HN user
PLG startup growth person
Find more upsells in PLG
4 Post-Sales playbook
Nowadays, retaining paid customers is increasingly difficult
If I were to do it again, here's my post-sales playbook for PLG:
1. Introduce advanced paywalled features 2. Create a private paid customer community 3. Be the pulse of paid customers 4. Show ROI with a business review
Are you building different products for PLG and SLG? :thinking_face:
Throughout time, we then saw the Venn diagram
Moving the benefits of an excellent
Self-serve experience :point_left:
And
Tech-touch model :point_left:
Will translate over to the Sales-led
This gives room for
Customer Success teams to dive deeper
Into …
:+1::skin-tone-3: Introducing advanced features
:+1::skin-tone-3: Gather insights
:+1::skin-tone-3: Developing relationships
Improvements in the PLG experience
Will translate to SLG improvements
Are we building whatever we want??? or what the customers want??? :thinking_face:
Here's how we use customer feedback in our PLG roadmap…
1. How did we collect user feedback? 2. How did we organize user feedback? 3. How did we gain the trust of engineers and designers? 4. How did we prioritize user feedback?
An in-depth look at what we did and what could have done better...
My job is in jeopardy… if Customers keep Churning
The 3 ways I keep an eye on churn :eyes:, "control" churn, and influence product roadmap:
A. Exit Interviews B. Churn Reasonings C. Product Usage Analysis
Click to read how we did each step...
We are taking action :point_left::point_left::point_left:
"No stones left unturned"
—
Churn Happens…
The analysis is to get you and your team
In a direction :arrow_right:
Improve
Communicate :speaking_head_in_silhouette:
Influence
Forecast :bar_chart:
"Control" Churn
Top 5 reasons for Product-Led Growth customers churn
:one: Price :two: Out of Business :three: Integrations :four: Not Feeling Heard :five: No need anymore / No more champions
Click the article below to read how we prevent churn...
:large_blue_diamond: Reassure customers about your offerings and renewal :large_blue_diamond: Communicate with your executive team and roadmap ways to recover revenue :large_blue_diamond: Provide a best practices and workaround :large_blue_diamond: Acknowledge customers and give them a playbook :large_blue_diamond: Contingency plan when champion leaves
Anticipate churn will happen in Product-Led Growth
It’s important to hone in on the revenue, NRR, ARR forecast
Partner with your teams (Product, Engineering, Sales) on churn
Stay on top of churn reasons so you can mitigate it :mag:
Communicate with your leadership team :writing_hand::skin-tone-2:
So you have plans and roadmaps to recover revenue and business growth :chart_with_upwards_trend:
Inspire | https://inspire.com/ | Arlington, VA or Remote | Full-time | Product Manager - Member Growth and Engagement
Inspire.com, is a patient support network. Inspire has 230+ communities, each a condition: lung cancer, psoriasis, ovarian cancer, brain tumor, etc.
We are looking for an Engagement and Email Strategy lead around product retention. Local Metro DC area preferred, remote is OK too.
Highlights include: - Lead Email Strategy and Mobile Push Notifications strategies - Work with developers of Inspire products to use dynamic content, event triggers and important touch points (APIs, transactional, etc.) to onboard, activate, and retain our users
Apply here: https://inspireinc.applytojob.com/apply/W4gdr7hImB/Marketing...
Product Manager, Growth
Name: Gary-Yau Chan
Location: NYC
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: No
Specializes: Product Management, Growth Framework, Growth Hacking, Growth Marketing, Growth Experimentations, Content Marketing, Media, SEO
I am a former SaaS startup founder, product developer, product creator, growth hacker, and community manager. I am looking for content marketing or SaaS companies. Love to just solve problems, email me or tweet me @garyyauchan
Also I have participated, and organized in 55+ hackathons.
Survey Links - https://chany2.wufoo.com/forms/company-culture-questionaire/
Landing Page - http://chany2.github.io/VoiceUp
Yes. I actually lost my job the same day, I asked if my friend needed any help.
So there was no expectation set on the 1st day. The first and 2nd month or so - was still determining our product-market fit. The 3rd month was more aligning to clients.
