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Do Things that Don't Scale

paulgraham.com

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Re: Do Things that Don't Scale

#81

Post by EGreg »

This is great advice. But I wanted to briefly mention an alternative perspective. We did things very differently.

Now two years later we have 250,000 monthly users, and we're getting ready to roll out our technology to them in a few months.

When you are building an app for people, businesses, or whoever, you have to go where they congregate. Pick an existing social network with a messaging channel that people haven't grown apathetic to. Then you have to have an onboarding process that's simple. Then you have to develop a sales process and maybe even incentivize your existing users to sign up others. Viral coefficients decrease your user acquisition cost. And so forth.

That's why we built our framework. We spent two years solving the problem of "how do you build the next generation of successful, useful apps? And soon we will see if we were right.

I wrote this back in 2008: http://luckyapps.com/blog/?p=12

Re: Do Things that Don't Scale

#82

Post by guynamedloren »

mandeepj wrote: post #77
guynamedloren wrote: post #46

This bums me out. Majorly. I work at a YC startup (which will remain nameless), and we function exactly the opposite of how this essay suggests. We aren't huge by any means, but we focus heavily on scale, and suppress ideas that do not scale. Automate everything. Nothing should be manual . I'm an engineer, but I recognize the importance of fantastic customer service. While building an iPhone app, I suggested that use…

I am sorry that your product failed. Would you mind sharing with us what you think had caused your product to fail?

I would love to - there's a lot to be learned from such experiences. Unfortunately, I would not feel comfortable doing so without approval from the founders - even remaining nameless.

Internally, we have been reluctant to admit that the product has failed (despite it being shut down and pulled from the app store). We have not discussed the product since we shut it down. We have not looked at what worked and what didn't work. We have not analyzed why it failed. Instead, we've chosen to blaze forward, focusing on our next launch.

Re: Do Things that Don't Scale

#83

Post by johnrob »

nowarninglabel wrote: post #73

It's still easy to mess up this process though, at least, that's how I feel about RepairPal. I got an e-mail from my credit union suggesting them, and it was perfect timing cause I had just bought a used car that needed some repairs. So, I signed up, put in the info, and...nothing. No response whatsoever. But then, their marketing team sent me a semi-personalized e-mail requesting feedback. Awesome, so I wrote about…

Unfortunately, a billion minus one is still a large number. Thus, the penalty for annoying individual users is pretty much nothing unless it turns into bad PR.

Re: Do Things that Don't Scale

#84

Post by [deleted] »

mandeepj wrote: post #77
guynamedloren wrote: post #46

This bums me out. Majorly. I work at a YC startup (which will remain nameless), and we function exactly the opposite of how this essay suggests. We aren't huge by any means, but we focus heavily on scale, and suppress ideas that do not scale. Automate everything. Nothing should be manual . I'm an engineer, but I recognize the importance of fantastic customer service. While building an iPhone app, I suggested that use…

I am sorry that your product failed. Would you mind sharing with us what you think had caused your product to fail?

[deleted]

Re: Do Things that Don't Scale

#85

Post by krisc »

mojuba wrote: post #66
Jd wrote: post #24

TLDR: Startups that try to focus on big launches are generally lazy. Success comes from putting in extraordinary effort to putting your customer first. This means you get super-enthusiastic users. This works by the principle of compound growth as users tell their friends. Somewhat ironically I am of the opinion that: (A) this is one of pg's best and most useful essays ever (B) it is partially more useful because it i…

Somehow many of his essays look "the best ever" when they just come out ;) Take for example Startup = Growth which did have an impact back in the day, but already feels somewhat outdated.

It's like what he's writing seems so obvious, and the essay puts this seemingly obvious information out there for everyone to know.

Re: Do Things that Don't Scale

#86

Post by draugadrotten »

guynamedloren wrote: post #82
mandeepj wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sorry that your product failed. Would you mind sharing with us what you think had caused your product to fail?

I would love to - there's a lot to be learned from such experiences. Unfortunately, I would not feel comfortable doing so without approval from the founders - even remaining nameless. Internally, we have been reluctant to admit that the product has failed (despite it being shut down and pulled from the app store). We have not discussed the product since we shut it down. We have not looked at what worked and what didn…

> We have not looked at what worked and what didn't work. We have not analyzed why it failed. Instead, we've chosen to blaze forward, focusing on our next launch.

Ahem...That sounds... ominous. Why not spend at least a lunch with a basic analysis? Use a fishbone. http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_03.htm

Re: Do Things that Don't Scale

#87

Post by philfreo »

derefr wrote: post #53
pg wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the reasons I wrote "there may be a handful that just grew by themselves" is that every time I learn the story behind one of these apparent instant successes, it turns out it wasn't so instant. I don't know the stories of all these companies, but I do know that Instagram's launch was preceded by a lot of manual recruitment of influential users.

Would you recommend that strategy--having a quiet, unmemorable, word-of-mouth-driven initial launch (which you can call a "beta period"), and then, once you've already got some hooks into the press and a good userbase, a follow-on publicity stunt (which you can call a "launch")?

This worked well for us at Close.io " rel="nofollow">http://close.io.>

We had a couple "soft launches" - one where we put up our first email-collecting landing page and invited some people we knew to use the service (Sept '12). Another where we turned on self-signup on our website and invited more people (Nov '12).

Then after a couple months we had some solid active users and a small number of customers, we were also able to get 2-3 good press articles in the same week, which we now consider our official launch (Jan '13).

I think it's good advice to just keep "launching" until somebody notices :)

Re: Do Things that Don't Scale

#88

Post by 6thSigma »

PG, I'm curious if you have any data among your startups that tests user recruitment methods. For instance, maybe you've seen that Reddit is great for gaining users in consumer startups but cold calling is great for B2B startups.

I think the biggest difficulty non-"famous" hackers face in user recruitment is it's hard to figure out where and how to successfully do it.

Re: Do Things that Don't Scale

#89

Post by johns »

guynamedloren wrote: post #58
johns wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"People would be calling us constantly." "Let's try it for a few days and find out. I'll answer the calls."

You wouldn't believe how often I've attempted to make myself available to other areas of the company that have needed help. But I was hired to write code, so I should just focus on that. ;-)

You should find a company that values your talents. All of them.

Re: Do Things that Don't Scale

#90

Post by agilord »

guynamedloren wrote: post #46

This bums me out. Majorly. I work at a YC startup (which will remain nameless), and we function exactly the opposite of how this essay suggests. We aren't huge by any means, but we focus heavily on scale, and suppress ideas that do not scale. Automate everything. Nothing should be manual . I'm an engineer, but I recognize the importance of fantastic customer service. While building an iPhone app, I suggested that use…

> "Automate everything. Nothing should be manual."

This mindset seems to miss the point of technology (and software development). It is the business impact, not the automation for its own sake.

E.g. we can automate the hell out of the office arrangements or whatever, if it does not have a business impact, we are just wasting our time.

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