Get Products Done
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How To Use Live Chat To “Get Out Of The Building”
Thanks to the work by Eric Ries and the Lean Startup movement, startups are using the scientific method to build products, test markets, and grow their userbase and revenue. One of the tenets of this movement is for founders to “Get Out Of The Building” because there are no answers inside your company walls. Typically, this means that you need to use networking skills to meet with people in your market, validate your idea, and understand the pain points they have. While this is a mandatory approach before launching your MVP, it is extremely hard to get out of the building when you are trying to move from MVP to a great product.
Since launching Postwire at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC last May, we’ve done hundreds of product releases. In the same time, we’ve grown our DAU several orders of magnitude while keeping the same team size. Our four-person product team consists of three (killer) engineers and me. Depending on the hour, I do everything from wireframes for new features, triaging user stories and bugs in Pivotal Tracker, doing calls with partners, testing changes before we release, to handling the lions share of the live chats in SnapEngage and support requests in Zendesk. Given all of that, how am I supposed to find time to get out of the building to validate our idea and market?
Ever since our first beta release, we’ve had SnapEngage and Zendesk set up for Postwire. At first, it was rare that we had more than a few tickets a week. On a typical day, we now have at least 10 live chat requests and another 5 support requests. While it is sometimes annoying to deal with support questions and issues, this gives me and my team ~15 times a day to interact with our users. We could simply answer their question and move back to “our day job”, but we’d be missing a huge opportunity to learn. Here are some ways that you can leverage this opportunity:
1. Ask Why - Always get to the root cause of their question
A user chatted with me the other day asking if we could turn off commenting in Postwire. Since commenting is a pillar of the social interaction in Postwire, we do not have a way to turn it off. Instead of telling him no and moving on, I asked “Why would you want to turn off comments?” It turns out that this user is CEO of a company that runs clinical trials for pharmaceutical companies. He currently uses six-figure cost software to syndicate content for these trials, but he thinks Postwire could do a better job. The one problem he had was that he couldn’t allow comments due to privacy rules. We have a meeting on Friday to discuss kicking off a huge trial with him, potentially meaning thousands of paid users for us. If I had simply answered his question, I would have missed this opportunity to help him solve a problem that our product is very much capable of solving.
2. Ask how they describe your product to their colleagues or friends
If you are lucky enough to get 15 live chats a day and you ask this question, you are aiming to get the majority of them replying with a similar message. If there is a large variance in answers to this question, it’s probably a good time to revisit your messaging on your homepage and in your marketing content.
3. Ask them how they heard about you
I know that most of us have Google Analytics, Mixpanel, KissMetrics, or some other analytics system tracking all of our users, but there’s nothing like hearing first hand where a user heard of you. Was it from another user, press, your blog, or somewhere else? Since users who reach out to you can be your most valuable early adopters, you can use their responses to acquire more people like them.
4. Ask them to describe one thing that really annoys them about your product
We’ve been asking this question since the beginning. At any moment, anyone on our team can rattle off the top three annoyances that our users have. We use this as a constant reminder to balance new features with improving what we already have. The best part about this question is that when you fix it, you gain some huge fans.
After asking one of these questions, you’ll be shocked about how much the user will open up. The best part is they are using your product in the moment they are chatting with you so their ideas are fresh. Also, I’ve found that users who are the type who use the live chat are the ones who will be your best users in the early stages. They “get it” and they’re typically willing to bear with some workarounds while you round out your product.
If you don’t have a live chat capability, implement one immediately. This is the easiest and most lean way to “get out of the building” without having to extensively network and spend time at coffee shops away from your team.
Join the discussion on Hacker News.
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When I finally get user feedback that’s positive, I’m like
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Peter Vidani on the Evolution of the Tumblr Dashboard
Ministry of Design senior minister Peter Vidani lays hands on every aspect of Tumblr’s visual and usage aesthetic. Initially contracted to work on theme creation, he came aboard full-time in 2009 and has steadily advanced his design philosophy of utility and simplicity. One of his primary, perpetual obsessions could be considered the real face of Tumblr: the Dashboard.
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Turntable.fm Would Be A Killer Live Music Experience
Some Background In February, pandodaily featured a blog on Turntable.fm: It’s Time for Another Turntable.fm Pivot. Author Erin Griffith wrote
“The problem is, for all its hype, Turntable is proving to have the same problems as Stickybits. It’s really cool. No one is denying that. Stickybits was cool too. But ultimately, it’s a novelty.”
I agree with Erin, especially for the mass audience who listens to top 40, 80’s music, or other stuff you can easily find on the FM dial, on Pandora or Spotify. Turntable.fm loses it’s excitement after a few days if this is your favorite music.
