
PushBullet: From 0 to 15,000 users in 2 weeks - Guzba
http://blog.pushbullet.com/2013/02/03/from-0-to-15000-users-in-2-weeks/
======
murtza
Congratulations. It is always inspiring to see successful product launches.

To keep the press buzz going, consider directly pitching journalists that
cover Android stories. Send them a three to five line email about your app and
the growth you have seen over past two weeks. To find the emails of these
journalists, Google: [insert name of newspaper] + [Android], and you will find
journalists who write about Android stories. Most of the time, they will have
the writer's email there. And if not, you can try
firstname.lastname@newspaper.com.

Here is an example email pitching PushBullet:

"Hi [insert journalist's name],

I see that you cover Android stories for [insert newspaper].

I am the founder of PushBullet, which is an app that makes it easy to push
files, lists, addresses from your desktop browser to your Android devices. We
launched two weeks ago, and have grown quickly to 15k users. We have been
featured on LifeHacker, Geek.com, and Android Life. In the coming weeks, we
are going to do [insert new features].

Please let me know if you want to set up a time to talk about PushBullet or if
I can answer any question you may have over email.

All the best, Ryan [insert your phone number, journalists like calling
people]"

------
alaskamiller
Start charging, ASAP.

Even something as simple as $2/mo for 500 pushes. It creates perceived value
and with that you can then use to create more buzz by then giving something of
value away.

Talk to #android blogs and give them coupon codes for accounts that they can
then give away and they will be more than willing to help you promote.

Whereas before if you pitch them to write about something free it just gets
lost in the fray of blog posts pointing out other free things that come and
go.

Good luck.

~~~
murtza
Agreed, but he might consider following Dropbox's tiered pricing approach and
marketing strategy.

Incentive free users to market the app for you, and only charge heavy users.
Down the road a few months, when he has proven the app's value to a large
number of free users who have in turn told their friends, he can start
charging everybody. This approach would still show perceived value by charging
heavy users, while not limiting the app's growth potential by giving access to
everybody.

~~~
Osiris
This approach worked for me. I worked on a free Windows program for about 8
months or so and it because fairly popular. At one point I decided to charge
for it. I released a new version that provided basic free features and
additional features for an upgrade. My first month was only $400 in sales but
the second was $1800. The large use base I had was great at word of mouth and
I made those sales with no advertising costs at all.

------
huhtenberg
> _15,000 people / 25,000 things_

So. How many _active_ users?

And how many have left after pushing just one thing (whatever it means)?

\--

(edit) Re-read my comment and it comes across as dismissive. I didn't mean
that. What you got in terms of raw numbers is impressive, but since 90% of
your traffic came from Reddit, I'd show very cautious optimism. Reddit crowd
is easily excitable and it tends to be supportive for the sake of being
supportive. They are the do-gooders and this translates into overly positive
skewed feedback. Try and not get carried away here. Having a lot of foot
traffic is great. As you correctly pointed out, it created a positive feedback
loop and helps self-propel the promotion. But it's really of little value if
no ones sticks around. I don't know your active/return user counts, but
judging by 25k/15k ratio it's probably not mind-blowing, in which case you
should use your current momentum to try and fine-tune the details. In fact,
you must. Engage the visitors better and make them stick. The launch splash is
a one-time event and the level of attention you got so far will be very hard
to replicate.

~~~
Guzba
I agree with your assessment that active users is the only count that really
matters. I haven't actually got the numbers myself but I watch the split
between users and things pushed and it is growing wider every day. This is my
proxy right now.

I haven't messed with weekly active users, for example, because my sample
space of time is so small I couldn't really make any statements.

The other thing I take as a good sign is that the number of registered devices
has officially overtaken the number of registered users, meaning people have
taken the time to register more than one device more often than not even
registering one.

------
mwilcox
Been using it since day 1 after seeing your post on /r/Android. Really
fantastic app that just works perfectly. The fact you got a Chrome extension
out so quickly made me love you.

~~~
Guzba
I really liked this post so I'll share a funny story about the Chrome
extension.

I spent a couple evenings getting pseudo-authentication working with OAuth to
log people into the extension, it was annoying and a real pain.

Then, the third evening, I realized that as an extension, any ajax request I
make will have access to the same pool of cookies as normal browser requests,
so it turned out that if a user is logged in on the site, they're
automatically logged in on the extension, too.

