Tag Archives: User Acquisition

Product Launch!

1 Jul

It’s easy to have faith in yourself and have discipline when you’re a winner, when you’re number one. What you got to have is faith and discipline when you’re not a winner.
- Vince Lombardi

29. Product Launch (Late April)

Now that we were done testing and tweaking, next steps were to finally get our product into users’ hands.

Figuring out how to get users & content on board had been issue I’d been trying to solve since I started building this thing. Our product unfortunately lies in the “network effect or two sided“ market. Its hard enough launching a start-up in a one-sided market… we were launching a product for which there was no existing market, AND was two sided. We couldn’t have possibly picked a tougher fight.

I knew that users wouldn’t just come once we launched. And I was right, we invited the first group of users who’d signed up through our landing page … and not one person added any content. This went out to about 15 – 20 people and maybe 2-3 even bothered creating an account.

Luckily, this wasn’t something I wasn’t expecting, very few people ever bother creating content. We had roughly 100 people who’d signed up… but I was pretty sure these people just wanted to check out our site, not create any content. And I was right, when we got done sending those invites out, none of those members added any content.

Truth be told, why would they waste their time contributing to a completely new site? After all we didn’t have the branding of say Wikipedia or Quora or Amazon Reviews. We didn’t really have anything to offer to them. Yet.

Unfortunately content was our product and if we didn’t figure out how to get some soon, we would sink. Luckily I had a mental breakthrough of sorts here. I figured the lowest hanging fruit were people who’d already written comparisons. And so we should start by having them to add their content to our site. I was pretty sure that since we were giving them an additional distribution channel for very little work on their part  they would jump at the opportunity, right?

We carefully researched writers & bloggers who’d written such content and personally invited them. We got a whopping < 5% to agree. Even though they didn’t have to create any new content… all they had to do was add their already written content to our site… there weren’t any takers. #FAIL

This was pretty disappointing for us obviously. We then decided to even offer to add the content ourselves, (under their accounts of course). This was when the conversion rate picked up… we were now getting about 25% to agree. #PROGRESS!

Lessons learned: Just because you score a ZERO with one approach doesn’t mean everything you’ve done is wrong. You have to constantly battle to figure out what works for gaining customers. Even something worth Billions had to start somewhere.

Side note – When users use your product for the first time, it’s an an exhilarating experience. When the first user created an account and added their content, we were giddy, we celebrated.

21 Must Read Resources for Startup Marketing

20 Jun

“Pressure is what you live for…if you are going to be successful in life, you’re going to have pressure.”                                            - Jack Nicklaus to Rory McIlroy

I haven’t updated this blog in a while. That’s partly because we’ve had a lot going on, and partly because I wanted to first get the big fucking monkey off my back. i.e. I wanted to wait until I started to get new users and content onto Get Comparisons. Which I’m happy to say… we’ve been successful at doing! So with a big sigh of relief I return to blogging.

It’s hard to explain the feelings one goes through when one puts one’s baby/product out into the market. You wonder whether its going to be accepted… or whether all those negative thoughts were right and you really just had a crazy idea. Now that Get Comparisons is well beyond that point, I’m happy to get back to blogging. I guess the next step is just worrying about growth :-) . In my next few posts I’ll summarize all the advances we made since my last blog, and there have been a lot: Startup Riot, user-testing, re-branding, new team members, blogger outreach campaign, new users etc.

I first want to publish a list of resources that helped me think about the “launch” process. These articles helped me think about how to get the first users, how to build initial content, how to reach out to bloggers etc… basically what to do if you’re starting from zero. Hope you guys find these resources helpful as well!

