

How We Unexpectedly Got 60K Users in 60 Hours (2012) - sunasra
http://www.slideshare.net/mattangriffel/how-we-unexpectedly-got-60k-users-in-60-hours

======
ecaradec
The 60k users 60 hours is just the end result, but the slideshow is not about
quick results as I expected : it's about iterating around different things to
see what sticks until you find something that works.

"Presenting one feature at a time" is a quite useful thing because it allows
you to talk about yourself regularly with a slightly different angle and it
create news all the time.

~~~
patrickambron
Hi, I'm the author of the slideshare/founder of the company. You are right,
before the actual surge, there was a lot of upfront work understanding how to
build our product and how to tell our story. That said, once you have the
right product with the right viral loops we learned that taking an extremely
focused story (check out this ONE feature) to the right audience accelerates
growth like crazy

~~~
sylvainkalache
Hello Patrick,

First of all thanks for sharing, awesome story. We, at SlideShare, are
currently running a contest "My Startup Story":
[http://blog.slideshare.net/2013/09/04/slideshare-contest-
wha...](http://blog.slideshare.net/2013/09/04/slideshare-contest-whats-your-
startup-story/)

Your slide actually match what the contest ask for, so I invite you to join
it. You just need to edit pour presentation and add the tag "MyStartupStory".

~~~
patrickambron
OK great, I will definitely join

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patrickambron
Hi Guys,

My name is Patrick, I'm the CoFounder of BrandYourself and I'm the one who
made this presentation. I read HackerNews everyday, and was literally knocked
off my chair when I saw my own presentation on the front page. Thank you

I've gotten some great feedback. Some of you have asked some great questions
so I'm going through now to answer as many of them as possible.

In the meantime, some of you mentioned this would be more consumable in a blog
post. Here's a link to the original blog post I wrote about this--it actually
includes a lot more data

[http://www.patrickambron.me/we-unexpectedly-got-60k-users-
in...](http://www.patrickambron.me/we-unexpectedly-got-60k-users-in-60-hours-
what-we-learned/)

~~~
whitlock
Patrick,

I heard Pete's story on NPR a while back and how it helped your company grow.
It stuck out since when the reporter tried to verify the story they found no
results. The reporter comes short of accusing you or your co-founder of
telling a fake story to sell a product. I'd like to hear you or Pete's take on
this story (URL below).

[http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/05/29/187080...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/05/29/187080236/Online-
Reputation)

~~~
patrickambron
Thanks man. I remember that interview (it was a headache). The interviewer
seemed to have an agenda going in. Before the interview he kept saying he
thought it was "foolish that people would use Google to research people in the
first place" and that "nobody should believe Google results anyways".

When Pete was in college there were _several_ criminals who all shared his
name and his results were a mess. One of them included a story about someone
suspected of dealing drugs. At the time we never thought to save or bookmark
those results because we had no idea we'd be starting a company and being
interviewed by NPR years later.

We couldn't find an exact article about a drug dealer (perhaps it actually was
taken down). We WERE able to show him several other results with about
criminals with his name. We linked him to them. When he asked us about it, we
told him we couldn't find it, but we offered to redo the interview and be less
specific "Pete was being mistaken for criminals with the same name" since we
could show results for that.

In his article he claims we simply did not respond to these requests. When I
asked him about it afterwards he apologized and said "he must have missed that
email". He didn't update the story though. It seems like he wanted to tell a
story about how online reputation management helps people permeate lies and
that's why you shouldn't trust Google.

All that said, we learned a valuable lesson. We no longer use the term "drug
dealer" we use "criminals" and we link to specific articles we're still able
to find so people can't question the validity

