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During YC, we relentlessly practice our “two-sentence description.” It’s roughly of the form “ACME makes soup taste better. We do it with a seasoning that chefs

by memset 3y ago

During YC, we relentlessly practice our “two-sentence description.” It’s roughly of the form “ACME makes soup taste better. We do it with a seasoning that chefs add to their broth.” That is, what you do, and how you do it (or an example.) Yours might be “Perfai makes APIs faster. We do this by ?” The “how” is unclear. Are the case studies from actual users? Why all of the disclaimers? Your site mostly makes the claim that “slow APIs lead to churn.” If that is true, it is not obvious to me. I almost wonder if the copy was written by AI, as it uses plausible-sounding verbiage but is unconvincing. I believe the real problem is that you haven’t talked to enough potential users about their API problems. If you were able to quote their pain points in their own words, I think the copy would more convincingly demonstrate there is a problem and how your solution fixes it.

intesars 3y ago
I agree with all of your points. 1. Instead of doing a "two-sentence description" I did "problem-solution-result" style i.e. "Poor API performance results in negative UX and high customer churn. Deliver high-performance APIs to stop churn and boost 3x retention.". I like your suggestion "PerfAI makes APIs faster. We do this by" and I'll work on it based on your feedback. 2. Our CS team published the case studies at the last minute without a proper review. We'll fix it. 3. Most of the claims are actually backed by one of the Google white paper. We'll add its references to make it sound convincing. 4. You're correct we don't have customers we just started. We're in the process to getting potential users. Thank you for your feedback!
- YossarianFrPrez 3y ago
  Kudos to you for asking for honest feedback. I don't mean to pile on; only to clarify something about the pitch on your website. The thing with "problem-solution-result" style descriptions is that they can rely on (insider) knowledge about both the problem and the solution. Your pitch / tagline works great for people who know about both... even though this is unlikely to be the case outside of people working for your company. I.e. you want readers / potential customers to imagine how your solution applies to their problem, not to the one you've described for them. If a user / potential customer is tech-savvy enough to know about API testing, it's a good bet that they won't just take it on faith that AI testing will hand-wavily solve their problem. I think you can trust that your potential customers don't need to be heavily sold on the idea that API performance is critical. Instead, I recommend focusing on coming up with marketing copy to address the following questions: * What does your AI testing do that internal engineers and a set of tests can't? * How can perfai.ai augment engineering efforts? * Can perfai.ai find things that traditional test-suites miss? You sort of address this in the "No Code / No Config" section, but it's none too clear and takes some digging to figure out. Speaking of which "bringing the concept of Shift-Left to API active performance" is inside baseball. Hope this helps!
  - intesars 3y ago
    I changed the heading to: AI-Powered API Performance Testing No-Code, Self-Learning! Since AI learns how to interact with the API and validates every path in it. Is the new sub-heading any better than the previous one? Also, shortened all the other sections. Thank you so much for the feedback!
    - YossarianFrPrez 3y ago
      You are on the right track, but you haven't reached your destination, so to speak. "Value" isn't a property inherent to the copy on your website (or any text, for that matter), it's a property of the relationship between the copy and the reader. One way in which people recognize value is when they gently realize that they are (at least a little bit) wrong. What are people wrong about re: API testing? You currently have: > AI-Powered API Performance Testing > No-Code, Self-Learning! None of this implies that I have a problem. And this is because if I am building a website, I already test my API.* So it doesn't matter that your product is automatic, no-code, and self-learning. Instead, you have to point out how my testing of my API is incomplete. *Or so I may think. I might be convinced that I am testing my API even doing something as simple as '> rake routes'... But users will likely respond to the following value propositions: > Most people don't even know they aren't testing their APIs properly... > Doing it right is actually quite tricky, due to... (e.g. effort, time, money) > By relying on unit tests, engineers miss the forest for the trees... > For example... ^^ Build this out first, and a snappy way of wording it, as well as a heading / tagline will follow. The more you understand your true audience, the more you can "tune" this copy to specific issues they might have in their API test coverage. If I build a Rails site in a month by myself, am I likely to need your product? What about if I'm at the scale of Shopify? Or is your intended audience somewhere in between?
      - intesars 3y ago
        I used to have this line earlier. I changed it after criticism from the other users. I agree that your suggestions is valid to have a reason as well. I'll add this line back. "According to Google poor API performance leads to negative user experience and high-churn. Deliver High-Performance APIs with our Self-Learning and No-Code platform."
- memset 3y ago
  re: 3 - It may be true that google has a white paper describing the impact of api speed on retention. But beware, your users will need to have experienced this pain themselves, not theoretically, for them to be interested. They will need to have identified that latency (or churn - what is the actual problem you’re solving for users, that their api is slow out that they have churn?) is a problem that they want to solve right this second. Make the value proposition extremely clear, and try to really help the user focus on a pain they have right now and that you can solve it.
  - intesars 3y ago
    I added this text "According to Google, poor API performance leads to negative user experience and high-churn. Deliver High-Performance APIs with our self-learning and no-code platform."

