword ResearchMike Roberts
- Embarrassing Mistakes I've Made In Launches
- Things I've Learned
- Detailed Launch Plan for SpyFu SEO RECON Files (Agency Ready White Label SEO Reporting).
See the presentation here: http://vimeo.com/14965166
In this deck, we discuss an approach to validate the business merits of ideas. Presented to the HackUCI club on 02/02/2017 as part of a Cylance sponsored event.
Slides to the growth hacking workshop I recently gave for AAU students in Prague. We covered the Lean Canvas, getting to product-market fit, Wow! moment, growth marketing, and the analytics you should be focused on.
Task maps. Customer journeys. Cognitive walk-throughs. All are artifacts of our process of seeking understanding about our users that we likely create on a regular basis. But how can we better connect that work to the process of web site data collection and analysis?
Learn how we can adapt our existing process and artifacts to drive the definition of what user data we need to collect, as well as how to better analyze and validate what we do, including:
- Using existing site analytics to set a behavioral baseline.
- Defining what we want to measure based on task maps and other UX artifacts.
The result? Consensus on user behavior as expressed through data that can be used to tell the evolving story about our users and create better products for them.
My invited talk at TCS AgileCafe, Bangalore on Sep 29. In this talk, I explore how large #enterprises are creating #innovative products using #leanstartups
How To Maximize Dropbox For Your BusinessJorina Banes
This is a Tutorial regarding the basic of Dropbox and how you can Maximize it on your Business. This also includes features of Dropbox that makes it more user friendly, very simple user interface that even fit for those who has a bit knowledge about internet.
NCS Business Solutions is a Certified Dropbox Solutions Provider – which allows us to provision, support and manage the Dropbox for Business file sync and collaboration solution for our clients.
Launches, SEO, Adwords, Twitter, Blog, Search Engine, Keyword ResearchMike Roberts
- Embarrassing Mistakes I've Made In Launches
- Things I've Learned
- Detailed Launch Plan for SpyFu SEO RECON Files (Agency Ready White Label SEO Reporting).
See the presentation here: http://vimeo.com/14965166
In this deck, we discuss an approach to validate the business merits of ideas. Presented to the HackUCI club on 02/02/2017 as part of a Cylance sponsored event.
Slides to the growth hacking workshop I recently gave for AAU students in Prague. We covered the Lean Canvas, getting to product-market fit, Wow! moment, growth marketing, and the analytics you should be focused on.
Task maps. Customer journeys. Cognitive walk-throughs. All are artifacts of our process of seeking understanding about our users that we likely create on a regular basis. But how can we better connect that work to the process of web site data collection and analysis?
Learn how we can adapt our existing process and artifacts to drive the definition of what user data we need to collect, as well as how to better analyze and validate what we do, including:
- Using existing site analytics to set a behavioral baseline.
- Defining what we want to measure based on task maps and other UX artifacts.
The result? Consensus on user behavior as expressed through data that can be used to tell the evolving story about our users and create better products for them.
My invited talk at TCS AgileCafe, Bangalore on Sep 29. In this talk, I explore how large #enterprises are creating #innovative products using #leanstartups
Hardware Startups 101: Tips for "career engineers" (NESOSA 2015; Favalora)favalora
Strategic and tactical advice on hardware startups for first-time entrepreneurs. A talk by Gregg Favalora - an entrepreneur who exited a "holographic display" startup in 2009 - that will rapidly teach Career Engineers about the primary themes of startups. Topics: product definition, financing, sales. Links to an Online Guide for HW Resources in Eastern Massachusetts.
2. Background
• Cofounder & CEO, Dropbox
• Earlier: MIT comp sci (‘05), started
online SAT prep co, engineer @ startups
• Easiest way to share files across
computers & with other people
• Founded in ‘07, launched Sep ’08
• Sequoia & Accel-backed startup in SF
• Millions of users, rapidly growing
3. Some context
• 100,000 many millions of users in 18
months since launch
• No advertising spend
• Hostile environment: lots of competitors,
software download
• Mostly done by engineers w/ some guidance
but no prior marketing experience
4. How we applied lean startup
principles at Dropbox
(sometimes on purpose, sometimes by accident)
5. When to Launch?
Paul Graham: Joel Spolsky:
Early and often When it doesn’t
completely suck
(avoid “Marimba Phenomenon”)
6. 2006: Dozens and dozens of
2006: Dozens and dozens of
cloud storage companies
cloud storage companies
7. VC: “There are a million
cloud storage startups!”
Drew: “Do you use any of them?”
VC: “No”
Drew: “…”
9. From competitor’s support forum:
"[product] ended up turning all my Word
docs and half my Excel Spreadsheets
into 0 byte files. Needless to say, I am
not happy."