~~~
benjamincburns
If you were having trouble finding articles, what's with the Google screen
grab on slide 6? Was this something you created specifically for the slides?
If that is the case, showing a fabricated screen grab without noting it as
such seems a bit disingenuous. It's a bit like selling a diet with a doctored
"before" picture.

~~~
patrickambron
I agree, it is disingenuous, especially in this context. That slide was
specifically made for an in-person presentation that was later posted online
(it was posted by somebody else about a year ago). For the sake of a
presentation, we thought that image got the point across much better than
putting two hyperlinks on the screen. It was basically a design decision. In
retrospect we should have put a disclaimer on the image since it looks so
realistic, but we honestly had no idea the presentation would live beyond the
room I spoke to. That was a mistake

We used to use a similar type image on our about page, but for the same
purpose now only link to exact articles or results we can still find.
[https://brandyourself.com/info/about](https://brandyourself.com/info/about).

------
mbesto
There's a lot of good information the slides, but for the quick and dirty:

1\. They found one feature that a lot of people enjoyed (some would call this
a MVP) and lots of people shared it

2\. Mashable picked up on it and then other publications did.

3\. Massive growth.

The main takeaway that I always tell startup people:

1\. Marketing works, don't neglect it. (in this case PR worked extremely well)

2\. Don't do marketing until you've found the one feature everyone wants (i.e.
product-market fit)

~~~
manmal
I'd call that USP (Unique Selling Proposition) rather than MVP - the MVP would
be the minimal product incorporating the USP.

~~~
patrickambron
Exactly. We already had the MVP--the key here was boiling down our product
into a value proposition people could quickly understand. Rather than saying
"we can match an ISP to a location and company" we said "you can figure out if
an employer or ex gf googles you"

------
Maro
Numbers of registrations is a vanity metric.

How many used the core product?

How many retained?

How many converted to paying?

How many told their friends?

~~~
patrickambron
That's a very good question. We're not a social network or a game, so most
people come to us to solve a specific problem: they don't like their Google
results. We have a free product because we realize many people simply want to
be more visible, they want to make sure their portfolio or linkedin profile
actually shows up. Other people have more to promote or are trying to bury
something embarrassing. These are the people who use the product more and pay
for premium.

To answer your questions

"How many converted to paying" \--about 3% converted to paying, which is
slightly lower then our normal traffic (4-5%). A lot of the "non-converts"
were part of the foreign traffic we eventually moved to a wait-list until we
can enter those markets with a more strategic plan

"How many retained" \--This is an interesting question. Most people used the
product, 3% paid. Remember, our product is meant to be free, so many people do
some upfront work and then just check their email progress reports to make
sure everything is still OK. Our email open rates have never dropped below
60%, so many people are retained in the sense that they check those emails.
We'll have people who signed up during that surge that will pay us for the
first time today based off one of those emails

"How many told their friends"

About 75% of users tell somebody else. This is based on a user survey. The
problem is, almost all of them tell people in person. They tell them over
dinner, or at an event when someone mentions their Google results. We haven't
figured out a way to capture that same rate through online vehicles.

------
velik_m
Hm, it sounds like they just got lucky, so i'm not sure what the lesson is
here. A sample size of 1 is useless for learning what works and what not. I
would be far more impressed if they would get similar results repeatably after
each promoting action.

~~~
highace
I was going to say the same.

How we got 60k users in 60 hours: make something useful that people really
want.

~~~
rahoulb
> How we got 60k users in 60 hours: make something useful that people really
> want.

And tell them about it in a way that they understand

~~~
jmngomes
And identifying "them" properly

~~~
mattlutze
The fact articles like this surface again and again suggests that these three
steps are not so easily remembered nor followed in the heat of the moment.

------
spindritf
So browsing nginx logs for my vanity domain and running whois queries for the
IPs at 3am is not nearly as weird as I thought.

~~~
arbuge
On that note, how exactly are they reaching conclusions on where Googlers who
are Googling you actually work? (i.e. their actual company name, not just the
physical location their IP address maps to).

~~~
pdx
I second this question. What are the best databases out there, that map IP
addresses of office space, not web servers, to company names?

I see some products out there that purport to do this, but they aren't saying
where they're getting their data. I'm really curious how they are creating
such a database.

LinkedIn, for example, would have such a db, since people surf LinkedIn from
work. However, they're not granting access to it, I'm sure.

Who else could generate a strong database like this?

~~~
sparkman55
We used a company called LeadLander for this when we were in the B2B space.
Since qualifying leads and negotiating a deal were harder than lead
identification for us, this was mostly a vanity / fun project, although it was
successful in motivating us.

------
tieTYT
I'm sorry this is off topic, but that slideshare ui is so annoying. Why
doesn't it progress one slide when I click on the slide? I hate how I have to
precisely click on that tiny "next" button to go to the next slide.

I'm posting this hoping someone can provide an easier way to navigate.

