LikeMinds’ Post

“𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗰𝗮𝗻’𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗰𝗮𝗻’𝘁 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲” - 𝗣𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗗𝗿𝘂𝗰𝗸𝗲𝗿 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗱𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲 something as abstract as 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁-𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗳𝗶𝘁? Sean Ellis (growth hacker involved in Dropbox, LogMeln, and Eventbrite) found a leading indicator of product-market fit through customer development surveys. 🔑 Ask users “𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝘄𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗹 𝗶𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗻𝗼 𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿 𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁?” and 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝗮𝗻𝘀𝘄𝗲𝗿 “𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗱.” 𝗕𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗵𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸: 𝟰𝟬% Companies that struggled to find growth almost always had less than 40% of users respond “very disappointed” in the survey. 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗹𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗮𝗹𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝗲𝘅𝗰𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗱. 💬 Slack iterated its product until 51% of users said they would be “very disappointed” without Slack. 📧 Superhuman iterated its product until 58% of users said they would be “very disappointed” without Superhuman. 👇 Here's how Superhuman used this indicator to find its product-market fit https://lnkd.in/eAFXqFN #productmarketfit #customerdevelopment #startup

I built two products with 5K+ users in one year. But it wasn’t my intention. I was trying to find product market fit. And before I knew it, my first product had spawned a second product. It looks good on paper: two adjoining products growing fast and generating revenue. But it became a nightmare. Here’s how I got there: The initial problem I solved was video testimonials. And early adopters loved it. Their imaginations ran wild with new ideas. I noticed a specific feature request was trending from our client-facing customers: “We want to chat face-to-face with our clients asynchronously to scale our businesses.” I listened. And before I knew it, we had built a video-centric community platform. It was the first of its kind. And the users who requested it, loved it. But with it, came a whole new ICP: Community builders, coaches, and creators. If you think building for one ICP is hard, try having multiple ICPs, each with a different problem to solve: 1. Our pricing got confusing. 2. Our marketing messaging lost focus. 3. Our demo calls resembled speed dating. So this year, I’m splitting the products in two. StoryPrompt and Swarm StoryPrompt: Helps you collect, produce, and showcase client testimonials. Swarm: Helps you monetise your expertise without giving up your time. My advice to startups: don’t do what I did. Instead, take a platform-led approach: 1. Build a core platform 2. Make a list of products it could support 3. Start with the most promising idea 4. If it doesn’t work out, go back to 3 For me, it happened by chance. I was so busy trying to find product market fit, I didn’t realise I’d actually built two products. StoryPrompt is the platform. Swarm is the promising idea. Has anyone else accidentally created two products while searching for product market fit? __ Follow me (Gavin Hammar) for more startup stories, tips, and tantrums.

As promised last week... Names matter. What we call things colours what we expect from them - and what we are willing to accept. Some years ago, in the late noughties/early teens, I had a lot of conversations with startup founders. What we were talking about was how they could make money, but the way we talked about it is what's important: we talked in terms of value. Most of these founders' investors weren't very interested in what we had to say; they were interested in monetisation. Does that seem like hair-splitting? Maybe it is, but value as a pursuit can take us a lot further than monetisation. Here's a short blog post on how: https://lnkd.in/e9RUq8zj I would be remiss if I didn't point out that this is a great example of the second lesson of my Guide to Thriving: understand the system you're a part of. When we understand the systems that exist around, within, adjacent to and intertwined with our products, we can see so many more and better opportunities to improve and extend them, to reach new customers, to level up our game. If this sounds like the kind of thing you and your colleagues would be interested in, why not book a briefing? They're fast, free and the first step to booking The Superhuman Guide to Thriving. Part 3 of this whole what's-in-a-name thing coming soon...