by memset 3y ago

intesars 3y ago

I agree with all of your points. 1. Instead of doing a "two-sentence description" I did "problem-solution-result" style i.e. "Poor API performance results in negative UX and high customer churn. Deliver high-performance APIs to stop churn and boost 3x retention.". I like your suggestion "PerfAI makes APIs faster. We do this by" and I'll work on it based on your feedback. 2. Our CS team published the case studies at the last minute without a proper review. We'll fix it. 3. Most of the claims are actually backed by one of the Google white paper. We'll add its references to make it sound convincing. 4. You're correct we don't have customers we just started. We're in the process to getting potential users. Thank you for your feedback!

YossarianFrPrez 3y ago
Kudos to you for asking for honest feedback. I don't mean to pile on; only to clarify something about the pitch on your website. The thing with "problem-solution-result" style descriptions is that they can rely on (insider) knowledge about both the problem and the solution. Your pitch / tagline works great for people who know about both... even though this is unlikely to be the case outside of people working for your company. I.e. you want readers / potential customers to imagine how your solution applies to their problem, not to the one you've described for them. If a user / potential customer is tech-savvy enough to know about API testing, it's a good bet that they won't just take it on faith that AI testing will hand-wavily solve their problem. I think you can trust that your potential customers don't need to be heavily sold on the idea that API performance is critical. Instead, I recommend focusing on coming up with marketing copy to address the following questions: * What does your AI testing do that internal engineers and a set of tests can't? * How can perfai.ai augment engineering efforts? * Can perfai.ai find things that traditional test-suites miss? You sort of address this in the "No Code / No Config" section, but it's none too clear and takes some digging to figure out. Speaking of which "bringing the concept of Shift-Left to API active performance" is inside baseball. Hope this helps!
- intesars 3y ago
  I changed the heading to: AI-Powered API Performance Testing No-Code, Self-Learning! Since AI learns how to interact with the API and validates every path in it. Is the new sub-heading any better than the previous one? Also, shortened all the other sections. Thank you so much for the feedback!
  - YossarianFrPrez 3y ago
    You are on the right track, but you haven't reached your destination, so to speak. "Value" isn't a property inherent to the copy on your website (or any text, for that matter), it's a property of the relationship between the copy and the reader. One way in which people recognize value is when they gently realize that they are (at least a little bit) wrong. What are people wrong about re: API testing? You currently have: > AI-Powered API Performance Testing > No-Code, Self-Learning! None of this implies that I have a problem. And this is because if I am building a website, I already test my API.* So it doesn't matter that your product is automatic, no-code, and self-learning. Instead, you have to point out how my testing of my API is incomplete. *Or so I may think. I might be convinced that I am testing my API even doing something as simple as '> rake routes'... But users will likely respond to the following value propositions: > Most people don't even know they aren't testing their APIs properly... > Doing it right is actually quite tricky, due to... (e.g. effort, time, money) > By relying on unit tests, engineers miss the forest for the trees... > For example... ^^ Build this out first, and a snappy way of wording it, as well as a heading / tagline will follow. The more you understand your true audience, the more you can "tune" this copy to specific issues they might have in their API test coverage. If I build a Rails site in a month by myself, am I likely to need your product? What about if I'm at the scale of Shopify? Or is your intended audience somewhere in between?
    - intesars 3y ago
      I used to have this line earlier. I changed it after criticism from the other users. I agree that your suggestions is valid to have a reason as well. I'll add this line back. "According to Google poor API performance leads to negative user experience and high-churn. Deliver High-Performance APIs with our Self-Learning and No-Code platform."
memset 3y ago
re: 3 - It may be true that google has a white paper describing the impact of api speed on retention. But beware, your users will need to have experienced this pain themselves, not theoretically, for them to be interested. They will need to have identified that latency (or churn - what is the actual problem you’re solving for users, that their api is slow out that they have churn?) is a problem that they want to solve right this second. Make the value proposition extremely clear, and try to really help the user focus on a pain they have right now and that you can solve it.
- intesars 3y ago
  I added this text "According to Google, poor API performance leads to negative user experience and high-churn. Deliver High-Performance APIs with our self-learning and no-code platform."