Startup Marketing 101 (in no particular order):

  1. How to create a [good] blogger pitch Stephanie Schwab
  2. How to start with 0 members Rich Millington, thought leader in community building
  3. Preparing for launch Peldi, Balsamiq Founder
  4. Startup marketing advice from balsamiq studios Peldi, Balsamiq Founder
  5. Thoughts on product launch promotion Marshall Kirkpatrick, editor & writer RWW
  6. Traction Verticals Gabriel Weinberg, Founder Duck Duck Go
  7. Startup marketing: Getting your startup noticed and covered by blogs Zferral Blog
  8. How PR professionals should pitch bloggers Jeremiah Owyang, Social Media Guru
  9. Three keys to laying out a strong PR foundation Shonali Burke, PR/social media consultant
  10. Find customers and fund your startup – before you even have a product Shonali Burke, PR/social media consultant
  11. How to pitch a tech blogger Mark Hendrickson
  12. How to pitch your startup to the media Nick Saint
  13. PR for your startup: How a bunch of Silicon Valley rookies out-launch the veterans Gagan Biyani, uDemy founder
  14. Hollywood launch 37Signals – nuf said
  15. Pitch blogging resources Marshall Kirkpatrick, editor & writer RWW
  16. Five wrong ways to pitch Read Write Web and one great way Marshall Kirkpatrick, , editor & writer RWW
  17. Mint.com: A fresh example of startup-up Web marketing Brian Jackson
  18. Fab 5 product marketing blogs Bertrand Hazard
  19. How to pitch tech journalists Ciara Byrne
  20. How to get your first 1,000 users Vinicius Vicanti, Yipit Co-Founder
  21. Find a Growth Hacker for your Startup Sean Ellis, The best “start-up growth” guy on the planet
Update – This subject of Start-up Marketing really started to intrigue me. In the interest of learning more, and profiting from others’ past experiences, I decided to start a video blog on the subject – StartupMarketing.tv. Hopefully this is of some help as well!

Plugging into the Atlanta Startup Ecosystem

21 Jan

“I was not willing to give up because I was born to like taking risks and that is my way of life.”

- Alain Robert, Spiderman

24. Networking, re-designing  & brainstorming launch strategy (still)

I know I’ve dragged the marketing issue on for like 5 posts but its a pretty big issue and I’m still working on it. One way or the other it will have to be finalized before our scheduled launch in February. I’ve mentioned previously that I’ve been on the fence about partnering with a marketing agency (New Marketing Labs). I decided a few weeks ago to go ahead and take the plunge. I’m working with Red Pin Marketing, a division within NML dedicated solely to startups. Unfortunately this is going to set me back by about $5,000, but our engagement lasts 4 months (my rough estimate on the time it will take to start growing from organic traffic) so I’m not too unhappy with the expenditure. The agreement is that they will help through our Beta launch and the buildup of the initial members, until we’re off to the races so to speak. At that point we’ll revisit the deal and see what we need to do.

I’m finally making inroads into the entrepreneurial community here in Atlanta. Its not because I shied away from it before, but between my travel back to and from India, and my wedding, I was unable to drop any roots over the past few months. I had mentioned previously about being recommended to join ATDC. I finally did it and this has led to few good things already; I’ve gotten to know a few other good entrepreneurs. I was also invited to join a course called Customer Connect, the idea behind the course is to help startups define, identify and reach potential customers. While the course is interesting, its the ancillary benefit i.e. connecting with other entrepreneurs and advisors that makes it really beneficial. I’m in a group with the founders of ThundrLizard and DayZipping, and we work with an advisor, all great guys. Looking forward to the other events such as Entrepreneur night, Mentor program etc, will post more feedback as time progresses.

Networking is a pretty core step and I wish I had been able to start this before. It helps hugely to have the world aware of your product even before launch and to to be able to discuss thoughts with people who might be knowledgeable on the subject. Not to mention the numerous peripheral positives that come out such as feedback regarding features you might not have thought of, introduction to people who could be of help to you and vice versa etc. I know the early groundwork I am laying here is going to be extremely beneficial post-launch. Here’s a good excerpt from Gagan  Biyani, founder of Udemy on the topic. His startup, successfully launched and raised 1 Million from some pretty noteworthy seed investors.

