PBworks Case Study @ Startup Lessons Learned 2010
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Customer Development Startup Lessons Learned Conference David E. Weekly (@dweekly) April 23, 2010
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David Weekly's presentation at the first Startup Lessons Learned conference (http://sllconf.com/) on April 23, 2010. This presentation covers some of the historical pivots the company has made in response to discoveries about customer behavior and demographics.
Transcript of PBworks Case Study @ Startup Lessons Learned 2010
Customer Development
Startup Lessons Learned ConferenceDavid E. Weekly (@dweekly)
April 23, 2010
Quick Note
• (good thing I like bowling!)
Success is Adaptation
• Agile: use customer stories to guide product– Good: solving specific problems.– Bad: presumes specific uses.
• Lean: okay to be surprised at uses / users.– It’s a continuous learning experience!
• So pivot – adapt to new uses / users.– (you heard this earlier!)
Feedback: Breadth + Depth
Data
User Stories
Collecting User Feedback
• Support email• Monthly sales pings• In-product TEXTAREAs• Phone calls• UserTesting.com• Onsite usability tests• In-person visits
Key Learning
• Your experiments provide an oracle function.– Good for testing hypotheses.
• But what hypotheses do you test?
• Study your users for hypothesis + inspiration.
Science or Art?
• From “What About Design” Panel…
• Science is an art.
• (Experiments rarely inform which hypotheses to test!)
Feature Pivot
• Being right and $1 gets you on the bus.• Make sure customers are empowered to succeed.
• WYSIWYG: didn’t offer it on purpose!• WikiText: performant, robust, easy-to-learn.• …but kept people from spreading it.– (afraid their coworkers wouldn’t grok it!)– Didn’t learn this until talking with them.
• So I ate my hat and delivered a WYSIWYG editor.
Demographic Pivot
• Sometimes you’ll be surprised at who actually shows up. So ask who they are!
• “We loved your presentation in Chicago!”• Hunch: 5% educators?• Interstitial => 45% educators. Jeebus.
• Surprise! We had made an educational product.
Pricing Pivot
• Duh = Align pricing with value.
• Crappy renewal rates from $/wiki.• Accenture call, PeopleMaps interview• Whoops, wikis = projects & Projects < year.• Ok, so $/user and ∞ wikis = wiser.• Didn’t realize this until we talked w/people about why
they weren’t renewing.
• So we changed our pricing and design.
…and many other pivots!
• Ads = only beer $. Oops.• “Wiki” = commodity. Oops.• Folders & networks to organize & permission!
• Talk with your users.• What they’re doing and who they are may
surprise you.
The Good News
• Went from ASPs of $50 to $50,000+ by listening to customers and delivering value. We grew the product as customers grew their deploy – coevolution!
• You can succeed by continuing to better understand your customer. Go do it!
Customer Development
Startup Lessons Learned ConferenceDavid E. Weekly (@dweekly)
April 23, 2010
