Des Traynor — What We’ve Learned From Scaling to 0-25k+ Paying Customers (Turing Fest 2018)

Des will share the wins, losses, successes and failures he’s experienced working across product, growth, marketing, and support at one of the fastest-growing startups out there. This talk will cover the decisions that can make or break a Product, including the Product’s pricing, packaging, positioning and placement. Anyone working in marketing, growth, or product will learn the impact of these early product decisions on a business’ trajectory and how the right decision can lead to maximum growth.

Transcript

1. 2011, Dublin, Ireland @destraynor from @intercom
5. “Let’s see if anyone else wants it”
7. Text here San Francisco 2011
8. Intercom started in 2011 with 4 people, zero revenue, and an ambitious $6M valuation.
9. Today we’re 500+ people across 5 offices, 30,000 paying customers, and valued at over $1B.
10. The things I think we got right
11. Product At the start, it’s just you and your product
12. THE PRODUCT STAGE Scope your product Prioritise exploration Align your team Choose your product
13. Text here
16. Questions to ask yourself
 
 Will this problem exist in 3-5-10 years time? Do you have the problem yourself? How do people currently solve it? Are people currently paying money or time to solve it? Do you have an unfair advantage in solving it? Do you have everything you need to solve it? What silent assumptions are you making?
17. THE PRODUCT STAGE Scope your product Prioritise exploration Align your team Choose your product
18. Problem “I need to grow my business” G row an audience G et them 
 to your site Send outbound
 m essages Qualify them Create opportunity Schedule Dem os Negotiate deals Start conversations Solution “Net New ARR up 10%”
19. 1. Start where your product can add new value
 Faster, Easier, Cheaper, Accessible, etc 2. Transition from previous step seamlessly for your user Where to start?
20. Where to stop? 1. When the next step is done by a market leader that you don’t intend to fight (Amazon, Salesforce, etc.) 2. Or if the next step is completed in many different ways (e.g. transferring money, creating a report, invoice, etc) 3. Or if it’s something you just can’t innovate on. 
 (e.g. “they always phone their customer here and do the rest over the phone”)
21. Run Ad Campaigns Purchase lists Sponsor events Research
 Leads Publish content Send emails Plan Follow ups Retarget
 Leads Start Conversation Qualify Lead Create Lead AUDIENCE BUILDING OUTBOUND MARKETING CAPTURE AND CONVERT Schedule a demo Negotiate Pricing Create 
 Prospect Mark as 
 Closed Won Assign to 
 Customer Success CRM
22. Start Conversation Qualify Lead Create Lead CAPTURE AND CONVERT Schedule a demo How can we make this as easy as possible Create 
 Prospect How can we
 remove work here?
23. The Scopi-locks principle for Product Strategy Not too big (or no one can adopt it)
 Not too small (you’ll be dismissed as a feature, not a product)
 Just right (small enough to adopt, big enough to matter)
26. THE PRODUCT STAGE Scope your product Prioritise exploration Align your team Choose your product
27. A product team without a clear strategy
28. Same team with a strategy
29. What are we building? (Product scope) Why are we building it? (Product Vision and Mission) How are we building it? (Product process)
30. THE PRODUCT STAGE Scope your product Prioritise exploration Align your team Choose your product
31. Best solution Start
32. Best solution
34. Product And if you’re successful enough, you’ll eventually layer in marketing Marketing
35. THE MARKETING STAGE Market the Job to be Done Practice effective testing Learn the ways people buy Solve from the Inside Out
36. Happy Paying Customer Trialist Active 
 user Onboarded 
 User Signed Up
 Visitor Visitor Advert
 Clicker Audience
37. Happy Paying Customer Trialist Active 
 user Onboarded 
 User Signed Up
 Visitor Visitor Advert
 Clicker Audience DEMAND GENERATION PRODUCT MARKETING ENGAGEMENT PRODUCT We tend to look at funnels from the outside in
38. Happy Paying Customer Trialist Active 
 user Onboarded 
 User Signed Up
 Visitor Visitor Advert
 Clicker Audience The temptation is to start
 marketing here It’s short term responsive
 It’s easy to experiment with It can be high impact
 There’s whole industries here to help DEMAND GENERATION PRODUCT MARKETING ENGAGEMENT PRODUCT
39. Happy Paying Customer Trialist Active 
 user Onboarded 
 User Signed Up
 Visitor Visitor Advert
 Clicker Audience The temptation is to start
 marketing here It’s short term responsive
 It’s easy to experiment with It can be high impact
 There’s whole industries here to help DEMAND GENERATION PRODUCT MARKETING ENGAGEMENT PRODUCT
40. Happy Paying Customer Trialist Active 
 user Onboarded 
 User Signed Up
 Visitor Visitor Advert
 Clicker Audience The best marketing starts here
41. Happy Paying Customer Trialist Active 
 user Onboarded 
 User Signed Up
 Visitor Visitor Advert
 Clicker Audience And works backwards
42. THE MARKETING STAGE Market the Job to be Done Practice effective testing Learn the ways people buy Solve from the Inside Out
43. Are you building what you sell? Are you selling what you build?
 
