Yep, agreed on the last slide that lean startup only works 1 out of 10 times - http://bit.ly/178ZPrb
But since it's lean, presumably the other 9 failures don't cost much and lead to success on the 10th try...
How to get traction/usage for your product
11–20 of 28 posts
Re: How to get traction/usage for your product
#12Slide 14 & 15 were instructive, brilliant way of connecting the dots.
How specifically are you segmenting out new users by Twitter follower / Klout score and then firing actions to those segments?
Re: How to get traction/usage for your product
#13Allow me to add: Have a landing page that actually says something about the product. The limk landing page is atrocious. How d you expect people to sign up to your service when the entry point to your system is this bad?
Worse, what there is was confusing, at least to me. I signed up after reading the article and checking Twitter accounts. I thought I was signing up for a deal finding site from what text I'd seen. It's actually more of an interesting content finding site.
I haven't seen any deals but think it is referring to occasional promos or discounts or something else to incentivize users - doesn't seem to actually be about shopping or getting deals of offers or anything. Example categories were humor, and there were stories about what girls find more attractive, etc..
Re: How to get traction/usage for your product
#14Wow, I like your 15th slide. I have a new website just launched and start from 0 (zero) followers. I don't know the best method to get more followers.
Re: How to get traction/usage for your product
#15Slide 14 & 15 were instructive, brilliant way of connecting the dots. How specifically are you segmenting out new users by Twitter follower / Klout score and then firing actions to those segments?
Thanks aresant, already replied you privately, but for the public knowledge; you can accomplish this with Intercom but only with emails & in-app notifications.
We're currently studying all these features to build similar ones to accomplish the same from the servers that we own in future. We've already built an app to do exactly the same for Twitter mentions. I'll consider open-sourcing this, once it gets better & more stable.
Re: How to get traction/usage for your product
#16Wow, I like your 15th slide. I have a new website just launched and start from 0 (zero) followers. I don't know the best method to get more followers.
Glad that you liked it, daviedR. We've also just started the process earlier in this week, but it's already getting some results. And I'd be more than glad to help you.
Ping me: oguz@limk.com
Re: How to get traction/usage for your product
#17Yep, agreed on the last slide that lean startup only works 1 out of 10 times - http://bit.ly/178ZPrb
But since it's lean, presumably the other 9 failures don't cost much and lead to success on the 10th try...
Nice argument, arbuge, thanks for pointing out.
It's not that we actually don't like & use lean techniques, but it's just I wanted to address that actually 'fetish of failure' might not be a good thing in the long term.
Re: How to get traction/usage for your product
#18Don’t blindly follow the MVP gospel, adapt it to your personality and projects. People won’t take your half finished app seriously if you are outside of the early adopters market… which happens most of the time.
People won’t take your half finished app seriously if you are outside of the early adopters market… which happens most of the time.
A point a lot of people seem to miss about MVPs and the whole Lean Startup approach (specifically the aspects taken from @sgblank's Customer Development Methodology) is that you start out focusing on early adopters. You aren't, with the initial cut, usually trying to sell to the mass market yet. You're trying to find out if there's any market for "the thing you're building".
This, to me, implies that if you're working with an MVP that is "half finished" or less than polished, you don't publicize it to the world and try to drive massive traffic to it right away (this is assuming some kind of webapp, SaaS thing). A closed, invite only, beta or trail program, just to get feedback, find out how customers interact with the thing, etc., should probably come first.
Of course, webapps are a slightly different model than what @sgblank wrote about in TFSTTE, and he revised some of his stuff in The Startup Owner's Manual to address that more specifically.
Re: How to get traction/usage for your product
#19Regarding the Marc Andressen quote on slide 17:
“We see Lean Startup methodology being used inappropriately as an excuse to not take sales and marketing seriously,” he said. “Founders tell us that all that matters is product, and sales and market will happen automatically. The ‘if they build it it will come,’” mantra, which he noted is not always an acceptable approach for those looking to grow.
I can't help but wonder... who are these people and what in the world made them think that being a Lean Startup in any way obviates the need for sales and marketing? If you read one of the seminal books of the Lean Startup world, @sgblank's The Four Steps To The Epiphany you see that he makes it absolutely clear that sales and marketing matter. There's a lot of material in there about demand creation, channels, pricing, and other sales and marketing topics.
IMO, anybody who says "we don't need to worry about sales and marketing because we're a Lean Startup" is clueless and probably hasn't actually done any research on the whole Lean Startup approach, beyond reading headlines on HN and maybe a blog post or two.
Re: How to get traction/usage for your product
#20Yep, agreed on the last slide that lean startup only works 1 out of 10 times - http://bit.ly/178ZPrb
Yep, agreed on the last slide that lean startup only works 1 out of 10 times
As opposed to?
Seriously, I'm not trying to be snarky. "Lean" is a way of thinking, a set of principles, etc. that should increase the odds of success of most startups. So if we say "using this only works 1 in 10 times" then how often do startups succeed who don't use them? And if one were to advocate for a "something else" model then what, exactly, is the "something else"?
Or I guess another way of wording what I'm asking is "Is there actually any counter-indication to doing things like getting to know your customers and understand their pains, achieving product / market fit before doing a big-bang PR launch, and waiting to try and massively scale sales and marketing until you know there is a market for what you're building"?