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3 Ways We Use Flowtown For Customer Development

Written by Dan Martell
6

Is this post a little self serving? Yes. (I’m a co-founder of Flowtown).  That being said – we use Flowtown every day in our customer development processes and after showing several startups how to accomplish this, I figured it only made sense to share it with the rest of the lean startup community.

1. Finding Early Adopters

One of the biggest challenges for most startups is finding early adopters for their application.

Early Adopters: Passionate, early users of new technology or products who understand its value before mainstream markets. Acquiring early adopters is important to jumpstart product adoption. (p.17 – The Entrepreneurs Guide to Customer Development)

They become extremely important in providing feedback on product features, competitive landscape, the market and potential business models.

3 steps to helping you find them within your teams network:

  1. Using Flowtown you can easily import all your existing contacts manually or by using one of our import methods: CSV, GMail, MailChimp or Campaign Monitor.  From there we analyze them and create a rich social profile.
  2. Now, using the occupational search feature – you can look for individuals who may have have experience in the market you’re targeting.  For example – here’s the search we conducted within all the founding teams contacts: CMO/CEO/COO, Social Media Experts / Consultant, Founders / Co-Founders, Marketer / Marketing and Community Manager.
  3. From there you can create a contact group from this search result and send them an email or tweet to connect with them. (tip: in person – get out of the building :-)

Bonus Tip - Here’s a list of people that you can ideally learn a lot from:

  • Industry consultants
  • Developers with domain knowledge
  • Founders in similar market addressing a different customer
  • Investors with an interest in your market

2. Learning and Engaging Your Users

Once you start having users – you can then do a variety of things within Flowtown to understand and engage with them better:

  • Create Twitter List from a User Group: Using the ability to create groups based on location, occupation or social network you can use this to engage with them on twitter.
  • Timed Survey Automation: Flowtown has the ability to schedule a customer discovery survey (ex: using Survey.io) to all new users 2 weeks after they’ve activated or sign up for your application.
  • Customer Advisory Board (CAB): Creating a Customer Advisory Board (CAB) contact group, you can then add customers and others individuals from your target market that have agreed to provide feedback and validate ideas before building them by sending simple emails with either surveys, product screen shots, screen casts or mock-ups.

These are just a few ways you can use Flowtown to interact with your users and potential customers.

3. Real Time Notifications of Target Users

Using the our web hook integration, you can setup your sign-up flow, newsletter subscriptions or contact form (ideally using Wufoo) to add that person to a Flowtown group.  From there, you can setup a social notification to be emailed anytime someone meets one of the following filters; twitter influence, occupation or location.  For example – anyone that signs-up for Flowtown that has either a Klout twitter influence score  >=15, occupation is either a Founder, Co-Founder, CEO, CMO, Marketer or lives in San Francisco – I receive an email like this.

From there I typically do one of the following:

  • Ask them what problem they feel that Flowtown would solve for them
  • Ask them to join our Customer Advisory Board (CAB)
  • Ask them how they heard about us
  • Ask them for a 15 minutes phone call and conduct a customer discovery interview
  • Say hi to an old friend!

… Final thoughts

Most startups fail because they’re building something that nobody wants and they run out time and/or money before they can learn their way to success.

Hopefully you’ve adopted Customer Development (CD) within your startup and find some of the tips I’ve provided useful in regards to learning exactly what it is that’s going to make your product a must have.

Did I forget anything? I would love to hear from you in the comments.

Uncategorized

Conference Tour: SLLConf, Lean Startup Intensive, Montreal Startup Camp, AIM Conference, MeshU and LessConf

Written by Dan Martell
4

Speaking has always been a way for me to deepen my understand around a specific topic, as well as a way to gain a larger perspective around issues that face a the startup community.  I always get more out of it then I put in (it’s a bit selfish that way #honesty)!  With that being said, I’m super excited to be participating in 6 of the most amazing startup conferences in North America.

Startup Lessons Learned (videos are online) – San Francisco, April 25, 2010

Flowtown Case Study as a Lean Startup.

Lean Startup Intensive (Web 2.0 Expo) – San Francisco, May 2nd, 2010

Flowtown Case Study as a Lean Startup: This will be a similar case study to the one we presented at the Lesson Learned Conference with one additional slide on the techniques that we’ve since implemented that have had the biggest impact to our results.

Startup Camp – Montreal, May 5, 2010

Unconference Moderator:  Montreal + Startups = Super Excited!

