Some non-obvious tips… Scaling Up

DIGEATALL talk about several non-obvios/non-tech tips we found interesting scaling streetlife.

Transcript

1. Scaling Up Jorge Bastida Head of Development streetlife.com @jorgebastida Some non-obvious tips…
4. 270K+ 400K+ 6M+ 2 active users tasks/day emails/month web nodes Today
5. 3x 2x 3x Same active users tasks/day emails/month servers in 6 months…
6. Scale? WHAT?! "
7. 1. User acquisition
8. Getting your first user is hard. Getting a f* millon is even harder.
9. Our Average user is a 50+ woman. 1. Understand how your users look like.
10. +30% of our users don’t use 2. Find where they hang out. !" We are (mostly) their first online experience.
11. Wait… but…. how? where? 3. Catch 'Em All
12. If you are looking for traditional users… ! ✉ Do not fear traditional marketing.
13. Plan it ahead… carefully! cartodb.com
14. Test, test and test again. •If you print a flyer with a broken link… that's bad. •All software deserves testing. •Invest in automation. •Test your critical paths with Selenium.
15. Automate Everything
16. But… whatever you do… traditional marketing has a major problem in the “tech” sense of things.
17. ✈ Point of no return. The point of no return is the point beyond which one must continue on one's current course of action because turning back is physically impossible, prohibitively expensive or dangerous.
18. ⚠ 2. Have a Plan B
19. What if a meteor… …yes, shit happens.
21. ✓ 100% self hosted, (no external resources). ✓ 100% static, (plain boring html). ✓ All signups go to Google Docs. ✓ All responses 503, (no cache).
22. DNS Provider #1 Provider #2 meteor.streetlife.com Load Balancer ✓ Scheduled maintenances. ✓ Internal Cock-up. ✓ No need to update the DNS. ✓ Immediate. streetlife.com ✖ Provider #3
23. streetlife.com DNS meteor.streetlife.com Load Balancer ✓ Main provider Down. ✓ Huge internal Cock-up. ✓ TTL to switch on/off. ✖ Provider #1 Provider #2 Provider #3
24. ✓ Nearly 0 cost. ✓ Easy to setup. ✓ It can seriously save your ass. ⚡ 5 / mo $
25. 3. Engage
26. When do users consume the site? 0:00 2:00 4:00 6:00 8:00 10:00 12:00 14:00 16:00 18:00 20:00 22:00
27. When do users consume the site? 0:00 2:00 4:00 6:00 8:00 10:00 12:00 14:00 16:00 18:00 20:00 22:00 TFL Peak-time 6:30am - 9:30pm 16:00pm - 19:00pm
28. Why? They are bored in front of their phones. ! How? We don’t have an app! (Yet). ! What does a “traditional” user understand? Emails. They magically appear in their phones!
29. Daily Notification
30. When do we send these emails? 0:00 2:00 4:00 6:00 8:00 10:00 12:00 14:00 16:00 18:00 20:00 22:00 ~300k emails. 0.01% Complaints
31. That’s a substantial amount of emails. ✉
32. And… what about if… …emails don't go through? ⚠ SPAM
33. ✓ Users complain (A lot!) ✓ Traffic is lower the morning after. ✓ We die inside. :__(
34. 4. Buy time , Invest in good third party tools.
36. Amazon SES Simple Email Service 0,0001 / email $
37. Sign your emails: DKIM From: Jorge <jorge@streetlife.com> To: Foo <foo@gmail.com> Subject: Hello! DKIM-Signature: SIGNATURE streetlife.com DNS gmail.com Sender It’s only another factor… …but it is really recommended. Anti Spam Filter
38. Process your Spam Reports ! List Unsubscribe NDR
39. Process your complaints. ✓ NDR ✓ If permanent, stop sending emails to this email address. ! ✓ Spam Reports or List Unsubscribe ✓ Update their notification settings to the minimum.
40. 6. Team
41. Scaling servers is hard, scaling your team is tough too.
42. Recruiting is complicated, time consuming and expensive. Be patient!
43. 9 women can’t have a baby in 1 month.
44. Hand holding, Guidelines… In general… Learn to work together…
45. ˒ Understand who your users are. ˒ Plan marketing carefully. ˒ Automate as much as possible. ˒ Have a plan B - Always! ˒ Buy time. ˒ Be patient when hiring. ⚑
46. Thanks!