One of the sneakiest but an effective way to test product hypothesis and guage user demand is Fake door tests PS: done these in Uber and a startup , both times it helped give us rich data and informed product strategy A good tool in the arsenal of #Startups and #ProductManagers Do not overdo it though . https://lnkd.in/geZ9QNQZ

We at Your Brand Mate have been building products for a lot of startups now and here are a few things that we have learned the hard way while building MVP. 1) Don't go too big in terms of features. Start Small, and Be on Point. and Sell. 2) Don't compete directly with competitors, Stand Out and solve things that they couldn't solve. Users will love you. Will pay you. Don't don't wanna copy competitors with huge resources. That's the easy way out to funds and motivation. 3) Easy is not always easy for many millions. User user insights tools like mixpanel, and HotJar to be aware of how users use your tool. 4) Product-led growth might not work for you, market it well and sell. However, be confident with what you have built. You can't sell what you don't believe in. 5) You can let go of dark mode for now. No one will leave you just because you have dark mode and a buggy platform. Solve first, then bring sensitive delight.

I recently heard about a surprising and disappointing experience from a startup founder I work with. He was unhappy with a marketing tool, so he decided to cancel his plan and politely requested all his backed-up data. Even though he was dissatisfied, he wrote a kind letter explaining the issues and asking for the files. And what did the software support team do? They just sent the backup files with NO RESPONSE! Not a single word. This founder, one of the most customer-centric individuals I've ever met, was left completely stunned. And so was I. It's a reminder that such behavior can have a huge negative impact on your brand and marketing efforts. One bad customer service experience can ripple outwards, affecting your reputation. This is why it's so important to make sure that everyone in your company, not just the support team, is focused on being customer-centric. It all starts from within. You can't expect your company to be customer-centric if you aren't yourself. #startup #Customercentric #startupmarketing

Day -5: 'How do we get to these customers? - The first 100 users.' This was one of my big question marks when starting with StudentUnion.im. While in previous posts we talked about getting user feedback, but before even that – how do we even reach customers? It is said that most founders believe -- that simply building a good product would help in getting the customers, while that can be true for certain cases, most startups need to build products with their customers - it cannot be built in isolation. Simply putting a website and hoping it goes wild just doesn’t make sense. 4 common strategies - 1. Email every single person you know - It could be someone you met once, your colleagues, your classmates - everyone. And, always make sure to charge for your product. Rarely do go for the ‘free’ trial basis - very, very rarely. 2. Research potential customers - Email these people, text them, connect them via LinkedIn and more. Now, here conversion might be pretty low, since basically these would be cold calls/cold emails. But sending targeted emails definitely helps - most people are helpful. 3. Social Media/PR - So basically keep this ongoing. Airbnb did this in the beginning, when it was a cereal company - they sent huge boxes of their cereal to journalists and more people. But like all things - this is hard as well to keep the traffic ongoing rather than one big wow. 4. ADs - This is not recommended and considered lazy but everything is subjective in this world. It’s also super important to take into consideration as early-stage startups is the ‘how’ – how you tell the story. When asked about first users to a bunch of founders from Y Combinator - their answers would range only between - network, social media(Reddit, LinkedIn, Facebook), or Friends/Family. Interestingly, most of their users were pretty intrigued on what these founders were building because they shared their building journey :). Basically, like every company that got huge, we have the ways to get these customers with us as well. Maybe, we got our words, our mails, our market wrong or maybe we’re trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. But, it isn’t as simple as that - It’s a long funnel - maybe you need to get to 100 people to simply get 2 customers. (That's still a very small number - the 100 people). Yeah - it’s a slow, long process. You need LOTs of data to understand and come to a conclusion. And, don’t worry if you don’t know how to sell - you can learn. When you know the problem, your product and your market - you become an expert. You truly need to know your customers and you do this by doing the sales yourself. For StudentUnion.im, some of our first customers were from the network - and I couldn't be more thankful for these people to trust us with their work. #startups #sales #ideas