Atlantic Internet Marketing Conference – Halifax, May 14-15, 2010

Startup Marketing Tactics: User acquisition, Conversion Optimization, Metrics and Channel Testing.

MeshU – Toronto, May 16, 2010

Lean Product Development: Learning is the Killer App

In todays world of open source, cheap computing power and APIs, it’s not if you can build it, but should you build it. The #1 startup killer is running out of time to “figure it out” before you get traction. Lean product development is the methodology that allowed companies like PayPal, Yelp, Ardvark and up and coming Flowtown.com (profitable in two months) to pivot into their market to become a dominate player.

There is a science behind the approach and in this talk I’ll go over customer development, feature prioritization, split testing, product metrics and agile development as approaches to increase your probabilities of succeeding as a startup.

http://meshu.eventbrite.com/

LessConf – Atlanta, May 21-22, 2010

Lean Product Development: Learning is the Killer App

If you plan on attending any of these conference, be sure to leave a comment with your Twitter name and a note on why you’re going (what do you hope to get out of it) and I’ll be sure to reach out to you and help enhance your experience.

See you on the road!

startups

Customer Discovery Talk at Berkeley: Flowtown.com Evolution

Written by Dan Martell
3

Next week Ethan and I will be speaking at Berkeley to the MBA class that Steve Blank and Eric Ries created around Customer Development (CD) and Lean Startup.

Am I nervous? Heck yeah! Steve’s the God Father of CD and known for being brutally honest. All we can do is tell our story with as much passion and honesty as possible.

If you’re new to Customer Development or Lean Startup, be sure to read Steve Blanks blog, or his book: Four Steps to the Epiphany.

Last month in Boston I got to speak with a groups of statrups about Customer Development and the best feedback I got was “get straight to the stories, don’t focus on the mechanics … tell us what YOU did it – not how to do it.”. So with that feedback fresh in my mind, our talk next week will be 100% story based.

The 7 personal stories on Customer Development / Lean Startup I’ll be talking about:

  1. Customer Developement (CD) is freakin’ hard.
  2. Focus on the problem, not the solution.
  3. Don’t solve problems you’re not passionate about.
  4. Being good at sales is a bad thing.
  5. You need thick skin to do it right.
  6. Stop geeking out on the numbers.
  7. Pivoting to perfection (again, problem not solution)

Interested in stopping by? Learn how here.

Are you implementing Customer Development / Lean Startup processes in your startup? If so, what have you learned?

Uncategorized

Boston Lunch & Learn on Customer Development

Written by Dan Martell
1

Huge thanks to David Cancel and Performable for sponsoring the lunch!

———-

If you’re a startuper or marketer in Boston I’d like to invite you to join us this week at Performable’s 3rd Customer Development Lunch, this Tuesday (January 26th, 2010) at 12:30pm.

We’ll be welcoming serial entrepreneur and fellow marketing metrics geek Dan Martell to Boston. Dan is a canadian entrepreneur now residing in Silicon Valley; he is the co-founder of FlowTown a social email discovery platform.

Our first Customer Development Lunch featured our Advisor, Sean Ellis, and was graciously hosted and sponsored by Spark Capital. Our second lunch featured Jonathan Mendez and was hosted by our friends at Compete and sponsored by Charles River Ventures. This lunch with Dan Martell will be hosted by our friends at TechStars Boston and sponsored by Performable.

Please register on EventBrite if you can attend this Tuesday: Customer Development Lunch with Dan Martell.

———-

Originally posted at Making something from nothing by David Cancel

Uncategorized

Clash of the Titans: SEO vs Social Media – Who’s Going to be Left

Written by Dan Martell
1

In a recent tweet, Micah Baldwin boldly declared, “If you do SEO for a living, you will be out of business or irrelevant in 3 years.”  We’ve been reading about the death of SEO since the late 1990s when SEO was still very much in its infancy. But lately there’s been something different in the cyber air about the future of SEO and it got me wondering …

In the race for relevancy, could 2010 be the year that SEO is forced to relinquish its organic search throne to give way to the power of search filtered through and against the social graph + geo?

I think so. Here’s why:

Twitter on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs)

A few weeks ago, Google started testing real-time Twitter search results. That got me ‘hmmm-ing’ like crazy.