I use Turntable.fm almost everyday. I never listen to Pandora or Spotify. The lasting value I get from Turntable.fm is because I listen solely to live music (which is not found on those other channels). Whether is it Phish, other “jam bands”, or classic rock, that’s pretty much all I listen to. I’m not alone. Take a look at the top rooms on Turntable.fm at noon on a Tuesday
Do you recognize any of those artists? No, neither do I. It turns out that Turntable.fm is appealing to fans of music who don’t listen to the Top 40. These listeners appreciate music that is different, that changes everyday, and new artists who embody that spirit. Even though I mostly like rock, I’ll jump into the Ambient room here and there because I can appreciate some good improv.
So Here’s My Killer Idea - Virtual Live Concerts
I’ll graciously give away my killer idea to the folks at Turntable.fm :-). I think Turntable.fm should focus on these users. My hypothesis is that all of them share something in common: they like “different” music, really appreciate a good live track, and probably see their favorite bands a number of times live each year. They’d love to discover new music in their genre, but might not have enough time to get out.
On nights that Phish plays, the PhantasyTour Phish Message Board is on fire. Links are shared to people using their iPhones to stream the live concert over uStream. Setlist threads are topping out at 499 posts every 5-10 minutes.
How Would It Work?
Phish would be a great band to target because of it’s rabid fan base and the band’s general willingness to turn the other cheek when someone shares their music. They understand what the web has done to the music industry so they are willing to give away their music because they really make their money on the live concert experience and merchandise.
For the next Phish concert, get one of the many tapers in the audience who is sharing a live audio stream to pipe it to Turntable’s servers so one or more rooms can be made featuring that stream. Let people make rooms so they can chat about the show, click the Awesome button, change up their avatars to stand out, etc. You could even have people spinning some pre-show and setbreak music in between the live sets.
Not only would this bring in an influx of new users, I think it could prove that Turntable.fm could be a viable platform for live concerts. Since the music industry is moving towards live shows as the monetizable product, Turntable.fm could be the primary platform for niche bands and eventually the big names too. It’s fun, interactive, and allows people to (virtually) experience the best about music: live shows.
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Agile is a Sham
thats SCRUM and TDD and all the rest; it is all those new ways of managing development projects and being super-productive and modern and buzzword-compliant; all the sprints, scrums, playing cards nonsense.
The management pitch is that by getting programmers to follow some process rote you will get good, predictable results out.
See, the thing is, the success of the coding-part of a project is dependent on the calibre of the engineers doing that coding and not the process they follow. -
Learning From Failure: A Presentation To Lean Startup Circle Boston
About a month ago, I was invited to speak to the Lean Startup Circle Boston. I gave the presentation last night. After attending many of their meet-ups, I didn’t want to give one more talk about building an MVP, using Agile/Lean/Kanban, or doing Customer Development sessions. I wanted to offer the group a different perspective that they could learn from.
I settled on identifying themes in failure. Looking back on my career, I pulled out some recurring themes that foreshadowed failure of a new product or startup. The two most prevalent I’ve seen are what I call The Services Death Spiral and The Rationality Trap.
The Services Death Spiral
You have an early product with some interested customers. Instead of saying no to their feature requests, you fill the gaps in the product with professional services so you don’t distract the product team. Over time, the professional services team subsumes the product team until you have an unsustainable and unscalable business model.
My prior startup, Permission TV, where I led the product/engineering team, fell victim to this. We had a few million in revenues and some unbelievable customer implementations, but we couldn’t scale it without more people. This is not good when you have VC’s with $20+ million in and expecting a 9-figure exit.
The Rationality Trap
You have a brilliant idea. When you get out of the building to do Customer Development, you receive overwhelming response. You build the MVP and nobody uses it. You might have people sign up, but nobody makes it part of their ongoing workflow.
This has happened to me more that I want to admit. I’ve learned to obsessively measure quantitative metrics in addition to qualitative. It doesn’t matter if customers “love it” or even buy it. If they don’t use it, you’re dead in the water and ready for a pivot.
The full presentation is below. Enjoy!
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Eric Ries at Lean Startup Circle Boston
I had the opportunity to see Eric Ries give his latest Lean Startup presentation as part of Lean Startup Circle Boston. I’ve seen Eric speak a number of times and he always brings some fresh material to get your brain working. I also manned the video camera and did my best to capture the essence of the presentation. NOTE: I’m not a videographer so don’t complain about the quality. I did my best. :-)
Here’s the video. I suggest watching it in its entirety…good stuff:
Lean Startup Circle Boston - Eric Ries from Matthew Mamet on Vimeo.
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SLP Boston Kickoff With Bill Warner
This blog was originally posted on the Startup Leadership Program Blog. I was fortunate enough to be selected as one of the fellows for the 2010 Boston class. This was a great first class and I’m excited for the rest of the year.
The SLP Boston chapter kicked off their first class on September 21. After some great kickoff presentations from Program Leader Michael Mullins and Director Anupendra Sharma, we were lucky to be joined by Bill Warner, best known as the founder of Avid Technology.
