Scaling Up
Jorge Bastida
Head of Development
streetlife.com
@jorgebastida
Some non-obvious tips…
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270K+
400K+
6M+
2
active users
tasks/day
emails/month
web nodes
Today
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3x
2x
3x
Same
active users
tasks/day
emails/month
servers
in 6 months…
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Scale? WHAT?!
"
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1. User acquisition
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Getting your first user is hard.
Getting a f* millon is even harder.
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Our Average user
is a 50+ woman.
1. Understand how your users look like.
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+30% of our users don’t use
2. Find where they hang out.
!"
We are (mostly) their first online experience.
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Wait… but…. how?
where?
3. Catch 'Em All
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If you are looking for
traditional users…
!
✉
Do not fear
traditional
marketing.
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Plan it ahead… carefully!
cartodb.com
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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.
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Automate Everything
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But… whatever you do…
traditional marketing has
a major problem in the
“tech” sense of things.
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✈
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.
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⚠
2. Have a Plan B
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What if a meteor…
…yes, shit happens.
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✓ 100% self hosted, (no external resources).
✓ 100% static, (plain boring html).
✓ All signups go to Google Docs.
✓ All responses 503, (no cache).
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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
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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
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✓ Nearly 0 cost.
✓ Easy to setup.
✓ It can seriously save your ass.
⚡
5
/ mo
$
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3. Engage
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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
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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
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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!
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Daily Notification
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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
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That’s a substantial amount of emails.
✉
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And… what about if…
…emails don't go through?
⚠
SPAM
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✓ Users complain (A lot!)
✓ Traffic is lower the morning after.
✓ We die inside. :__(
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4. Buy time
,
Invest in good third party tools.
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Amazon SES
Simple Email Service
0,0001
/ email
$
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Sign your emails: DKIM
From: Jorge
To: Foo
Subject: Hello!
DKIM-Signature: SIGNATURE
streetlife.com
DNS
gmail.com
Sender
It’s only another factor…
…but it is really recommended.
Anti Spam Filter
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Process your
Spam Reports
!
List Unsubscribe
NDR
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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.
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6. Team
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Scaling servers is hard, scaling
your team is tough too.
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Recruiting is complicated, time
consuming and expensive.
Be patient!
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9 women can’t have a baby in 1
month.
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Hand holding, Guidelines…
In general… Learn to work together…
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˒ Understand who your users are.
˒ Plan marketing carefully.
˒ Automate as much as possible.
˒ Have a plan B - Always!
˒ Buy time.
˒ Be patient when hiring.
⚑