If what I saw is what there is, wow. This thing is sooooo easy to game.  Check this out: Let’s say I’m looking for a new dentist. Do I really care about conversations about dentists, from dentists or dentistry in general? No, not really. But what if I could geo-filter those same conversations? Okay, that’s more interesting. Now what if I could add a second filter to these same conversations, only this time showing only those tweeple I’m following on Twitter? Ahhh ….

Are you hmm-ing, too? Now let’s take a look at this …

Social Graph Recommendations

With over 350 million Facebook users and growing, there’s a pretty good chance you have a ton of Facebook friends just a click away. With these incredible numbers, how long do you think Facebook will wait before it announces the complete revamp of its anemic search engine and launches brand-new, totally pumped search engine functionality that will make Google a little weak in the cyber knees? Perhaps it already is. Google’s recent integration of Twitter into its results is evidence of ‘first-strike’ thinking.

So ask yourself – when the search playing field finally becomes level in the not-so-distant future, which engine will be your first choice for research: Facebook or Google?

GEO the Evolution of Local Search

In a tightly woven global world, people still care most their needs at home. It’s the main reason consumers have stubbornly held onto their big yellow phone books, despite all the bells and whistles of Google and its SE brethren. When your toilet stops working, you need a local plumber. When your roof has a leak, you need a local roofer. GEO search technology? Of course! And its where EVERYONE is throwing money and lots of it.

Google Sidewiki

Love it or hate it (and most site owners seem to be crowding into the thumbs-down corner. That includes me, too.), there’s no doubt in my mind that Sidewiki’s ability to allow comments, rants, etc. adjacent to specific sites was done with an eye toward affecting overall search, perhaps even PageRank. By offering yet another way for people to comment and engage in the same space smells like another not-so-thinly-veiled strike against Facebook.

The power of social recommendation certainly isn’t new. Anytime we ask a friend to make a recommendation about anything – a new restaurant, a physician, an awesome new WordPress plugin – we’re using the power of relationship-based word of mouth (WOM). What’s different now, and incredibly exciting, is our ability to expand WOM beyond physical borders, time zones and even face-to-face personal relationships.

Today, everyone is a friend or a potential friend. Wow.

Add the quick hit of Google Adwords, Google Local 10 Pack, and a niche platform sites like Yelp (which Google is negotiating to buy for something like half-a-billion dollars, or maybe not.) Oodle and the upcoming Gowalla & FourSquare turf war (my bet’s on Gowalla) and with startups like SimpleGEO, there’s no doubt that the future of search will change. In fact, it already is. It has to. When you combine the search filter through the Social Graph and add GEO for recommendations, what you deliver are vetted results people will use and trust. Elegant. Simple. Completely awesome.

Note: I originally wrote this on ShoeMoney.com as a guest post. It includes concepts and ideas that are changing the way businesses will engage customers and I wanted to insure my readers had read it.

How do you see the way businesses are communicating with their customers due to new social networks and data?

Leadership, Metrics, startups

Keeping Startup Advisors Informed (Email Template)

Written by Dan Martell
9

As a startup advisor and angel investor, one of the first things I try and teach every entrepreneur, is the importance of keeping advisors and investors in the loop.  With that in mind, I’ve created an email template that you should consider using.

Benefits of sending update emails

  • Have you’re advisers solve problems for you
  • No surprises, surprises are bad
  • Let your advisers celebrate your successes
  • Good news will go farther [lets us promote you!]

Best format and frequency

  • Put your most important challenges at the top
  • Short and sweet
  • Make it “Skimable” [bullets!]
  • Every 3 weeks (or if there’s any major issues news).

Other Tips

COPY/PASTE

===================================
+ Top 3 Challenges
+ Metrics
+ Whats New / In The News
===================================

> Top 3 Challenges
1. Getting Press
2. Hiring Biz Dev
3. Building Sales Team

> Metrics
1. Revenue / Target
2. Return Usage / Retention

> Whats New / In The News
1. [Source] – [Title] [Shortend URL]
2. Hired Rails Programmer (@username)
3. New Customer – Fortune 500 company

===================================

Personal

Quick Holiday Message

Written by Dan Martell
6

The word appreciate means “to recognize the worth, importance, or value of”.

I want to take this moment to appreciate YOU and recognize your worth, importance and value.

It’s because of you that I get to do what I’m here to do and live my WHY.

And during this holiday season, take a moment to recognize YOUR OWN worth, importance and value.

I really appreciate the fact that you’re my reader.