Bill immediately made all of the new fellows feel comfortable. Instead of a lecture format, he sat at the head of the table with more of a fireside chat feel. After
introductions, Bill shared some stories on the history on Avid, including how he launched it on $50k and spent about 40% of that money on unique office space in an old factory. “The one thing that friends always remember about the early days of Avid was the office…our visitors sat on the waiting room on my Minivan’s back-seat”, Bill recalled. Bill didn’t make a lot of calculated moves in the early days of Avid that you’d expect for such a successful entrepreneur. He instead relied on instinct and gut feel. He advised the fellows to do the same: do things quickly and if it doesn’t work, fix it just as quickly.
Bill contrasted his experience bootstrapping Avid with his launch of Wildfire Communications, which he did on $2MM of VC money. With $2MM, he didn’t have financial constraints so he lost his ability to say no. Even with all of his experience growing Avid into the market leader, Bill eventually failed with Wildfire after 8+ years and a lot more VC money.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the session was when Bill spoke about his philosophies on developing new products. He said the #1 thing to focus on is your “intention flow” to “your people”. When building a product, ask yourself the following: “I intend to help people _____”. In Avid’s case, the video editors were his people, and Bill’s intention was to make it much easier for editors to do their job. He repeated several times that “your people are not your customers. They don’t pay you anything.” This was an interesting contrast to the cliche “listen to your customers” philosophy that is in most business literature.
So, if you’re only focusing on your users, and they don’t pay you, how do you make money? This is where Bill pairs “Co-Flow” with the intention flow. Co-Flow is another flow for the folks who pay money because of what you do in your intention flow. The classic example is Google. Their intention is and always was to have the best search so that “their people” can quickly and easily search the web. Ad Words is their “Co-Flow”. Google is paid by advertisers who want access to the users who are simply searching on the web.
It was a great class and we couldn’t have kicked SLP Boston off better. Lots of great stories and good advice from Bill. We are already looking forward to the next class on October 25!
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Great presentation by David Cancel: Data-Driven Startups
On Thursday night, I went to the monthly Boston Lean Startup Circle Meetup to see David Cancel from Performable speak about Data-Driven Startups. I went in expecting to hear about his philosophies and practices around A/B testing, analytics, etc., but the best parts of the presentation had nothing to do with any of those topics.
My takeaways from his refreshing talk:
- Reading books & blogs and listening to talks are good, but it is time to jump in and do it. Get started now!
- Your #1 goal in an early stage startup is to figure out “Does anyone give a shit about your dumb idea?”
- Every business is different. There is no recipe or secret. You need to learn by doing.
And a few takeaways on the main topic:- Collect data only if it helps you to make business decisions. Don’t waste your time on data collection and analysis if it doesn’t.
- Every startup should have an operating dashboard, a customer funnel, and a cohort analysis. I honestly never heard of a cohort analysis.
- Don’t try to automate your business analytics. Do it manually until it is painful. You’ll learn more that way.
- Multivariate testing is a waste of time. Startups don’t have enough traffic to warrant it. Stick to a simple A/B test.
- The entire company should get together weekly to review the operating dashboard. It will be painful, but it is worth it.
Here’s the slide deck if you are interested in learning more: -
Marketers can learn something from “Lean Startup”
This article was originally posted by me on the VisibleGains blog on June 1, 2010.
On Thursday, May 27, many of us from the VisibleGains team went to the Rattlesnake on Boyleston Street for “Lean Into Spring with MassChallenge and Lean Startup Circle Boston”. It was a packed room with 250 entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, angel investors, and other Lean Startup practitioners. We’ve been practicing Lean Startup since the early days here at VisibleGains, so it was great to see such a vibrant culture of like-minded folks right in our backyard.
One thing I noticed was that there were a number of marketers from medium and large companies in attendance at the event. The marketing department, across every company size, often has autonomy to try new ideas, interesting campaigns, new technologies, etc. like no other department in the company. In selling to marketers, we’ve noticed that our product rarely has to go through the bureaucracy that other software products do. Marketers are expected to innovate, and the ones that don’t will lose their job in 18-24 months.
The question is: How do you innovate while reducing the risk of failure? I think one answer to that question can be found in the principles of Lean Startup. Look at the graphic above. Your job is to minimize time through the loop from an idea to a learning. So, if you have a great idea for a new campaign where you’ll have to spend $30k to build the interactive microsite, develop a killer product demo, video some customer testimonials, etc., instead try to focus on the minimum that you can do which results in validated learning from your market. What would happen if you bought some ads and nobody clicked through? All of the work you did on the microsite would be a waste (and might get you fired). In this case, you might be able to get away with a simple landing page that describes the offer, a few graphics that allow the visitor to visualize it, and lead capture form. If you bought ads and nobody clicked through, you would have wasted about a day of effort and minimal company resources.
A nice side effect of adopting a lean, test before you invest, methodology is that you are expected to fail most of the time. Most campaigns will be flops. But when one of them works, you’ll have the resources and time to focus on them to get even greater returns.
