palette columbia
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Transcript of palette columbia
Who we are
Alan Gou
- B.S. in Computer Science- Built distributed systems at Jet- Executive recruiting committee
at HLAB- Instructor at ScriptEd
George Liu
- B.A. in Economics- Launched the HubSpot CRM- Built the growth team for Adobe
Muse from scratch- Partner at Dorm Room Fund
Day 1
Motivation- Alan is a stickler for processes
and has dived deep into tools such as Trello and Asana
- George has worked in growth roles at 4 different companies and seen consistent pains that can be productized
Solution?- We build software that helps
companies manage their growth strategy
- Sell it to marketers and product managers
- It’ll be a million times better than what they do right now
The Pirate Funnel
Acquisition
Activation
Retention
Revenue
Referral
Get people to where you’re going to sell them stuff
Keep them coming back
Get them to engage with your product
Ask them for money
Ask to promote to friends
Cost Structure
Website hosting
Customer acquisition costs
Revenue Streams
Freemium subscription tiers (unlimited members, upgrade for additional features)
Key Partners
Stripe
Zendesk/Intercom
Heroku/Firebase
Github
Key Activities
Software development
Customer development
Find scalable acquisition channel
Strong feedback loop
Key Resources
Sales + Marketing
Designers
Developers
Intellectual Property
Value Proposition
A simple, centralized workflow to help growth marketing teams run better experiments faster
Customer Relationships
Forum/blog dedicated to marketing methods and best practices
Personalized support at first
Channels
ProductHunt/Others
Strong referral program
Inbound marketing
Evaluation by test runs
Subscriptions
Customer Segments
High-growth SMEs that are managing marketing/growth campaigns
Marketing consultancies that run such campaigns or experiments for large clients
Potential to branch out to product teams in the future
Our HunchesWe lose track of all our experimentsIt’s in a big, messy spreadsheet — we’re only human after all
We can’t prioritize in this chaosTasks and results are scattered everywhere, and these tools don’t even let you assign priorities
We forget about our own findingsThey get stuck in the backlog and we can’t find them or don’t notice
We hate our task management toolsIt’s slow and cumbersome, whereas I’m agile, and three months later I still feel confused using it
Everything is messy and disorganized
What did we find?
We talked to people at…
and more!
And they said...Stuff really is hard to keep track of, especially across teams
When you’re too small, you don’t use any extra tools because you’re just two people with a desk
Some have trouble prioritizing — only scaling up to Jira gives you choices
Cost Structure
Highly scalable low-fixed cost business. Main costs:- Website hosting- Human capital - Customer acquisition
Revenue Streams
Team-based freemium subscription tiers - Unlimited members- Upgrade for additional features ($5/user/month)
- API integrations, cosmetics, permissioning
Key Partners
Payments processingStripe
Customer interactionZendeskIntercom
AnalyticsMixpanelGoogle Analytics
TechnicalHerokuFirebaseGithub
Key Activities
Feature developmentAgile engineeringStrong feedback loop
Customer developmentScalable acquisition channel
Key Resources
GrowthSalesMarketing
ProductDesignersDevelopers
Value Proposition
Systemized TeamworkTrack experiments across teamsDiscuss projects and tasks in organized way
Fast and Easy-to-useGood responsive designNo feature overloadBetter workflow fit but still have customizability
Increased ProductivitySummarize key resultsBetter able to prioritize
AggregationSeamless bundling of workflow and chat
Customer Relations
CommunityForum for marketing methods and practices
IndividualSupport page/FAQPersonalized support
Channels
OutboundPH/HN/GHFacebook adsDirect sales
