Creating an enchanting first moment with a product, reducing the knowledge gap between users and the app, and focusing on passionate users are key to achieving market dominance.

• 🤝
  00:00

  We focused on values that help acquire the first user to reach billion dollar success, and looked at how real relationships work to build our product.

  • Growth is the interaction between conversion rate and churn, and the gap between them.
  • Focus on values that help acquire the first user to reach billion dollar success.
  • Booth is an easy-to-use online form builder with customers from a variety of industries, including Fortune 500 companies, which was acquired by Surly Monkey in 2013.
  • Wufu raised 118k and returned 29k% to investors, compared to the average startup raising 25m and returning 676%.
  • We looked at how real relationships work and applied them to how we build our product, focusing on first impressions and word-of-mouth stories.
• 🤩
  05:05

  Companies can create enchanting first moments with their products by taking inspiration from Japanese concepts and adding fun features like Vimeo's dinosaur with a tooltip and Roku's knobs and levers.

  • First impressions are important for the start of any relationship, and companies pay attention to what they send their marketing people to work on.
  • Creating enchanting first moments with products can be achieved by taking inspiration from the Japanese concept of "Shih Tzu" and "Medio Kentucky" inches.
  • Vimeo's login page has a dinosaur with a tooltip that puts a smile on people's faces, and the app has a fun feature where it makes fart noises as you scroll.
  • Cork's signup form is a poem, conveying the personality of the site and Yahoo's login form is disappointing.
  • Roku's signup page has an easy-to-use interface for scaling up server back-end services with knobs and levers.
• 🔨
  09:52

  We contacted Armored Comm to forge a custom battle axe for our programming contest, and subscribed to Little Big Details to get screenshots of software based on research done by John Gottman, who can predict with 85-94% accuracy whether a couple will stay together or divorce.

  • HTTP requests can be checked with Hurl, and 404 errors can be opportunities for first moments with customers.
  • MailChimp redesigned their help guides to look like magazine covers, increasing readership, while Stripe made it easier to copy and paste API credentials into examples.
  • We contacted Armored Comm to forge a custom battle axe for our programming contest, which made people excited to work on it.
  • We changed how people talk about our services and subscribed to Little Big Details to get tons of screenshots of software that shows they are being conscientious of the user and the customer, based on research done by John Gottman.
  • John Gottman can predict with 85-94% accuracy whether a couple will stay together or divorce in four years based on how they fight.
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  14:47

  Adding a drop-down to ask users their emotional state when submitting a support request improved customer support and accelerated growth.

  • Customer support is essential to ensure customers make it through the conversion funnel.
  • Companies often silo off tasks that make them real, but what is needed is a change in software development to inject values such as responsibility, accountability, humility, and modesty.
  • Driven development is a way of creating high quality software by having developers and designers give the best support, fixing bugs and creating an elegant QA solution.
  • John Gottman identifies four major causes of relationship breakdowns: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling.
  • Airbnb's growth was accelerated when they figured out how to match capacity to the demand for their support system.
  • Adding a drop-down to ask users their emotional state when submitting a support request resulted in users being nicer and more understanding.
• 💡
  22:58

  Reducing the knowledge gap between users and the app, redesigning documentation, and showing people care through a blog are key to building better software and increasing growth.

  • Direct exposure to users for at least two hours every six weeks is necessary to build better software, according to Jared Spool.
  • Decreasing the knowledge gap between the user's current knowledge and the target knowledge needed to use the app is key to making an intuitive product.
  • Redesigning documentation reduced customer support by 30% overnight.
  • A 1% increase in conversion rate and a 1% decrease in churn have the same effect on growth, but the latter is easier and cheaper to achieve.
  • John Gottman noticed that relationships tend to follow the second law of thermodynamics, requiring constant energy and effort to maintain, and that showing people care in products and companies can be done through a blog.
• 🎁
  27:56

  Focusing on our most passionate users and providing them with personalized thank-you cards helped us exceed expectations and achieve market dominance.

  • We built a new tool called the "Roof Rule Alert System" which sends users a message about all the new features since their last login.
  • We wrote simple handwritten thank-you cards to our users every Friday, which helped create a tightly knit team and kept everyone focused on the mission.
  • We focused on our most profitable users and exceeded expectations by sending them Christmas cards.
  • To achieve market dominance, companies must focus on logistics, R&D, or customer intimacy.
  • Focus on the most passionate users in the early stages to eventually appeal to a wider audience.
  • Focus on functionality before attempting to make an app humorous.
• 🤩
  34:11

  Prioritize customer feedback, create a story people want to tell, test ideas quickly, and consider remote working for efficiencies.

  • Focus on making your product as easy to use as possible and prioritize customer feedback.
  • You should always have a feedback loop between product development and customer support to ensure success.
  • Figure out how to create a story that people want to tell about your product to drive word-of-mouth growth.
  • Spend no more than a week or two on each idea and test it out to see what works and what doesn't.
  • A company implemented an idea called "Keen for a Day" where a randomly chosen employee got to be the "King" and direct the product, giving engineering, marketing, and advertising resources to make it happen in 48 hours, boosting morale by allowing employees to make a difference.
  • Remote working can be tricky, but it can also bring efficiencies that an office can't provide.
• 🤔
  40:02

  We implemented a 4.5 day work week, held employees accountable, hired remote workers, and assessed empathy skills for customer support, but found that "crunch mode" games were demoralizing.

  • Blue implemented a four and a half day work week with a 15 minute rule to respect employees' time and maximize productivity.
  • Remote working requires extra work and discipline, but our 10-person team was able to do far more with it.
  • Employees are held accountable through profit sharing and to-do lists, creating a written trail for how to handle tasks.
  • Hire people who can work remotely and have them work on a month-long side project to assess their ability to manage themselves.
  • To assess empathy skills for customer support, applicants are asked to write a breakup letter in 15 minutes, to get a sense of their writing skills and ability to deliver bad news tactfully.
  • We tried a "crunch mode" game to motivate ourselves, but it ended up being demoralizing and we never did it again.