“So what I did for the next six months after that, after we had failed and closed down the fundraising process, was I did what I called “tee up the fundraising.” I spent the entire time meeting as many people as possible. So I’d go to tons of Silicon Valley events. At night when I was dead tired from working all day, I would get myself up and get in the car and drive over to San Francisco or drive over to Palo Alto and attend an event and give out my business card and get business cards. And that was super important because I got to know a lot of these investors. Like Dave McClure definitely saw me 15 times before he invested in my company. He met me at conferences, he met me at dinners. I attended his events. I was friends with all of his friends. He knew who I was before I even asked him for money, which was great because it socialized me. Even if he didn’t like me, even if he didn’t know anything about me but he just knew I existed, that makes me a much more familiar face. So when I go to raise money, he’s like, “Oh, I kind of know this guy.” He’s more familiar. Do you know what I mean?”

The other thing that I’m working on is the re-design of the site; i.e. implementation of the awesome new UI design.

Finally, I’ve spent about $4,000 over the past month on design, development, copyright research & filing fees & marketing. Next month, once the beta is released I’ll post a breakdown of all the various expenses it took me to get to the launch point. I’ll also talk about where I think I could have saved money.

All the Pieces Are Starting to Fall Into Place…

10 Nov

If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.

- Sir Isaac Newton

20. Figuring out my launch and other stuff (Nov 1 – Nov 10th)

As you’ve gathered from my previous posts, I’ve been spending a lot of time researching outreach methods for Mokabla. I feel like an idiot because the answer has been before my very eyes this entire time. Let me tell you what I mean by this. I subscribe to a large number blogs. Most of these you’re probably familiar with – Both Sides of the Table, Steve Blank,  Sramana Mitra, Venture Hacks, Venture Beat, etc and they have been fantastic sources of information. There are a ton more I would love to read but I simply don’t have the time. Anyways one of the most useful subscriptions I have is one that everyone may not be aware of - Smart Brief (another gem I picked up from a Guy Kawasaki article). If you are working on a startup and don’t subscribe to this service, do it now. I can honestly say that the knowledge & insights gained from some of the articles on Smart Brief (and their subsequent links) have made my startup happen. In fact what I have learned so far from my blog subscriptions in general has been priceless… I would say more pertinent than any MBA/coursework I could ever undertake. Anyways, the point I was trying to get at was that my blogs had all the answers I needed regarding product launch/promotion strategy. Unfortunately I had gotten so caught up in doing other stuff that I started ignoring my reading. I recently decided to dive back into them (I had 1,450 unread at last count) and almost as soon as I started going through them, it became more and more apparent as to what I should be doing. I will get into this later, I want to first mention a few other things that have been occupying my time.

A big thing I have been working on for the past few weeks is the design of Mokabla – I have been looking for a good designer to implement good UI/UX for the site. I have designed Mokabla to have a simple UI. Its not very pretty, it’s functional. My DIY approach to web design and UX needs a professional makeover. While a great design isn’t a need to have, I do think the UI makes a huge difference (plus, fortunately or unfortunately, its a point of personal pride for me to make sure that Mokabla provides a good UX). I’m constantly reminded of products that have done well (over other products with similar functionality) largely due to design – Tumblr (read this awesome article on Tumblr vs Posterous), the iPhone, iPod, Google Maps and countless others. On that note, Tumblr is probably my favorite site as far as UI design is concerned. I feel in love with it the first time I checked out their home-page.

My goal is for users to have a similar experience with Mokabla. I’m in talks with the guys at SpookStudio for this. I’m pretty confident that they will deliver on my vision. Take a look at their site and you can see that they have similar thoughts w.r.t UI design. I found them the same way I found my logo designer – on Twitter. After talking to a bunch of firms, I liked their work and service the best. All things being equal (or even unequal) you always want someone who is enthusiastic about working with you, someone who comes to you as opposed to the other way round. I’m hoping this inbound marketing method is how I get investors as well. I HATE expending my energy chasing down service providers, but unfortunately it’s part of the job. And as a startup, I’ve found that even getting interest from service providers can be a challenge because as far as they are concerned, a pre-revenue startup is at the bottom of the client totem pole.

