Thoughts and discoveries

This is a visualisation from a fascinating article you should go and read right now.

This is hugely important for anyone working on a freemium product. This visualisation is for one specific cohort of users over time as they use Evernote, not a visualisation for the conversion rate to premium over the years as a whole. The amazing thing about this is that if you work with the free users and keep improving the experience for them, over time they may well jump onto the premium package.

Great timing as I've just launched Buffer and whilst I don't have paying customers yet I believe that many people are finding a lot of value in the product and that makes me happy and confident that if I keep working with them and building the relationships then I will gain some paying customers.

What are your experiences or thoughts on freemium? Let's discuss in the comments :)

Just came across this awesome pie chart showing 3 types of knowledge from an article titled "No One Knows What the F*** They're Doing". I think it applies very much to startups and this pie chart is the very reason we're putting so much focus into metrics and listening to our users at OnePage. What do you think?

If you find my posts interesting, you should see ways to connect with me at my OnePage here.

You should look at your business as a funnel (which, incidentally, is how every salesguy on the planet looks at their sales pipeline). Here’s one that’s in my head all the time:

This diagram yet again shows the importance and relevance of metrics in building a startup. Also, more important than just collecting data is ensuring you're collecting specific metrics. If you want to chat metrics get in touch :)

In order to build a great company, you have to be absolutely crystal-clear about the goal you are trying to accomplish. For startups, that goal must be to create a rapid-iteration feedback loop that enables you to learn what customers want and will eventually pay for. Everything else, including anything that optimizes any other goal, is waste.

In developing OnePage, I am completely convinced that metrics and data driven product and customer development will be a key factor in our success. By using metrics and having a tight feedback loop with our customers, we can avoid waste in terms of our development time. Get in touch if you want to chat further about how this is done, as I thoroughly enjoy discussing these topics.

The above quote is by Eric Ries in his article Throwing away working code.