And if you’re a customer then I really REALLY appreciate you!

Thanks for making 2009 a great year. Let’s work together and make 2010 an even better one.

Have an awesome holidays season.

Uncategorized

9 Reasons Why Doing a Startup is Like Running a Marathon

Written by Dan Martell
13

This past Saturday (November 14th, 2009) I ran my first marathon!  It was hard.  A lot harder then I thought it would be.  Fortunately, I kept busy by thinking about how running that marathon was much like doing a startup.

Below are 9 similarities that I identified throughout the run.  If you have any other example, please let me know by leaving a comment below.

1) You need to set goals

If you’re doing a startup, you’ve probably set some goals (revenues, customers, product) .  For a first time marathoner (as I was) the only goal you should make is the date your going to run, and that you’ll finish no matter what.  Many people say they’ll run one someday, I say pick a date and commit. Set that goal today.

2) The beginning is always the best part

Isn’t starting a new company fun? You get to figure out the domain, design a logo, strategize about the business model – no problem.  The start of the race (for me, the first 18miles) had the same feeling, it was exciting lining up, I kept a good pace and had no issues.  Then things started to change, pains / cramps / a bit of dehydration.  I smiled as I thought how startups shared this same feeling.

3) It’s always easier with support

For most startups, it’s your co-founder – maybe for others its your advisory board, or business coach. Either way, having support from someone makes the journey more enjoyable.  That’s what I loved best about the people cheering us on all through out the run, then again the group that formed just before the finish line.  I always picked up the pace as I ran past these people ;-) .

4) The prep-work will have a huge impact

There’s nothing like doing market research before entering an industry to understand how you’re going to compete, and the same goes for a marathon. Do your homework, figure out your training regimen and stick to it.  All the prep work you do before will have a huge impact on your results.

5) Things you don’t expect to go wrong, will.

For the longest time, I’ve had knee issues from an accident when I was a teenager.  I’ve been worried that it would act up during the race, but the funny thing is that my knee wasn’t what ended up causing me troubles.  Instead it was my hips, my right foot and my back tightening up.  All things I had no ideas would cause me discomfort.  Startups are the same way – shit happens.  Things you don’t expect to go wrong will, and it’s how you deal with them that decides if you win or loose.

6) You need to have fun

Startups are awesome because you can have fun even when times are tough – because sometimes you just need to smile.  Marathons are no different.  At mile 23.5 I came up to an aid station in pain, and m-a-n was I SORE .. so I smiled to the guy next to me and said “Wow, this is pretty hard, eh?” smiling.. cause I thought it was a funny thing to say. He looked at me confused and answer “of course it is.” – either way, I laughed.  Sometimes when things are tough, you just need to laugh and have some fun – just keep pushing forward and enjoy the journey.

7) You’re crazy just to think you can do it.

Only 1/10th of a percent of the population will run a marathon. Why? Because it’s freakin’ hard! Mentally and physically. Some that try, don’t finish, and many that do, complete with injury.  Startups are no different. The failure rate is high, the odds are against you – but still we do them. We must be a little bit crazy, right? I think so ;-) .

8 ) Running out of money (water) is very bad!

Either you stop at Aid stations along the way, or you stock water and food as needed.  A typical marathoner burns 4000+ calories during the run, and much like a startup you need to insure you have resources available throughout the startup. Typically this is capital and/or customers.  Be sure to plan for both, if you run out, you’ll fail.

9) It’s a mental game

Others have talked about the Entrepreneurial Pendulum, or the Emotional Rollercoaster in doing a startup, and I would suggest that running a marathon is no different.  At the beginning you’ll feel great, then things start to hurt, and eventually its unpleasant, with moments of traction (it gets better for while).  You find a rhythm, only to slow down when it just hurts too much (but you don’t stop!).  That’s how startups feel sometimes – it’s mostly mental, a competition against your thoughts.  Were all capable of way more than we give ourselves credit for.

You don’t get what you want, you get what you believe.

Uncategorized

Startups: It’s O.K. to Change Your Mind / Product

Written by Dan Martell
12

I’m not a football “guy”.  Actually, the only thing I like about footballs are the inspirational movies, great quotes, and cheerleaders (yep, guilty). However, here’s a startup analogy involving football: having the ball, taking a hit, rolling [bouncing] (without touching your knee to the ground) and continuing your charge forward!  That’s the mental movie I see when I think about startups.