~~~
WayneS
Use the keyboard

~~~
tieTYT
Thank you, Sir. I went down that route by wondering if "space" or "enter"
would do it with no luck. I stopped short at arrow keys.

------
Oculus
I noticed the 'do things that don't scale' actions like delivering a trophy
with cookies to the 10k user or writing personalized emails to every new
customer.

~~~
patrickambron
Yes within the company we've adopted a motto "customer service is the most
underrated marketing channel". I think this is what has driven most of our
steady growth which comes through word of mouth

------
300
It's interesting to see. If nothing more, I at least learned(again) that
powerful marketing is the key for successful product/service - front page on
HN/TechCrunch/Mashable/etc is definitely something that every startup should
focus on in the beginning.

~~~
sejje
I absolutely disagree with your last statement. Many niche startups--those
without mass appeal--have no reason to focus on TechCrunch. There may be some
all-important blog in their field, though.

Think Patio11 focused on getting BCC on the front page of Mashable? I highly
doubt it.

~~~
patio11
I'm pretty sure that time the Jane Austen Society called for a month of local
chapter bingo games made me more sales than being on TechCrunch ten times.

That said, with a view to giving people the best possible advice, I've been
told by people who are deeply in the Valley ecosystem that the fact that TC
and whatnot are for better or worse the paper(s) of record for the Valley
ecosystem means that you probably do want to be in them when you are
hiring/seeking funding/etc, both for visibility and for social proof. Be that
as it may, there are many, many, _many_ companies which will succeed in
selling millions, raising funding, and hiring employees without ever having a
single visitor from TC et al darken their doorstep.

------
butler14
At its core the product itself is pretty weak. Its recommendations boil down
to linking in and out of various profiles, updating descriptions and adding
photos...

As a case study this is a lovely bit of UX, CRO and digital marketing though.

------
pdog
A signup conversion rate of 30+% from news articles on _Mashable_ ,
_Huffington Post_ , _Yahoo! News_ , social sharing, and direct and search
traffic is just incredible.

Is that typical for this type of service?

~~~
patrickambron
Basically anything around 8% is considered very good. We spent ALOT of time
optimizing our sign up flow. We did hundreds of usability tests. I think the
key was making it clear what the product would do and why they needed to
complete each step. We tweaked language until nobody in a usability test
seemed confuse. We removed any step that people didn't actually need.

We continue to focus on this. Even as we've grown we've maintained a free sign
up rate of 15%

------
mnml_
I didn't learn anything reading those slides

~~~
ttty
me too xD

------
msallin
Homeboy flew out and delivered homemade cookies and a trophy to his 10,000th
user. Awesome.

~~~
patrickambron
Haha thanks

------
smoyer
The real question is how many sign-ups will occur from being on the front page
of HN?

~~~
patrickambron
I'll do a follow up on this :)

------
artax77
one thing i don't get: if i google someone and find their brandyourself.com
profile, wouldn't i (if i'm familiar with the service) conclude that they're
using it to bury results and search harder?

------
meapix
Can you help me to not have any results in google about me?

------
jasonswett
From what app is the screenshot in slide 25?

~~~
patrickambron
That's just a custom report from Google analytics

------
danso
The pivotal moment that the OP talks about is being covered by Mashable, here:

[http://mashable.com/2012/05/01/brandyourself-
google/](http://mashable.com/2012/05/01/brandyourself-google/)

The claim that the service can tell you who Googled you is partially true...if
someone Googles you and _if_ they happen to click through to your
BrandYourself page, then BrandYourself can guess the IP against a list of
publicly known servers.

This is a useful service for those who can't set up their own website (and set
a tracking script)...though let's face it, most readers were thinking that the
service could conclusively show you any Google search.

~~~
asdf333
where is this 'list of publicly known servers'?

do you mean just doing a reverse ip lookup? because often the ip address of
the server is different than the ip address used by the business when people
are browsing.

