Reminder: Readings are your responsibility. You will be expected to come to class prepared, having read the material, and ready to participate in the discussion
Logistics
- Ok to sit in the first row of the back section. But not behind that. Teams sit together
- Adding a class where all projects present to each other, early on
- If for some reason you did not submit the MVP work by the cutoff, as for an extension!
3x5 card feedback
- Confused by grading. What does it mean to have a “meets expectations” (5x)
- Lets look at the blurb for the MVP assigment and discuss it.
- About 50% do the reading and 50% don’t
- Reasons:
- Too much reading
- Students find it difficult to identify and remember the key points. Would like me to provide them!?
- No Slides? THESE are the slides!
- Cold calling is stressful (5x) (One person likes it).
- Would you prefer a snap question on Moodle?
- More interactivity. Maybe reserve 10 minutes at end for teams to talk to each other (5x)
Lean Startup Discussion
The Funnel
- Getting from random to a paying customer
- Metaphor useful for modeling, planning and execution
- Identify the key ‘stages’ in relationship between prospect and business
- Each stage needs to be somehow measurable!
- This framework will inform the metrics you collect, your decisions around a pivot and even how your operating model is designed
Stages (one example)
- Acquisition (or awareness). A potential customer has found out about our product or web site
- Activation. They have taken the “action that we want them to”
- Retention – They are coming back, using, signing up for a free trial, to show that we are rataining them
- Referral – They are telling others about our product, sending them referral links, actively recruiting them
- Revenue - They are paying
Applications
- Makes us really think about what the key metrics are to collect
- In helps us identify our engine of growth
- Measuring the metrics in cohorts informs the tuning of the engine
- Permits the modeling (prediction) of how many at each stage
- Based on marketing and other investments
Tuning the Engine of growth
- What is an engine of growth? It’s A metaphor and a financial model
- Approach
- Identify key stages of relationship with customer
- Measure customers at each stage
- Analyze impact on financial model
- Tune the engine
Broader View of the stages
- Visit: users come to the site from various channels
- Repeat: come back to the site because they liked it.
- Register: request a log in or register to become a user
- Activate: actually activate their account (respond to an email)
- Retain: come back at lease X times and use the site repeatedly
- Refer: they refer their friends within X days
- Pay: Actually send you money within X days
- Abandon: Don’t log in again after X days
- Cancel: Actually cancel their account
Measure
- Which stage can you actually measure in your product or service?
- Be very precise about the ones you decide to measure
- You can’t/shouldn’t measure all of them
- The ones that matter to you are the ones that tie in with your engine of growth
Model
- How do you plan to make money or achieve your objectives?
- Remember the different types of engines of growth
- Sticky Engine of Growth (subscription)
- Viral (users invite other users)
- Paid (simple purchase, one shot)
- Accessory (in product purchases)
Tune: Make changes, see the impact
- Now that you know what you’re optimizing for
- And you have a way to see before and after
- You can experiment and tune your engine