Due to the holiday season, the design work is going to take some time. I don’t think all the changes will be completed until January. I might do a limited release in the meanwhile without the updated design once I’ve made a couple more changes the MVP. I’m hoping that I can fix any issues/bugs & get a pulse of the users during this limited launch. After the design changes are done I plan to do much bigger launch with an outreach campaign.

There are two other issues I want to discuss before closing out this post – content & SEO. I’m sure you’ve wondered about the content of the site. This has been a circular problem for me. Obviously content won’t get on the site without users and users aren’t won’t come to the site without content. You definitely want to have some content on there prior to release. I’ve also been on the lookout for part-time/student interns but haven’t had any luck so far. I recently put up a posting on Craigslist which I am hoping will generate some good responses. I am hopeful about a couple of writers I found on Fiverr. Will update you on the progress over the next couple of weeks.

Lastly, I have been researching SEO firms, best practices and how best to maximize SEO efforts for Mokabla. Btw, if you aren’t aware yet, SEOmoz is the blog to read for everything SEO. The blog is single handedly responsible for teaching me everything I know about the SEO field. Here’s a primer by them that helped me go from noob to not so noob.

Here’s a parting thought, how come there are no Twitter like services (either before or after Twitter). And I don’t mean services for Twitter or Twitter for verticals. Every successful product that’s ever existed has 5 to 10 competitors that they either bettered or spawned. Just thinking of the services I use the most – Google, Facebook, Kayak, WordPress, Quora, Gmail & Twitter – you can easily figure the odd one out. Any thoughts as to why ?

First Steps Into the Outside World

5 Nov

“Life’s like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending.

- Jim Henson, American puppeteer

19. Still working out my product outreach strategy (Oct 25 – Nov 5th)

As I explained in my previous post I was scheduled to meet with Allen from Shotput Ventures. When I met him, I was pleasantly surprised to find out Allen had invited Dave Cummings who was also an investor with Shotput, to join us .

It was a great introductory meeting. They are both great guys. I talked about Mokabla and my ideas and I got some good feedback regarding the direction I could take. This meeting was in sharp contrast to a meeting I had the day before with Sanjay Parekh, another investor from Shotput. I met him to discuss strategies for Mokabla’s launch on a consultancy basis since he also ran a consulting business for startups. I don’t want to get into the details but suffice to say it was pretty useless, especially given the fact that I had paid a pretty penny for his expertise. Getting back to Allen and Dave, they also agreed to make introductions and help me navigate the Atlanta startup circuit as well. One of their criticisms was the difficulty in remembering the name Mokabla. There might be merit to this but I don’t know if I agreed with them fully on this. I agree that this isn’t the easiest of names to remember… but I don’t know that its a big liability. I think its unique and can be catchy. What I did agree on was that it would be more prudent to have bought a URL that already existed so it would be more SEO friendly right from the outset.

That same evening I went to a startup event - Atlanta Startup Drinks. For this reason I got the first batch of our business cards done at a local printers. I really didn’t want to do this. I find it a bit obnoxious to have a business card without a real business, but it was necessary. Even with all the advancement in social media and the million digital ways of keeping in touch, you have to have cards to hand out. I wasn’t there too long but I met some good people, the organizers in particular and I was advised by many to join ATDC. Apparently membership, which is pretty reasonable allows for a lot of good perks such as the ability to reach out to mentors, connect with the local startup community etc. This is something I will definitely pursue in the near future.

Something I realize now – getting the word out & mixing with the startup community is something I should have started doing a long time ago. In fact it is the first thing I should have done, right after putting up a landing page. Product development is an ongoing process and I shouldn’t have waited for our Beta to be finished before talking to people about it. Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t done this, but given the failure of my team in completing the beta version the last time, I became very apprehensive about assuming anything this time around.