 Are you selling what they’re buying? Are they buying what they’re selling?
45. NEW CHURNED TRIALING SHOPPERS ACTIVE INACTIVE What are they looking for? What doesn’t work? What’s their definition of value? How do they measure things? Where are we most solid? Why does the job go away?
48. Understand your competition and why people should switch to you.
52. This is why switching is hard, and your product needs to be ~10x better
53. THE MARKETING STAGE Market the Job to be Done Practice effective testing Learn the ways people buy Solve from the Inside Out
54. They search by the description of their problem They search by the solution category They want a better version of what they currently have They want you! CON: You have to sell them on their problem, your category, your solution, and more
 
 PRO: There’s lots of them CON: You have to establish brand dominance in a category. 
 
 PRO: It’s defined space CON: You’re competing on your competitors terms in many ways 
 
 PRO: You just need to beat one company CON: It takes years to get here
 
 PRO: They accept no substitute
56. THE MARKETING STAGE Market the Job to be Done Practice effective testing Learn the ways people buy Solve from the Inside Out
57. Default to redesign, not optimise.
 
 A billion dollar company isn’t built off better button colours.
58. Sign up now Sign up now
59. Sign up now Sign up now
60. Sign up now Sign up now
62. Don't get sucked into black hole of tiny optimisations. Know when to reset.
63. Optimize ? Redesign ? Change in product Lots Little Performance Good Bad
64. Optimize Redesign Redesign ? Change in product Lots Little Performance Good Bad
65. Optimize Redesign Redesign Redesign Change in product Lots Little Performance Good Bad
66. Before you experiment ask yourself…
 
 1. How much could this experiment impact the metric? 2. Given that impact, how long will you need to run the test to get accurate results? 3. Is it actually worth the wait?
67. Sign up now Sign up now Time to implement: 2 hours Time to test: 68 days Total time: 70 days Percentage improvement: 1.4%
68. Time to implement: 15 days Time to test: 18 days Total time: 33 days Percentage improvement: 9%
69. Product Getting Product and Marketing right are the first steps to Product Market Fit Marketing
70. Product Marketing Sales Finance Analytics Customer Support Infrastructure Security Content Public Relations Brand Design Compliance But it gets complicated from here onwards
71. THE SCALE STAGE Evolve how you build Beware of dogma Maintain your edge Evolve your roadmap
72. What got you here won’t get you there.
73. Early product companies work off intuition, inspiration, gut, feel, etc. This doesn’t scale.
74. Even if it did scale, it’s not a good idea.
75. Roadmap Current customers Product 
 Iterations Voice of sales Competitive Landscape Churn 
 Reports Product 
 Health New Ideas
76. Current customers Product 
 Iterations Voice of sales Competitive Landscape Churn 
 Reports Product 
 Health New Ideas How you allocate your time here is crucial
77. Current customers Product 
 Iterations Voice of sales Competitive Landscape Churn 
 Reports Product 
 Health New Ideas Some will flare up, some you have to earn
78. THE SCALE STAGE Evolve how you build Beware of dogma Maintain your edge Evolve your roadmap
79. Innovation vs Problem solving are different modes Addressing problems Innovations & New Ideas Speculative Open ended Failure is acceptable Opportunity to differentiate Well understood outcome KPI driven Failure rarely acceptable Follow best practices
80. Every piece of product work needs a revenue hypothesis “This work will… Help sales close more deals Help us sell for higher prices Decrease customer churn Improve our site conversion rate Give us a unique position in market Decrease costs to serve our customers
81. Adding features just to close details is easy. It leads to consulting-ware long term.
82. Feature Feature Feature Feature Feature Feature % of customers that use it
83. Feature Feature Feature Feature Feature Feature % of customers that use it Feature Feature Feature FeatureFeature Feature “Just this once” “Look at the ARR tho!” “Said they’ll quit”
84. This isn’t some product purist nonsense. 
 You pay for that complexity in your Marketing, Customer Support, Success, etc. 
 
 It’s ‘easy’ to build everything Customers want
85. THE SCALE STAGE Evolve how you build Beware of dogma Maintain your edge Evolve your roadmap
87. You
88. You
89. You
90. You
91. You Your competitor
92. You Your competitor
93. You Your competitor
94. You Your competitor
95. You Your competitor
96. You Your competitor
97. You Competitor
98. Beware of prioritising product requests that make you more like your competitor. “We need be more like them” will turn into “We need to be different to them”
99. THE SCALE STAGE Evolve how you build Beware of dogma Maintain your edge Evolve your roadmap
100. All opinions in your software cost you customers so they better be worth it. Real examples from Intercom: 
 “We don’t think we should collect email addresses up front”
 “We have specific ways we want our customers to speak”
 “We think the messenger should always ___ and never ___”
 “We think there’s only ‘X’ ways you can set up permissions”
 “Our bot Operator should always sound like a ____” When an opinion is costing us more than it’s earning us, it’s dogma.
101. Good opinions - Attract a set of target customers - Inspire your team - Fuel your marketing - Reduce your product scope - Simplify your product Bad opinions - Are sales blockers - Confuse your team - Are only surfaced in product - Paint you into corners technically - Confuse your users
102. Opinions should expire “But we’ve always done that” “I remember back when…” “But on the blog it says…” “I found this Google Doc and it said” “Des once said at an all hands that…”
103. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds
104. Either you kill your dogma, or your dogma kills you
105. Thanks @destraynor, @intercom