This made everything SO much easier, but I had wasted like 8 hours of work to
get there :)

~~~
robflynn
It's amusing how things like that can happen. I felt like I was spinning my
wheels on a problem with a project -- consisting of treating each viewing of a
video in a 24 hour period as separate orders for statistical purposes -- yet
not cluttering the users history (among other things) with multiple "orders."

I started going through a complex process to make sure everything was properly
collapsed and still recorded when it suddenly occurred to me: "Hey, we already
have order renewals for dvds. This is basically the same thing."

So, a day or two of complex work ended up being solved by s three line change
that I should have thought of immediately. Good times. :)

------
minikomi
Awesome. I'm integrating GCM for many apps where I work & I'm looking for more
use cases.. One which works well is a live wallpaper which accepts an image as
a push & displays it as part of a slideshow.. Just for kicks for myself but
might get around to packaging it & making a simple web app to run it.

------
donebizkit
Great post. Short, straight to point and useful. Thanks for sharing your
experience. Do you have any advice on how to get exposure on reddit? In other
words do you think your karma helped, did you have friends who helped you
promote the post up? Did you do anything specific besides posting the blog
post? Thanks.

~~~
Guzba
I actually submitted the launch post on reddit as an afterthought to the HN
submission and was shocked when it was going better than the HN post. It kind
of destroyed my preconceived notions of HN as the best launchpad and reddit as
no-op on that front.

I had a couple friends I told about it and I'm sure they upvoted the
submission, but I think really I did well because PushBullet is exciting to
Android users and r/android is a hotbed of people looking for exciting things
to do with the devices they know have a ton of potential.

------
chairmankaga
How exactly are the files sent? You mentioned using "GCM as a tickle" are you
only using it for routing?

~~~
Guzba
Files are pass-through uploaded from users to an S3 bucket and given a UUID
name. That name is stored with the push data in Postgres and a GCM tickle is
sent to their phone with a push_id to act on.

The app receives the tickle and makes a quick api call for the push data and
sees it needs to get a file. It then asks for the file and I make sure they
have permission to download it and then let them.

Over engineered? Maybe :)

------
j_s
Is there a comparison somewhere of what this offers over the Chrome-to-phone
extension?

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-chrome-
to-p...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-chrome-to-phone-
ex/oadboiipflhobonjjffjbfekfjcgkhco?hl=en)

~~~
Guzba
Basically, its a superset of Chrome-to-Phone functionality that supports newer
devices and takes advantage of the new notification features in Jelly Bean.
Hope that helps :)

------
tjbiddle
First off, congratulations! I saw the initial launch on /r/Android but didn't
try it until now. Very convenient and easy to use; however I have a question -
The pushes are insanely fast, I mean they are _quick_. I'm assuming you have a
service running for the App and it's always listening for new pushes? Have you
done any research on how this affects battery and the like?

~~~
Guzba
Actually, I'm using Google's Cloud Messaging infrastructure which means I get
the benefit of the same technology Google uses to deliver Gmail notifications,
etc. It also means there isn't any incremental battery life harm. :)

------
dman977
Very nice app. I just downloaded/signed up today after seeing your app on a
makeuseof.com article today 2/8/2013. [http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-ways-to-
get-data-from-your-de...](http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-ways-to-get-data-
from-your-desktop-to-your-android/)

A suggestion: add a simple share button since most any Android app now has
that option.

Future feature: push to friends

------
tomp
It's awesome how this app is Android Only. I think this is a sign of changing
winds, Apple is putting so much pressure on developers by its strict App Store
guidelines and long review process...

It might become more viable for developers to first develop an app for
Android, make it free, just to test the waters, and if the app is success,
make a paid-for iOS version.

------
thiderman
Awesome app! Already loving it! As others, I would gladly pay for it!

A tip for the Chrome Extension: A majority of the times I have wanted to push
a link (the default) I want to push the page I am on. I suggest that you
prefill the "Link title" and "Link URL" field, if possible!

