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 :)

Every startup is a hypothesis. If your hypothesis is, “we can build a better web-based chat client”, that’s something you could test quickly. If your hypothesis is “we can build a car that runs on lemonade”, that’s just not going to work as a part-time effort.

I've always been fond of taking the idea of a startup as a hypothesis which must be rigorously tested, and it's what I'm attempting to do with OnePage.

Brick walls are there to show you how bad you want something. Commit to your goals and do not waver from them a one bit regardless of what else is there. I took this approach to losing weight and fitness.  I have not missed a single 5k run in over a year. (Here’s how I lost 50 pounds btw). It did not matter if I had not slept for two days, traveling across the country, or whatever else. If your goal is to become a millionaire, you need to be an unrelenting machine that does not let emotions make you give up / stop. You either get it done with 100% commitment or you don’t. Be a machine.

"Ironically, once a startup is successful, and you ask the founders what made it successful, they will usually cite all kinds of things that had nothing to do with it. People are terrible at understanding causation. But in almost every case, the cause was actually product/market fit."

I found this via Sean Ellis' Startup Pyramid article, and it's only available via the web archive. Definitely worth reading.

This is what I am spending almost all my time on right now, and losing sleep too :) I know just how important it is.

Are you working on something other than product/market fit when you haven't got to product/market fit yet?

Startups are primarly competing against indifference, lack of awareness, and lack of understanding — not other startups. For web startups this means you should worry about users simply not coming to your site, or when they do come, hitting the BACK button.

Chris Dixon has some great posts, and this one particularly resonated with me. I think it's easy to either consider existence of competition a bad thing or to dwell on the competition too much. A clear understanding of the market is important, but what is more important is to focus on your own startup and whether users are sticking around.

What is your opinion on competition?

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You can explain your business in mind numbing detail or you can inspire an investor and let them imagine. Guess what works better?

There's a great post by Fred Wilson I just came across. I think this applies to more than just an investor. People love to talk. If you can explain your startup succinctly and then let them ponder on all the possibilities whilst being a good listener then I would say you are more likely to get them on your side.

What do you think? Do you use this technique?

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The best way to come up with startup ideas is to ask yourself the question: what do you wish someone would make for you?

Paul Graham of Y Combinator has just put out an essay talking about Organic Startup Ideas. He describes that whilst there is no sharp line between organic startup ideas and startup ideas which people think will be necessary by others, it is the organic ideas (i.e. solving a need you have yourself) which tend to be more successful. He goes on to say this is even more important when founders are young: "the worst ideas we see at Y Combinator are from young founders making things they think other people want".

Well, I'm certainly glad me and Oo formed OnePage to solve our own problems! Interestingly, another thing which keeps coming up is that where we have multiple options of which direction to take OnePage, we keep coming back to "we should do what we need". We haven't "made it" yet, but we're making good progress and I am confident that taking this approach is very powerful.

Is your startup idea an organic one?

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As a founder, you need to prepare yourself to think creatively and independently because more often than not, conditions on the ground will change so rapidly that your original well-thought-out business model will quickly become irrelevant.

Steve Blank really does come out with some great insights. Well, he has spent 21 years in 8 high technology companies :)

I think this quote brings up an important point, which is that in order to succeed you must be prepared to change things quite radically within your startup. The aim should be to succeed on a high level vision, not to succeed with a very specific idea. At OnePage, what we have today hardly resembles what we started with, and in the process so far we have even killed some main features. We still have a long way to go, but we are starting to find our feet, and we're now comfortable with changing things when we feel necessary.

What are you working on? Has your startup business model changed since you started? Are you still flogging a dead horse?

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A startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.

I just came across this definition of a startup by Steve Blank, and I think it is fantastic. Short and concise, yet getting across the key points, repeatable and scalable.

What do you think of the definition?

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