However, its clear the value I set for the team behind the 3 month acceleration process. And that now, if they lose my contribution, the whole startup would be set back. (granted thats my perspective)
We will have the docs set up in the next 2-3 weeks.
Agreement was we do opposing research and share those readings based on common equity startup practices.
Obviously, its all different case-by-case.
What equity (or extra) compensation should I request for at this point?
A thought keep passing my head is: If I take a job at a mature startup, I be an employee as well. Here, I am also an employee (co-founder level) but no pay. Status is not important at the end, but it just cannot escape my head about it.
Theres a whole bunch on Swell, the radio app.
But I think founder stories on Pandomonthly video is probably the best - she already covered a good diverse set of people from B2B, B2C, media, VCs, CEOs... etc
Pandomonthly, Stanford Entrepreneurial Series, drt.fm, This Week in Startups
I think passion is when you try something (theme A) for a good long period of time, and failed. Tried something else (theme B). Then when someone talked to you about Theme A randomly - and it struck you with a feeling on getting back into that field. <== then you found your passion.
In your situation, you have no crunch time, no deadline. You sit safely in your good job (understood through the situation). But there is no urgency.
Create self-motivation to try new things. Help people for free. If you enjoy the process even when its free - good opportunity to continue.
^ This here is the best advice for non-sales folks doing sales call. This man did a lot of reading on sales.
You basically have change your mindset about it. You are not selling things to them (and no money is even exchange on the first call either), you are trying to help them.
-- No one likes to be sold to. Stop selling. Also don't think of it as cold-call.
Think of yourself as a consultant.
Think of yourself as a student.
A student in business class, writing a report and researching a company. Find out their current news about their business, and recent trends affecting their industry. Now, can your product fill to relieve some of the workflow they have according to your research.
If so, the client will open up to you. At the end of the day, that client, that manager just wants to get their work done better. If your product does that, and you found out that recent issue, your product can help with. You got a good consulting gig starting to happen.
Once you have your report, write a cold email instead.
What do you mean fail? Asana is doing very well. Does it boast replacing email... probably not. But still a very recommendable application for small teams.
^ One researcher recommended similar approach, the data stored centrally, and give other users access keys as the means of granting them permission to read those data. However the issue here, don't I end up 'storing' that access key as well? Unless its a password-type, where user have to remember and manually enter it every time...
He also suggest taking a push model (the central storage) rather than pull model (device storage).
I am still debating, and researching. Any other thoughts?
This looks promising! Will definitely check it out.
This sounds like an example of Path where you can Like something offline, and will sync when you have internet access.
However doesn't solve the "who stored your data" privacy concern.
"[There is no problem with Email itself.] The real problems we face are ones of organization, discovery, workflow, meaningful semantics, and overwhelmingly managing information overload." - someone's comment on Hackernews about Email's Problem
================================
Deep analysis of Email:
- Email is our medium of communication. Yes, for personal, we have social apps. For professional, we have LinkedIn messages - which is actually directed back to email. For internal small companies, there are Asana, and Basecamp. For larger groups, there is Yammer.
However Emails still cuts through all of those and everything in between because its just agnostic. Also it enables external communication as oppose to those internal structures.
- Email is also associated with behavior. Implanted to us since the internet. (Actually before the internet.) It is built into our mobiles, our laptops. Tough to tell someone to not use it.
================================
Possible Solutions:
- Behavioral: Slow transition is required. Little by little.
Examples:
1) Require where the group is going. I tell you to give up email, and use Asana tomorrow. Sounds great but you probably wouldn't (or not yet). If I give you 3 months, tell you that all people you know will slowly be using Yammer and you will get less and less emails. Then you would say yes. Big change but require time and group use.
2) Think about Boomerang, a small plugin, a small behavior change that helps - people started to incorporate it into their email use. Little behavioral change, big gain.
3) Think about Rapportive, highlight recipient info, small change, now many people use it. Little to no behavioral change.
4) However, Ping or Hop, making email into Instant Messages. Possible in the future, but not right now because it is a big jump in the way we view Email. Almost 'eliminating' how we write email. Big behavioral change.
================================
- Interface change (small incremental UI and UX) on the recipient's side.