InboundStrong referral programContent marketingViral waitlist
Customer Segments
Marketing TeamsSMEs that want to grow users and run experiments
Product TeamsSMEs that use agile engineering methods
Cross-functional TeamsMultiple teams, such as product and marketing, must coordinate activities
Experiment Process
Someone notices Week 1 retention is extremely low
Acquisition
Activation
Retention
Revenue
ReferralHypothesis: Users will come back with email reminders
Coordinate email emphasis with product team
PMM ProductTeam
Findings: An email retention flow increases
retention
The Test
Key Results: Learnings and next steps forward to
optimize email
Giant Spreadsheet
12
34
Pain and gains we’ll tackle
Coordinating with Teams
Product marketing manager may have to interact with
- Design team- Engineering team- Analytics team- Support team- Sales team
2
Moving Experiment Along
This all needs to happen fast
- Time is money!- Fast you finish,
faster you can tackle other problems
3
Making Sure You Remember Results
Results can get lost- Workflow is a mess- Waste of effort if
you just forget your findings or never act upon them
4
A Hypothetical Graveyard
We thought: Brainstorming is a valuable activity
Teams suffer from backlog of ideas and feature requests, not a dearth of them
We thought: Someone has a great workflow we can consult
Even tech giants and superstar companies don’t have their act together
We thought: This is also useful for enterprise, let’s target them
The cost of a sales force and the nature of tooling doesn’t justify it
Cost Structure
Highly scalable low-fixed cost business. Main costs:- Website hosting- Human capital - Customer acquisition
Revenue Streams
Team-based freemium subscription tiers - Unlimited members- Upgrade for additional features ($5/user/month)
- API integrations, cosmetics, permissioning
Key Partners
Payments processingStripe
Customer interactionZendeskIntercom
AnalyticsMixpanelGoogle Analytics
TechnicalHerokuFirebaseGithub
Other B2B SaaS Lead exchanges
Key Activities
Feature developmentAgile engineeringStrong feedback loop
Customer developmentScalable acquisition channel
Key Resources
GrowthSalesMarketing
ProductDesignersDevelopers
Value Proposition
Systemized TeamworkTrack experiments across teamsDiscuss projects and tasks in organized way
Fun!Fast, simple, easyConsumerization of ITBetter workflow fit but still have customizability
Increased ProductivityFiltering for better prioritization
AggregationSeamless bundling of workflow and chat
Customer Relations
CommunityForum for marketing methods and practices
IndividualSupport page/FAQPersonalized support
Channels
OutboundPH/HN/GHFacebook adsLinkedIn adsDirect sales
InboundStrong referral programContent marketingViral waitlist
Customer Segments
Growth marketerAt a high-growth post-series A startup
Marketing managerAt a medium-sized tech company
Product managerOptimizing and testing product features
Who is involved in the process?
Marketing/Growth LeadOptimizes entire funnel
Analytics TeamTells you what the data means
Product ManagersManages product development
Engineering LeadsBuilds product, keep it running
1
4
2
2
2 4
3
4
Who works with who, and at what stage?
1
Someone notices Week 1 retention is extremely low
1
Coordinate email emphasis
2
The test
3
Systemize learnings in giant spreadsheet
4
The ones we’ll focus on (initially)
Growth Marketers
Relies on the funnel for, well, their entire job
Marketing Manager
Coordinating with everyone can be a pain
Product Manager
Has to listen to and consider everyone
The ones who we won’t
Engineering Lead
Cares more about other issues (tickets)
Analytics
Product might not add much value
What else did we find?
Death by a million backlog items
Stuff piles up, and it becomes hard to sift through and organize
- Unassigned tasks- Forgotten results- Stagnant tickets- Someone had 1000
tickets sitting in their backlog!
