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This is sound advice, but not new advice. A couple of things that jumped out at me - Yes, yes, 1,000x when it comes to the importance of simplicity. It's far t

by kbos87 9y ago

This is sound advice, but not new advice. A couple of things that jumped out at me - Yes, yes, 1,000x when it comes to the importance of simplicity. It's far too easy to unknowingly distract yourself and your users from what is important in your product. My criticism is that this pays very little attention to how important it is to get to know who the people are you are attracting at the top of your funnel. It's tempting to reduce your acquisition funnel down to the level of "here's how many people we dumped in the top, and here is the % rate at which they activated." The truth is a lot more complicated. Too many people overlook this and optimize for what is working, which puts you at risk of unknowingly niching down into a small portion of your addressable market.

kitotik 9y ago
Great point. Responding to feedback from the ‘wrong’ customers kills so many products/startups. This is the point of methodologies and techniques like Customer Development, Ideal Customer Profiles, and good ol’ fashioned business modeling.
- delhanty 9y ago
  >Responding to feedback from the ‘wrong’ customers kills so many products/startups. That's something I wonder about with Show HN. Aren't many of us on HN inherently the 'wrong' customer for any product or service that aspires to be mainstream? Famously, for example, 10 years back, some of the comments when @dhouston submitted "My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive" [1] pretty strongly indicated 'wrong' customer. I won't pull out the comments, because: 1. I don't want to make it personal & 2. It's with the benefit of hindsight. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
  - opportune 9y ago
    Exactly, powerusers are in many ways actually terrible customers because 1) They are ok with using worse/harder solutions because they know how to use them. 2) They don't like to pay for things. 3) They are much more technically adept than the general population. 4) There aren't that many of them compared to the general population. 5) They skew towards 20-35 years old, white/asian men with good income. For example, this startup: https://unlockd.com/ https://unlockd.com/ pays you (via phone bill discounts) to watch ads on your phone after you unlock it. It had raised $17m as of May. I first thought it was the dumbest idea ever, but then I realized that this was because I would never use it. In fact, I couldn't even see my friends using it. That doesn't mean others might not.
    - austinchang 9y ago
      i agree with you here but sounds like you are mostly talking about "Early Adopters"? Power users of a product who get deep recurring value from your product are get to analyze. they may be mostly earlier adopters at first but hopefully will grow to be your core customer.
    - heisenbit 9y ago
      Power-users are not good proxy's for broad markets. But then aren't there markets where power users are the bulk of users and are actually willing to pay?
austinchang 9y ago
thanks for the comment. agree that chasing after the "wrong" customers is a whole pitfall unto it's own. Nothing here says you need to chose your user based on existing top of funnel. Often times those are earlier adopters who try something and leave. When thinking about your products critical user journey you need to think about ideal cases: who is the User, what is their Goal and in what Context they are using your product. Lots of work goes into understanding each of these to hone in on specifics for each product and definitely much more detail than this first article.

by kbos87 9y ago

kitotik 9y ago

Great point. Responding to feedback from the ‘wrong’ customers kills so many products/startups. This is the point of methodologies and techniques like Customer Development, Ideal Customer Profiles, and good ol’ fashioned business modeling.

delhanty 9y ago
>Responding to feedback from the ‘wrong’ customers kills so many products/startups. That's something I wonder about with Show HN. Aren't many of us on HN inherently the 'wrong' customer for any product or service that aspires to be mainstream? Famously, for example, 10 years back, some of the comments when @dhouston submitted "My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive" [1] pretty strongly indicated 'wrong' customer. I won't pull out the comments, because: 1. I don't want to make it personal & 2. It's with the benefit of hindsight. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
- opportune 9y ago
  Exactly, powerusers are in many ways actually terrible customers because 1) They are ok with using worse/harder solutions because they know how to use them. 2) They don't like to pay for things. 3) They are much more technically adept than the general population. 4) There aren't that many of them compared to the general population. 5) They skew towards 20-35 years old, white/asian men with good income. For example, this startup: https://unlockd.com/ https://unlockd.com/ pays you (via phone bill discounts) to watch ads on your phone after you unlock it. It had raised $17m as of May. I first thought it was the dumbest idea ever, but then I realized that this was because I would never use it. In fact, I couldn't even see my friends using it. That doesn't mean others might not.
  - austinchang 9y ago
    i agree with you here but sounds like you are mostly talking about "Early Adopters"? Power users of a product who get deep recurring value from your product are get to analyze. they may be mostly earlier adopters at first but hopefully will grow to be your core customer.
  - heisenbit 9y ago
    Power-users are not good proxy's for broad markets. But then aren't there markets where power users are the bulk of users and are actually willing to pay?

austinchang 9y ago

thanks for the comment. agree that chasing after the "wrong" customers is a whole pitfall unto it's own. Nothing here says you need to chose your user based on existing top of funnel. Often times those are earlier adopters who try something and leave. When thinking about your products critical user journey you need to think about ideal cases: who is the User, what is their Goal and in what Context they are using your product. Lots of work goes into understanding each of these to hone in on specifics for each product and definitely much more detail than this first article.