~~~
Guzba
Glad you like the app! And the Chrome extension will pre-fill for the page
you're on, but not for tabs you had open before you installed the extension :)

------
anakha
Is it intentional that you don't have a point of contact on the web-site or
app for feedback? I have some after using it and not sure how to pass it on.

~~~
Guzba
I have hey@pushbullet.com on the Play Store for feedback, and yeah I should
get a contact page up on the website too.

------
yefim323
I love this app! This was actually the inspiration for my MHacks hack this
weekend: <http://mypast.es>

------
jamesmcbennett
Congrats! I am making a list of launch strategies and will post on my blog
later, there are so many great tales out there (especially on quora)

~~~
jamesmcbennett
Posted a link to discuss launch strategies. New to posting on HN although
signed up a while ago, would appreciate if people could post any older threads
that are relevant. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5164583>

------
orangethirty
How much money are you making from those 15K users?

~~~
Guzba
Presently, $0. Yeah, I know that's not as good as anything > $0 but two weeks
ago I didn't think this was going to be a 'real thing'.

I'll figure something out, I work full time so I can manage the costs without
noticing but that isn't an answer so much as a deflection :)

~~~
orangethirty
I'm not giving you a hard time about it. At all. But you should be already
looking for ways to profit from this. In one month it will hit 100K users, and
suddenly you have a huge infrastructure bill. Plus the fact that you can get
sued the fuck out due to DMCA, patent trols, and such. Run some tests, charge
for it, and see what the apps real world traction is.

~~~
OldSchool
Worrying about DMCA, patent trolls, etc, doesn't sound productive for a
presumably young person with relatively nothing to lose financially and the
operation at least under the umbrella of a proper corporation or LLC. Get the
money rolling in, segregate it from your personal finances, pay yourself a
salary and pay your taxes. Listen to feedback, keep innovating and hope for
the best. Don't be paralyzed by what are at this point, made-up fears of the
worst.

------
hwang89
Congrats on the great launch - looks like you're building on momentum too.

How are you in contact with users? Any email marketing?

~~~
Guzba
Presently no, thats something I need to get on.

I've set up an account and am leaning toward SendGrid right now since I dont
need an SMTP server as MailGun requires.

Am I wrong about that, btw? It's all new to me. (I use Google Apps for Gmail,
etc. and MailGun wants the email dns stuff which is a problem.)

~~~
hwang89
No right and wrong here - just need to test/check out your options before
"settling". I'd also check out Mandrill, Postmark, and PostageApp, if you
haven't already!

------
xijuan
I missed the initial launch. But I just tried out the app! It is very easy to
use! Congratulations!

~~~
Ecio78
Me too, just installed together with the Chrome extension!

------
Ecio78
Have you thought about adding the possibility to share the pushed content to
other phone app?

------
xanadohnt
iPhone user here _ducks_ Didn't I see a Google IO keynote 2-3 years back where
Sergey demoed addresses, directions, links, etc. pushing from the sync machine
to the phone? Did this never come to be? Or did it lack in functionality?

~~~
Guzba
There might have been, it wouldn't surprise me if they were talking about
Chrome to Phone, an extension for Chrome they built for pushing to your
Android phone.

The problem is Google never really took it any further and stopped supporting
it. Classic example of a project that simply withered without any love.

------
chockablock
Typo on your home page: "Unleash Android's rich notifictions"

~~~
Guzba
Ah, thanks for pointing this out. I'll push the fix as soon as all of this
dies down. No need to rock the boat while there's a party :)

------
rfriedman
Congrat! Any plans for an iPhone app?

~~~
Guzba
Eventually, of course. Right now though I have a ton on my plate as it is and
zero iPhone experience :)

------
joemir
Should have posted on reddit!

------
pswenson
why use Redis for sessions?

~~~
Guzba
I'm basically just using it as memached right now. I need to use something
since I have more than one app server so storing it in memory on the machines
won't work.

------
helloimben
Awesome tool!

------
jjjdjdjdjdjdj
How can people be so naive? THIS is the marketing throw for VC.

~~~
bnegreve
I "like" that you have to create a throwaway account to say the things you
think.

~~~
jjjdjdjdjdjdj
It's just the state of things today. Speaking the truth is borderline criminal
these days, people prefer to live in an imaginary bubble.

~~~
EliRivers
Borderline criminal? Do you think that your comments here are going to lead to
you being arrested? Are the snatch-squads coming for you? Or is your real fear
that some meaningless "karma score" on your other account might go down a bit?
What a disaster that would be, given that it's such a meaningful value and
lowering it would really affect your life. Having a throwaway account for
comments you think people won't like says a lot more about you than about
society.