I will be going to India for the next 7 weeks for my wedding. Well 5 weeks in India and then around 2 weeks in Maldives for our honeymoon. My fiancée’ will fly in from Atlanta after a couple of weeks. I will be missing Atlanta Social Media week, which I am extremely bummed about. There will be a lot of people I would have liked to talk to about Mokabla. I will be back in the U.S. before the end of the year.

Love the Haters

25 Oct

I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

- Michael Jordan

This video is Michael Jordan’s Hall of Fame acceptance speech. It is now my favorite speech of all time. It’s definitely not the most eloquent, awe-inspiring or quotable, but it is the most “real” speech I’ve ever heard and one I can actually relate to. If you haven’t heard it, listen to it in its entirety, its fantastic. I was not a big MJ fan before, but I am now… after his ultimate retirement party. Hah.

It’s humbling to hear someone as great as Jordan talk about being rejected, and using that as motivation to become a better player. One would assume that with talent such as his, you wouldn’t have to worry about such mortal issues. For example, he talks about how he was passed over in high school (by his basketball coach at that time) and how that made him mad and want to prove to his coach wrong. It’s awesome to hear him list all those people who passed him over or rejected him and call out every one of those doubters. I’m sure it felt damn good. I’ve met my share of non-believers and every one of them has made me want to make it even more. I think for a lot of people it works the other way, it discourages them, it makes them want to quit and to give up. It does the opposite for me. As Michael said, each of those rejections is like an additional log in the fire, it burns you and drives you to compete and work even harder. I would love to be able to stand on a podium one day as well and say fuck you to every one of my detractors. I know that I will not unfortunately never have the platform that MJ had, but, when this venture becomes successful, I will find a way to tell the naysayers I told you so. And like Michael, I remember every one that doubted me.

15. How not to promote your Startup (Oct 1st – Oct 25th)

So getting out of that ominous tirade, let me continue where I left off from my previous post – promoting Mokabla. So far, thats not been going very well. Btw, I’ve decided against just blindly starting out with friends and family (without any other plan in place). I figured it was important to have multiple channels to pursue if activity fizzled out after initial usage by F&F. I’ll talk later about how completely ass backwards this thinking was. Anyways things have been extremely busy last few weeks.

The first thing I did to try to get users to sign up was to reach out to my alma mater, Purdue, about putting up a posting on the job-board for Beta testers. I know this isn’t a job but I figured I’d offer a prize of $500 to the student that wrote the best/most comparisons. Since we hadn’t launched yet, the posting would ask students to sign up to be notified as soon as we launched. After launch they could start entering comparisons. We would then pick the best comparison or whatever  by having other users vote and the winner would be awarded the $500 prize. Since this is mid-October, I wanted to run this contest through mid-December and announce the prize on Christmas day. Well let me tell you how awesomely this idea panned out. The people in charge of the job-listings didn’t even care to put up this contest. Talk about a kick in the balls even before you get into the ring. First plan, FAIL.

So I figured I would forget about the whole college route and try Facebook Ads. I made a couple of ads about the contest and published them. After a few hundred thousand impressions, less than a 2% click-through rate and a grand total 0 sign-ups, I canceled this campaign. Second plan, FAIL.

My next stop was Fiverr. I setup a couple of gigs for students to put up posters on their campus of this contest. All the people offering the service turned out to be duds. None of them completed their assignments on time so I had to cancel the gigs. When I first discovered the site, I was totally in love with it but after that experience, not so much. Third plan, FAIL.

I figured I would go back to solicit student interest. So my next stop was Georgia State University & Dawgtown. I figured I would target these schools since they were large and in my backyard. I setup the contest on the job boards for both these schools… and after about a week … success…1 signup… score!!! So despite mathematical evidence to the contrary (infinite % increase in signups), I decided to pull the plug on this riveting campaign.