Some like their tools, some don’t
Trello is loved by many — but all use Jira after certain size
- Trello can’t scale- Free form is also a curse- Jira is customizable,
good for large orgs
People care about speed
The faster you can experiment and iterate, the better
- Snowball effect- Faster you iterate, more
problems you can solve
Cost Structure
Highly scalable low-fixed cost business. Main costs:- Website hosting- Human capital - Customer acquisition
Revenue Streams
Team-based freemium subscription tiers - Unlimited members- Upgrade for additional features ($5/user/month)
- API integrations, cosmetics, permissioning
Key Partners
Payments processingStripe
Customer interactionZendeskIntercom
AnalyticsMixpanelGoogle Analytics
TechnicalHerokuFirebaseGithub
Other B2B SaaS Lead exchanges
Key Activities
Feature developmentAgile engineeringStrong feedback loop
Customer developmentScalable acquisition channel
Key Resources
GrowthSalesMarketing
ProductDesignersDevelopers
Value Proposition
1. Better teamworkTrack experiments across teams
2. Fun!Fast, simple, easyConsumerization of IT
3. Productivity gainsBetter prioritization via filtering and visualization
4. ConvenientSeamless bundling of workflow, data, learnings, and chat
5. Scales to needsGood defaults ease into powerful customization
Customer Relations
CommunityForum for marketing methods and practices
IndividualSupport page/FAQPersonalized support
Channels
OutboundPH/HN/GHFacebook adsLinkedIn adsDirect sales
InboundStrong referral programContent marketingViral waitlist
Customer Segments
Growth marketerAt a high-growth post-series A startupValue Prop: 1, 2, 4
Marketing managerAt a medium-sized tech companyValue Prop: 1, 3, 4
Senior PMAt a medium-sized tech companyValue Prop: 1, 3, 5
Getting People to Come
Tech evangelists PMs/PMMs
Tech savvy
Our website
AcquisitionTech EvangelistsThey roam ProductHunt, HackerNews, and reddit
Product Managers and MarketersWe’ll use content marketing to make them come to us just to read our thoughts
EveryoneUse targeted ads to get them on our website
Referral ProgramRequire company email to sign upStart viral loop focus on invitiing teammates
Activation — Getting them to use our product
Playground
Come and test it on our front page
Onboarding
Tailor our intro to your use case
Migration
Migrate from your previous tool to ours
Tasks
Team
AvgUser
PowerUser
Making Money
Early Adopters
PMMs we know Referrals
Content
Early AdoptersPMMs we know
Rest of the teams at their
companies
Press
Content
Early AdoptersPMMs we knowInitial companies
Product teamsOther companies
Referrals
Larger teams adopt
Mostly free tierAll free tier
Beware the cost cliff
$0/user/month- Basic features- Teams of up to
5 people
$5/user/month- All features- For teams
greater than 5
$5/user/month- For every
additional user past 5
$0/month $30/month $5/month
?!?
?
Maybe a solution
Cost Structure
Highly scalable low-fixed cost business. Main costs:- Website hosting- Human capital - Customer acquisition
Revenue Streams
Team-based freemium subscription tiers - 5 members free — avoid cost cliff- Upgrade for additional features ($5/user/month)
- API integrations, cosmetics, permissioning
Key Partners
Payments processingStripe
Customer interactionZendeskIntercom
AnalyticsMixpanelGoogle Analytics
TechnicalHerokuFirebaseGithub
Other B2B SaaS Lead exchanges
Key Activities
Feature developmentAgile engineeringStrong feedback loop
Customer developmentScalable acquisition channel
Key Resources
GrowthMarketing
ProductDesignersDevelopers
Value Proposition
1. Better teamworkTrack experiments across teams
2. Fun!Fast, simple, easyConsumerization of IT
3. Productivity gainsBetter prioritization via filtering and visualization
4. ConvenientSeamless bundling of workflow, data, learnings, and chat
5. Scales to needsGood defaults ease into powerful customization
Customer Relations
CommunityForum for marketing methods and practices
IndividualSupport page/FAQPersonalized support
Channels
OutboundPH/HN/GHFacebook adsLinkedIn ads
InboundStrong referral programContent marketingViral waitlist
Customer Segments
Growth marketerAt a high-growth post-series A startupValue Prop: 1, 2, 4
Marketing managerAt a medium-sized tech companyValue Prop: 1, 3, 4
Senior PMAt a medium-sized tech companyValue Prop: 1, 3, 5
Our most important confirmed hypotheses
People use the funnel a lot
Small companies, medium companies, large companies
- Acquiring user growth- Retaining customers- Generating revenue- Hands-free virality- The shoe fits
1
People always want to move faster
Always thinking about- How can we improve
this process?- How can we track things
better?- How can we prioritize
more effectively?- How do we improve
without screwing up what we have?
2
There are a lot of pain points in marketing
No one has a perfect workflow (it’s true)
- Disparate applications to look at related things
- Copy-and-pasting- Big, clunky spreadsheet- Stuff gets lost and
forgotten in the cracks
3