13. Private beta launch video 12,000 diggs;
Private beta launch video 12,000 diggs;
beta waiting list jumps from 5,000 to 75,000 in
beta waiting list jumps from 5,000 to 75,000 in
one day (Mar 2008)
one day (Mar 2008)
14. What we learned
• Biggest risk: making something no one
wants
• Not launching painful, but not learning
fatal
• Put something in users hands (doesn’t have
to be code) and get real feedback ASAP
• Know where your target audience hangs out
& speak to them in an authentic way
16. Public launch (Sep 2008): Time to get real
Public launch (Sep 2008): Time to get real
17. Public launch (Sep 2008): Time to get real
Public launch (Sep 2008): Time to get real
Our Web 2.0 Marketing Plan
Our Web 2.0 Marketing Plan
•• Big launch at TechCrunch50
Big launch at TechCrunch50
•• Buy some AdWords
Buy some AdWords
•• Hire, um, a PR firm, or a VP of Marketing, or
Hire, um, a PR firm, or a VP of Marketing, or
something
something
18. Experiment: Paid search
• Hired experienced SEM & affiliate marketing
guy ($$)
• Picked out keywords, made landing pages
• Hid the free account option for people
arriving via paid search, replace with free
time-limited trial
• Went live in early 2009
20. Cost per acquisition: $233-$388
Cost per acquisition: $233-$388
For a $99 product. Fail.
For a $99 product. Fail.
21. Experiments failing left and right
• Problem: Most obvious keywords bidded
way up
– Probably by other venture-backed startups
• Problem: Long tail had little volume
• Problem: Hiding free option was shady,
confusing, buggy
• Affiliate program, display ads, etc sucked too
• Economics totally broken
22. But we were still doing well…?
• Reached 1mm users 7 months after launch
• Beloved by our community
23. What we learned
• Lots of pressure (or guilt) to do things the
traditional way. But think first principles
• Fortunately, we spent almost all our effort on
making an elegant, simple product that “just
works” and making users happy
• And we worked our asses off
• And hired the smartest people we knew
• “Keep the main thing the main thing”
24. What we learned
• Mostly ignored (or woefully mishandled):
– hiring non-engineers
– mainstream PR
– traditional messaging/positioning
– deadlines, process, “best practices”
– having a “real” website
– partnerships/bizdev
– having lots of features
• Product-market fit cures many sins of
management
27. AdWords wasn’t the problem
• Nobody wakes up in the morning wishing
they didn’t have to carry a USB drive, email
themselves, etc.
• Similar things existed, but people weren’t
actively looking for what we were making
• Display ads, landing pages ineffective
• Search is a way to harvest demand,
not create it
29. Steve Blank & Market Type
•Existing Market
•Resegmented
Market
•New Market
•Marketing tactics for one market
type fail horribly in others
30. New strategy: encourage WOM, viral
• Give users better tools to spread the love
• Referral program w/ 2-sided incentive
permanently increased signups by 60% (!!)
– Inspired by PayPal $5 signup bonus
• Help from Sean Ellis: Surveys, split tests,
landing page/signup flow
optimizations, encourage
sharing big wins
• Big investment in analytics
31. Trailing 30 days (Apr 2010) :: users sent
Trailing 30 days (Apr 2010) users sent
2.8 million direct referral invites
2.8 million direct referral invites
32. Results
• September 2008: 100,000 registered users
• January 2010 (15 mos later): 4,000,000
• Mostly from word-of-mouth and viral:
– 35% of daily signups from referral program
– 20% from shared folders, other viral features
• Sustained 15-20%+ month-over-month
growth since launch
33. Wrapping up
• Learn early, learn often
• Best practices aren’t always best
• Know your market type & how
your product fits into your user’s
life
(as I spent the bulk of my 20s discovering) This is not your typical rails app that you can bang out in a weekend.
One thing I ran into over and over again was products that half worked. I promise you, if they did, I wouldn’t be here, I would be using that instead. But these were the guys who launched early. And now most of them are dead, not because of Dropbox but largely by self inflicted wounds.
So, launching early and joining the pigpile of halfassed storage products was not terribly appealing
So shipping code was out of the question YC app – ship in 8 wks vs 18 mos Prototype worked; video could show product in best light; get much of the same feedback as if we shipped working code
YC’s motto
As engineers
We ran a bunch of experiments; adwords example -- everybody else is doing it
- SEM is an example, but others – guilt to do what everyone else is doing -- to hire a product person, or a VP of whatever, or make an analytics dashboard, or a PR firm, etc. Often these are great things to do but that’s not a license to blindly do them
To do something well in general you’ll be doing something else poorly