I’ve realized that the problem with this whole contest idea is the large number of uncertainties and the open ended-ness, i.e. an unknown site that hadn’t yet been opened, content that students had no clue about and an uncertain date for the prize. The biggest problem was the lack of a brand or a person behind this that the users could identify with, like Seth Godin was for Squidoo. If people knew these things, the response would be much better. Obviously hindsight is 20/20. So this is a plan I might revisit in the future. Anyways, fourth plan, FAIL.

While I have received a few signups, they are mostly due to this blog, Twitter, and just by plain talking to people. A phenomenon I have since come to learn termed as Inbound Marketing - one kind of marketing that actually resonates with me. If you’ve clicked on the previous link you’ll see that the article is on Hubpgaes – the phrase was also coined/popularized by Hubpages). Like Quora, this is another service that I see conceptually similar to Mokabla. Although they have a significantly different business philosophy in that they allow ads & pay their writers. I have been reading/researching their growth extensively and see myself taking a few pages out of their success to grow Mokabla.

When I initially setup the contests, I thought I could put my heels up and watch as the floodgates opened up and users poured in to use Mokabla. Obviously if things were that easy, everyone would build a web app and become a millionaire.  I am constantly reminded at every stage of this venture how important persistence is for success. At least I know exactly what not to do.

I Got 99 Problems But a Bitch Ain’t One. Unfortunately Marketing is.

1 Oct

 

‘Tat Tvam Asi’

– a Sanskrit line from Vedantic Hinduism which roughly translates to “You are that”. A concept used to explain how everything lies within you, the fact that you already have all the power to achieve anything within you.

14. Strategizing Launch… (Sept 24th – Oct 1st)

As we start to get closer to our launch date (tentatively scheduled for Nov 1st) I’ve come to the point where I’m having to work on the part I’ve been least looking forward to and the part I believe I’m least equipped to handle – marketing. I’ve never been much of a marketing guy, so for me its the mother of all roadblocks. But given that I’ve gotten this far without having any idea of how I was supposed to get here…

I’ve been doing a lot of research on how successful consumer applications got started, and all the ones I’d like to emulate all seem to have started organically, at least initially. Which is what makes sense intuitively and thats how it should be. One shouldn’t try to force an application to become successful. It should become successful because people like it and therefore recommend it to each other. Word of mouth marketing as its called. People should try the product and the product should grow because of the awesomeness of the service. The consumer apps we’ve seen grow (explode) organically in front of our very eyes Google, Twitter, Facebook or even TFLN all seemed to have something in common – they were all propagated initially through the founders immediate network of friends, classmates or colleagues. In three of the cases – Google, Facebook and TFLN, the founders were in Universities and their applications were made popular through the student body.  In the case of Twitter, the initial usage seems to be from the days when the founders were part of Odeo and it got started from within the company. It got really big when they publicized it at SXSW in 2007 but the initial traction came from their initial friends and colleagues.

The point I’m trying to make here is that this initial traction… from friends, classmates and colleagues which seems to have spurred these applications is non-applicable in my case. My friends and the people in my immediate circle are not what one would call early technology adopters. They don’t really even get what I’m doing. I’m pretty much building this in a personal vacuum. So you get a feel for why this whole launch/marketing is going to be a big issue for me. Here are a few early ideas I’m working on, I don’t know how I’m going to implement them yet but I’ll worry about that when I get there -

  • Launch at my alma maters – which would be Purdue, George Washington University and Richmond American International University in London
  • Facebook campaign
  • Reach out personally to the people I know who I think will use this product

My next post should have details on how this goes. Without a doubt this is going to be the hardest part of this venture. Building your product, even though difficult/time-consuming/expensive is “controllable”. Making your product successful, isn’t. Its not something that one can predict.

Time for a random rant. I’ve faced a lot of skepticism from people in the “business”. One of the things that gives me confidence when facing pessimism is the fact that the majority of these industry experts aren’t making FU money themselves. They’ve been around the block a little more and thats about it. No one really has the answers, armed with that knowledge it becomes easier to continue toil. After all, success is the only measure of success.

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