Hello! 🙋♂️ We just hit 250,000 registered users at our little startup: ValidatorAI.com ✅ I want to share what we’ve learned. Maybe this will help you get some traction as well. ⭐ Get SOMETHING Out There ASAP  Getting our first AI tool live was super important. It let people know we existed -- and it got people talking and sharing us. This led to a massive influx of new registered users. ⭐ Gather User Contact Info. You need to be able to reach these early users. Later, you’ll have something really interesting for them. But, for now, offer them something (even a free product) and collect their contact information. ⭐ Go Niche’. Like, SUPER Niche’ You need to pick a super narrow niche’ that you understand. You can grow later. ✅ We help people go from Idea to MVP. But, there are many smaller segments inside that ‘Idea to MVP’ journey. We could narrow our focus to just idea validation. Or just MVP development. Or just ONE PART of MVP development. Or just one specific part of idea validation. ⭐ It’s Going to Take Several Tries to Figure it Out Guilty! 🙋♂️ Still figuring it all out myself. Nothing happens overnight. So, don’t put a ton of pressure on yourself. ✅ Focus on talking to potential customers to uncover a big need. ✅ Then, brainstorm solutions that might solve this problem. ✅ Then, roll out one of these solutions and see what these customers think. Are they interested? Do they want something else? 🤷♀️ It’s all trial and error. And, discovery and product market fit usually take a while to figure out. 🤯 I'm STILL working on this here as well! ⭐ Make a Paid Product You really can’t learn much from your audience until you put a product out there and charge for it. Will you have anyone interested? Is this product on the right track? ✅ This won’t be your final product — not even close!  So don’t stress over it. But you need to see if people are willing to pay for a solution. AND, you need to talk to those early customers about the problem and solution — EVEN IF THEY ARE DISSATISFIED EARLY CUSTOMERS. ⭐ Stay Engaged with the Audience I truly feel like we’re working on something here that is worthwhile. It’s taking a long time, but we're talking to users every day. 👉 It is helpful that we have a newsletter so we can get feedback from everyone. The newsletter helps us announce new developments, but it also ensures that our audience doesn't forget about us. 🚀 Consider starting one with your early users! ⭐ Tell People What You’re Up to on Social Media Every time we post something about our project, it seems to lead to something. An introduction, a lead on a B2B customer, etc. Posting also keeps you accountable. 🗺 We have a LONG way to go here. But it's been fun. Cool things are coming! #aidecade #ai #openai #gpt4 #startups #entreprenership #PMF #tech #techstartups #accelerators #MVP ✔ Article originally appeared here: www.validatorai.com

As an early-stage SaaS startup, it's tempting to get caught up chasing vanity metrics like website traffic. After all, conventional wisdom tells you to prioritize top funnel content for reaching as many eyeballs as possible, right? But if you're solely fixated on traffic, you're likely setting yourself up for a revenue-starved future. Let’s understand it with an example: Suppose you just launched an innovative live chat software for websites. Like many startups, you went all in and started creating top-funnel content to drive more visitors to your website. At first, the traffic numbers looked promising as thousands of new visitors poured in every month. But despite the traffic surge, the needle on actual product sign ups barely budged. You see, you mistook TOFU content as a revenue engine instead of what it really is ➡️ a long term awareness play! If your goal is to generate revenue, prioritize creating targeted bottom-funnel content tailored to those prospects who are closest to making a purchase decision. Invest in creating in-depth resources like: ~ Product comparisons and evaluation guides ~ Use case breakdowns ~ Customer success stories ~ Product tutorial videos Don't risk wasting your marketing budget on content that rarely converts. Need help creating revenue focused bottom-funnel content for your startup? DM me or shoot me an email at sneha@snehachatterjee.com. #saasstartup

How necessary is your product to your users? Rahul Vohra CEO of Superhuman, shares a simple yet profound metric for measuring product/market fit. 🎯 By asking users, "How would you feel if you could no longer use the product?" and looking for those who'd be "very disappointed," you get a clear picture of necessity and dependency. The magic number? 40%. That's the benchmark for true product/market fit across numerous startups. 💡 Even Slack, early in its journey, found 51% of users would be very disappointed without it. Surprising, right? It's not about happiness; it's about indispensability. It's about creating something so integral that life without it seems lacking. Viability isn't just felt; it's quantified. It's about outperforming competitors and having the metrics to prove your product's worth. 🌟 If you're striving to build a product that stands the test of time, focus on becoming an indispensable part of your users' lives. 👉 Want to dive deeper into growth hacking and marketing innovation? Join our vibrant community on Discord for more insights and discussions: https://lnkd.in/eTaQAMVV #ProductMarketFit #StartupGrowth #MarketingInnovation #UFOstart