

How to get traction/usage for your product - oguz
http://oguz.me/post/50082969863/how-to-get-massive-traction-usage-to-your-product

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andreasklinger
Lean Startup/MVPs are not about "launch it and people will come", it's not
even about launching early. It's about pulling learning forward.

A MVP is a solution validation (which usually suck btw). Not a rollout
technique.

[ps: Ah damn. Now I am defend Lean on HN on a friday afternoon]

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mindcrime
Regarding the Marc Andressen quote on slide 17:

 _“We see Lean Startup methodology being used inappropriately as an excuse to
not take sales and marketing seriously,” he said. “Founders tell us that all
that matters is product, and sales and market will happen automatically. The
‘if they build it it will come,’” mantra, which he noted is not always an
acceptable approach for those looking to grow._

I can't help but wonder... who are these people and what in the world made
them think that being a Lean Startup in any way obviates the need for sales
and marketing? If you read one of the seminal books of the Lean Startup world,
@sgblank's _The Four Steps To The Epiphany_ you see that he makes it
absolutely clear that sales and marketing matter. There's a lot of material in
there about demand creation, channels, pricing, and other sales and marketing
topics.

IMO, anybody who says "we don't need to worry about sales and marketing
because we're a Lean Startup" is clueless and probably hasn't actually done
any research on the whole Lean Startup approach, beyond reading headlines on
HN and maybe a blog post or two.

~~~
mjffjm
I would completely agree. At the core of it, customer discovery and learning
what product your customers want/will pay for (and thus you should build) is
the core of subscribing to being a "lean startup." Product does matter, but
what matters more is building something someone would pay for

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oguz
Presenter here. This was actually the first presentation I'd ever given in my
entire life which happened here at Amsterdam (1) to help our batch-mates who
currently do the program. (Disclosure: We're also part of Rockstart
Accelerator)

Without the context, some points might look like unclear, but I'll soon write
a blog post including all the knowledge & practical links around the topic.

If you're interested more in the topic, please don't hesitate to contact me
(2) to discuss, or ask my help for your own cases. These techniques can be
adjustable for whatever project you're working on, and it's always good to
start early on.

(1) Rockstart Accelerator - <http://rockstart.com/accelerator/> (2)
oguz@limk.com / Skype: fcbosa

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orangethirty
Allow me to add:

Have a landing page that actually says something about the product. The limk
landing page is atrocious. How d you expect people to sign up to your service
when the entry point to your system is this bad?

~~~
lnanek2
Worse, what there is was confusing, at least to me. I signed up after reading
the article and checking Twitter accounts. I thought I was signing up for a
deal finding site from what text I'd seen. It's actually more of an
interesting content finding site.

I haven't seen any deals but think it is referring to occasional promos or
discounts or something else to incentivize users - doesn't seem to actually be
about shopping or getting deals of offers or anything. Example categories were
humor, and there were stories about what girls find more attractive, etc..

~~~
oguz
Thanks for your interest, and sorry for your confusion, but we decided to do
this alpha phase only to run our experiments to see by using which ones of
them we can fuel our growth with steadily once we release our core features
which you probably haven't seen, or used yet.

To get to know better about Limk, please take a look at here:
<https://angel.co/limk>, or watch the reveal video:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3lw-H6liLY>

I've already segmented the users we got from Hackernews today to reach them
later on, but all these feedbacks were actually quite useful.

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plehoux
Don’t blindly follow the MVP gospel, adapt it to your personality and
projects. People won’t take your half finished app seriously if you are
outside of the early adopters market… which happens most of the time.

~~~
mindcrime
_People won’t take your half finished app seriously if you are outside of the
early adopters market… which happens most of the time._

A point a lot of people seem to miss about MVPs and the whole Lean Startup
approach (specifically the aspects taken from @sgblank's Customer Development
Methodology) is that you start out focusing on early adopters. You aren't,
with the initial cut, usually trying to sell to the mass market yet. You're
trying to find out if there's _any_ market for "the thing you're building".

This, to me, implies that if you're working with an MVP that is "half
finished" or less than polished, you don't publicize it to the world and try
to drive massive traffic to it right away (this is assuming some kind of
webapp, SaaS thing). A closed, invite only, beta or trail program, just to get
feedback, find out how customers interact with the thing, etc., should
probably come first.

Of course, webapps are a slightly different model than what @sgblank wrote
about in TFSTTE, and he revised some of his stuff in The Startup Owner's
Manual to address that more specifically.

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adib
Yep, agreed on the last slide that lean startup only works 1 out of 10 times -
<http://bit.ly/178ZPrb>

~~~
arbuge
But since it's lean, presumably the other 9 failures don't cost much and lead
to success on the 10th try...

~~~
oguz
Nice argument, arbuge, thanks for pointing out.

It's not that we actually don't like & use lean techniques, but it's just I
wanted to address that actually 'fetish of failure' might not be a good thing
in the long term.

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tyndierock
Great post, would like to hear more about some of the strategies and thoughts
behind slide 15, specifically grouping and evaluating users. Also what is the
7-time rule?

~~~
oguz
Thanks, tyndierock. We've just started the entire process earlier this week,
and the early results are already promising.

Speaking of the 7-time rule: (*)

"The Rule of Seven is an old marketing adage. It says that a prospect needs to
see or hear your marketing message at least seven times before they take
action and buy from you."

We re-imagined it, and changed if we're not getting any activation & usage
from a user after 7-times of trying, then we're grouping them as 'lost users'
which we might win back them again with some other techniques.

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daviedR
Wow, I like your 15th slide. I have a new website just launched and start from
0 (zero) followers. I don't know the best method to get more followers.

~~~
oguz
Glad that you liked it, daviedR. We've also just started the process earlier
in this week, but it's already getting some results. And I'd be more than glad
to help you.

Ping me: oguz@limk.com

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a5seo
Slide 13: "always be link building" -- something you don't see much on HN, but
very true.

~~~
wikiburner
What does that even mean, in a (hopefully) non-spammy context?

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orangethirty
Its means to create valuable content for your market, and then share the
content through links. From tweeting the link, to posting on a social network,
to posting to web forums, to posting as a blog comment. But always stay in
context. Don't post a link to post a link.

This works very well and has a long term impact. Plus it improves your search
rankings.

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aresant
Slide 14 & 15 were instructive, brilliant way of connecting the dots.

How specifically are you segmenting out new users by Twitter follower / Klout
score and then firing actions to those segments?

~~~
oguz
Thanks aresant, already replied you privately, but for the public knowledge;
you can accomplish this with Intercom but only with emails & in-app
notifications.

We're currently studying all these features to build similar ones to
accomplish the same from the servers that we own in future. We've already
built an app to do exactly the same for Twitter mentions. I'll consider open-
sourcing this, once it gets better & more stable.