Run. Run. Hit. Run. Hit. Hit. Run -> End Zone!

We get hit – stuff doesn’t work out – yet we keep pushing forward.  The only time you stop is if you give up (i.e. knee touches the ground).

Note: Personal story about Flowtown below

Pivots

A product pivot is like taking a hit and changing directions.  The idea is better described here using a basketball analogy – but I think it’s more than that. To me, It’s the equivelent of taking a hit (no product traction) and spinning (product pivot) to find another path at the end-zone (product market fit).

Customers Development

Created by Steve Blank allows startups to follow a methodology that should, in essence, reduce the amounts of time “hits” you need to take, to reach the end-zone (touchdown! [insert dance]).

Different Types of “Pivots”

I believe 2 types of “pivots” exist. Customer Development (feedback) led pivots, and Vision (management) led pivots. Arguably, the vision led pivots may have started by customer feedback – but it’s not so obvious on the outside. [again, I have no proof, other then what I have read].

Here are some examples:

Customer Development Pivots

  • YouTube: Video Dating Site -> Video Site (/w Embed Feature)
  • Flickr: Massive Multiplayer Online Game -> Photos (USA Today Story)
  • Rapleaf: Reputation Engine -> Customer Insight for Marketers
  • Imeem:
  • Nintendo: Trading cards -> Electronic games
  • Spokeo.com (feed reader for your friend to people search) http://www.techcrunch.com/tag/spokeo/
  • tailrank -> spinn3r (consumer media company to b2b service provider)

Vision Led Pivots

  • PotBelly Sandwich Company (Antique shop -> Sandwiches)
  • TwitVid.com (Read below)
  • Wikipedia: Life begans as nupedia, and vison led pivot to wikipedia.
  • Berkshire Hathaway: Cotton mills to investments
  • Pixar: Pixar Image Computer -> Animation Studio
  • Apple: macs -> ipods -> iphones -> itablets (? I liked it, not 100% sure)
  • .. and many tech startups {You know who you are, yes I’m talking about you. It’s all good – but recognize}

If you still want more, read: Surprising first products of 14 famous companies

Story: www.OneRiot.com

Two years ago, they launched as Med.ium – a browser plugin to allow you to view what your friends where navigating online in realtime – which they eventually pivoted to a real time search engine.

Listen to Kimbal Musk (Founder) talk about the pivot (@kimbal)

Story: www.twitvid.com

Adil Lalani (Co-Founder) via email: “Pivoting is something we’ve been doing for quite some time (although we never called it a “pivot”). So one example is my company: EatLime.com switching to TwitVid.com. Here’s an article that briefly talks about our switch to twitvid: Twitter Hype Trickle-Down Provides Boost To TwitVid ( btw that valuation in the article is old. )”

Our Pivot: Flowtown.com

We thought we were listening to the market, but we realized there was a HUGE difference between what we thought people wanted, and what they were willing to $ pay for (= how we measure traction).  We had 700+ registered accounts, however, only a small percent converted to paid accounts (very small).

Long story short. We threw out 3.5 months of code (video), built a new solution www.flowtown.com and brought it to market (pivot).

The results: 11,063.35% increase in revenue in our first month. That should tell you how bad it was before ;-) .

Conclusion

  • Decide what traction means to you.
  • Do Customer Development (CD) (or whatever you choose to call it)
  • Don’t be afraid to change directions (a.k.a pivot)
  • Don’t drop your knee [quit]. Ever!

P.S. For the record, doing a pivot doesn’t always work. Just saying.

P.P.S Thanks to the following peeps who provided insight to the examples above.

Jon Boutelle, Co-Founder of Slideshare.net

Jason Calacainis, Founder of Mahalo + ThisWeekInStartups.com

James Sherrett, Founder & CEO AdHack

Jon Bischke, Founder of EduFire

Marcus Nelson, Salesforce.com

Richard Mordini – Javaelin VP

Helen Zhu, Founder of Chictopia

Raj Gajwani

Christiaan Vorkink – True Ventures

Jonathan Abrams, Founder of Socializr, Friendster

John Anderson, CEO of GroupCard

Joshua Brewer, SocialCast.com

Steve Jang

Garry Tan, Co-Founder of Posterous

Arjun Dev Arora, Founder of ReTargeter

Rodney Carvalho, Founder of ScrumNinja

Julien Genestoux, Founder of SuperFeedr

 
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