Examples:
1) Mailbox, is literally email but with added features to enhance use. Snooze, and swipe.
2) Gmail vs. Outlook. Both emails, better ease-of-use features.
================================
- Reduction of Unnecessary Emails (FYI Emails)
Examples:
1) Gmail's filter tabs.
2) Apps like PeeqPeeq takes out your shopping newsletter, and puts it into their app.
3) Startups like Square, Stripe, Buffer, and Khan Academy are now using blackhole-mailing-list. CC everything FYI in. Access it when you have time.
4) Sharemoto.io [www.sharemoto.io] (shameless plug) is Sharepoint / Dropbox for Emails. Personal use, hashtags for archiving email and email threads regardless of subject line. Team use, hashtags become semantic topics and users can be invited or follow these FYI topics. Ultimately, reduce CC emails and view no action-required content at their own time.
Hahaha; if you read the comments in the article, they were vicious. The subject line was just shock value - granted Asana is a good application that many use.
I just don't think they should go up against Email. Historically Email have won many times (there are few exceptions like company impose Yammer)
Depends on your current situation.
If you are a young professional, I think its a great step, because now you are really forced into doing/finding something you are passionate about. Or going to solve a problem you will develop a passion for.
I am currently in this situation. Didn't get a job after college. Because I prefer to be jack of all trades. This perspective helped me dive into something I really want to work on, the Enterprise space.
Now I am in a job with a big company. I am unfit because I think too entrepreneurial. But I am absorbing all the information here, and taking advantage of the position to learn about the enterprise.
I think its a calling for me to work harder, double up on developing my product on the weekend, after work.
Nice answer on Twitter.
I totally agree, the first attempt probably won't solve the problem. And many startups actually found a solution first, then try to fit into a problem paradigm, pivot to solve that 'need'.
However Games might be another example, where was there a Problem people were complaining that there need to be an Alien vs Human strategy game? No matter how entertaining, is there study prior to building towards that?
So as a follow-up thought based on your above analysis, should big companies just keep experimenting in-house on a 'non-problem' until reaching a need? - also lends a bit to Innovators Dilemma
Going to the same situation. I decided on NodeJS vs Ruby on Rails or Python because I am mostly a front-end engineer; so advancing in JS skills is good.
There is a lot of PHP resources on the web; so I don't have you have to give it up.
Awesome!
Dead simple, clean UI, and just great picks of landscape photos as well.
Good job man.
Sooner or later a competitor technology will come out to lines of Google Glass for contacts; ultimately the 3rd episode of Black Mirror, where you can record 24-hours of your life via your eye contacts.
Single-page HTML5 design?
Topbar CSS = background:fixed
You just build <div> with different color with width=100%
I googled for you - http://www.instantshift.com/2013/10/14/free-responsive-html5... --- go to around the 6th one, free Download, exactly the same as Actionherojs.com
Thanks, that definitely help with confirming.
It probably be more would one algorithm problem and then other questions about frameworks.
Yeah good chance a lot of questions on technical ideation and architecturing maybe a very open question, answered whichever tech language I prefer, or in plain english if it has to be cited in a language I am not familiar with.
-- From there, how I do you think I can prepare?
I agree. I actually approach my learning in a very similar way. Thus I show value by my portfolio of apps (http://garyyauchan.com/) with ideation and designs, and codes I build through passionate googling.
Granted, the other view is that you need to know the "foundation" and the "why" in order to solve problems more efficiently.
Yeah its bad.
Being devils advocate for a moment, is it the "cage" look thats alarming? Without those bed fences, millions of people around the world, in different countries live very similarly.
Personally I never understood why people think the world is overpopulated. The split side is that maybe the rich and the above-average families are just living too wealthy with so much real estate. As that becomes more of the perceived "standard" for prosperity, the low income class would live in a such tragic condition.
- Basically as the rich want more, the poor would have less.
- Granted I am not talking about distribution but actually talking about if the mentality of living more frugal are in for most people, then there might be a possible economic shift.
More Front-End. Thanks for clarification.
Supposedly the best way to promote your project is write a blog. In order to promote your blog, you need to comment other folks' blogs or be a guest blogger on another popular blog.
Granted I haven't got the chance to start yet.