SMOKE TESTS HUSTLE YOUR EXPERIMENTS w/o DEVS

WHO IS THIS GUY DOMINIC?● Co-Founded 2 Companies● GSEA In College

Now I’m @DistroDom @500 Startups investing time and $ in promising startups #500STRONG

@DistroDom - #WMD2015

WE’VE ALL BEEN HERE

== Product

Growth Is SLOWER than we want

Product Backlog is LONGER than we want

Product Backlog is LONGER than we want

YOU EXPECT….

But you get….

SO WE STALL#ProductDilemma

KILL THAT SHIT

Grow Without Waiting For Product - Get Hacky

MY OWN FUCKUP (one of the many)

MY OWN FUCKUP (one of the many)

ONE ENTIRE YEAR WASTED

WAITING ON

ONE MODULE

SMOKE TEST

WTF is this Smoke Test?

WAY TO PROVE THAT YOUR PRODUCT BACKLOG IS WORTH IT

+ VALIDATE+ LEARN+ ITERATE

AN EXAMPLE

“TYPICAL” PRODUCT WAY

BUILD a New Feature Called “Add To Box”

(~2 Weeks)

PLAN a New Feature Called “Add To Box”

(~1 Week)

TEST & RELEASE a New Feature Called

“Add To Box”(~1 Week)

ONE FUCKING MONTH POTENTIALLY WASTED

“TYPICAL” PRODUCT WAY

LAUNCH(THAT DAY)

PLAN IDEA => HACK(~1 hour)

MAKE $$$$ BOoooOM

:)

And the RESULTS….

FIRE

BUT EVEN IF WE LOST….

RESULTS?

LET’S GET TACTICAL

1. What is the Absolute Bare Bones Minimum Proof You Need?2. How Can you get that proof with NO ENGINEERS?3. Get Traffic to your site4. Get Leads5. Get Referrals6. Measure Conversion7. Analyze and Optimize8. Make a decision9. Plan Operations

LET’S GET TACTICAL

dom@500.co

@DistroDomwww.facebook.com/dominic.coryell

RESULTS

<= 30% of visitors entered their

zipcode&

25 % of people entered their

email =>&

10% shared

Vs. This Design

- Asked for email and zip before live

- Had a <3% Email Capture Rate

Less than 2x as many leads