The MicroConf Europe 2015 Talk Recaps can be found on the central “hub” page.

Website:
Twitter:
Slides:

Talk Recap

• The hypothesis is a testable assumption
  • Shopify shops need adwords help (difficult to test)
  • Shopify shops use adwords help (easier to test, look at shopify marketplace)
• Use all background knowledge you can get
• Reason Backwards / Pattern Matching
• Use the “right” statistics (mean vs median)
• Use heuristics
  • Find most important reason and ignore the rest

-Christoph

The MicroConf Europe 2015 Talk Recaps can be found on the central “hub” page.

Website: uibreakfast.com
Twitter: @uibreakfast
Slides: The 1 hour UI audit slides

 

Talk Recap

• Your app/website design is damocles sword hanging over your head: Always threatening, but you never have time
• Top 4 Design Hazards
  • User doesn’t want your product
  • user fails to sign up
  • user fails to get started
  • user fails to reach his goals
• 3 modules, 20 minutes each
  • functionality
  • layout
  • style
• Functionality
  • List the goals
    • Who are your ideal customers?
    • What is their big goal when they sign up?
    • What are their long-term goals, business or personal?
  • List the tasks
    • Primary: What tasks do the users perform daily? What is their daily routine for achieving that big goal?
    • Secondary: What unique tasks are performed from time to time?
  • Extract the objects
    • Work through your tasks from previous step, and list all nouns.
    • Chances are your main menu will list the same objects
  • Define the language
    • Work through list of tasks and objects
  • Classify Existing Screens
    • Primary: items in main menu & first-level descendants
  • Audit each Screen
    • List tasks & objects for each screen
    • Ideal Screen Checklist
      • one big title
      • just one list of objects
      • one prominent task (other tasks subtle)
      • clean corners
      • obvious navigation
  • Now work with the results
    • polish the language
    • split complex screens
    • Group elements in horizontal blocks
    • Polish experience for primary tasks
• Keep your product crispy
  • simple apps are easier to use, build & sell.

-Christoph

The MicroConf Europe 2015 Talk Recaps can be found on the central “hub” page.

Website: grabaperch.com
Twitter: @rachelandrew
Slides:

 

Talk Recap

• Have no plan of ever selling to Facebook or anything
• What happens after you quit the day job?
  • You hit the goal
  • You don’t have a boss anymore
  • But what is next?
• Created EdgeOfMySeat.com
  • Things were easier back than
  • Swapping hours for money
• Launched Perch as a result of consulting work (scratching own itch)
• April 2013 we went full time on Perch
  • “The most dangerous poison is the feeling of achievement. The antidote is to every evening think what can be done better tomorrow.” – Ingvar Kamprad
• Goal: “Going full time”
  • specific
  • measurable
  • attainable
  • realistic
  • time-bound

What happened after we went full time on Perch?

• we’ve launched a second product that people love (a smaller version of Perch)
• still just the two of us
  • still working very hard – 7 days a week
  • but we love the work
• There is no transformation moment
  • even after going full-time, you’re still you
  • you still have your weaknesses & strengths
  • you may lose a team that covered your weaker spots
• We forgot to ask ourselves:
  • What did we want our life to look like?
  • What was the next goal for us?
• “We have a strategic plan, it’s called ‘doing things'” – Herb Kelleher
• What are your options? 
  • stay small
    • outsource to small team of freelancers
    • not all products suit small (customers need rapid support; mission critical)
  • hire a team
  • replace yourself
    • “get the solution right then remove yourself from delivery” – Brian Casel
  • sell up and move on
• We’ve tried staying small
  • Perch as a business has a lot of moving parts:
    • Development
    • Ops
    • Community stuff
    • Marketing
    • Support
    • Documentation
  • We can’t do the job of 5 people
  • We could have delayed that jump
    • continue with consulting
    • would have allowed to hire sooner
    • could have self-funded first hire
• sometimes it is OK to upset a few customers
• Why not hire/outsource support?
  • as a self-hosted product support is often our first run experience
  • it is truly technical support
  • not the sort of support a VA can easily handle
  • support that every person with technical chops in the company is going to need to help with
• hiring a developer: what will this give us?
  • more development capacity
  • someone to work alongside
  • focus
  • new ideas and input to the product
  • What’s stopping us?
    • Money – we’re not quite there yet
  • How are we going to get there?
    • Increase profit to hire developer
    • Working strategically on things that increase sales of Perch
    • Focus on most profitable customers?
  • Who are our most profitable customers?
    • Perch is one-off license sale
    • Recurring because people buy a license per site they develop
    • Support costs are front-loaded
  • How do we identify profitable customers?
    • Look at data
    • segmented our customers into groups: casual, committed, super-users
    • current list of top 100 customers on our dashboard
      • I never talked to some of those customers!
  • We want customers who:
    • run a busy consultancy agency
    • Are building lots of websites
    • are more interested in being profitable than playing with the newest shiny thing
  • Your sales data is a goldmine of information
    • you don’t need a SaaS for this
  • Prioritise features wanted by ideal customers
    • Add weight to feature requests based on customer profile
• Where do our customers come from?
  • our audience
    • seen me on stage somewhere
  • Colleagues’ audiences
  • NOT our ideal customers
• Where do our IDEAL customers come from? 
  • they have often never heard of Drew or I
    • e.g. in support they don’t know we are the founders
  • cold audiences from Google, or referrals based on word-of-mouth
  • “Our customers don’t come through the one marketing channel that I am good at!”
• content marketing targeted at ideal customers
• search engines
  • we do well in organic search traffic
  • which has meant we’ve typically been a bit lazy
• Placing ads
  • choosing sites that attract our ideal cusotmer
  • using ad copy that targets these customers
  • creating landing pages that speak to these customers
  • TEST!
• Plugging our leaky funnel
  • we love Drip!
  • Pushing our customer segments into Drip so we can target them as groups.
  • Identifying lapsed customers – those who haven’t bought a license for 6 months – and emailing them
  • Book recommendation: Watertight Marketing
• We have everything we need to do this
  • Nothing we’ve discovered has been a shock
  • Underlined things we really already knew
  • We’re looking at data through a different lens
• If you are stuck
  • define your vision for your company and life
  • what does it look like? What is your role? What else are you able to do?
  • “Arrival is not static” – Sherry Walling

-Christoph

The MicroConf Europe 2015 Talk Recaps can be found on the central “hub” page.

Website: pocketrisk.com
Twitter:  @johnndge
Slides:

Talk Recap

• Pocket Risk is an online investment risk questionnaire for financial advisors
  • launched in April 2013
  • $99/mo
  • made it to 6-figures as a non-technical founder

Idea Phase

• Goal: Establish whether you have something valuable
  • Establish what you want to achieve – $10k MRR, quit your job, billionaire
  • Margin of safety – have money in the bank or a job
  • Find a problem – your own experience or speak to market
  • Assess market size – can I achieve my goals in the market?
    • total reachable market given your resources (i.e. you know SEO, PPC –> that’s your market)
  • Validate problem – speak to 20 prospects and see if problem exists
  • Define the solution – create a mockup. Have a vision for customers, product and industry
  • Customer validation – sell the solution using mockup. Get 10 companies to pre-pay

Build Phase

• Goal: Hire developer & build something valuable
  • Minimum $15,000 development budget. $100/hour max. You get what you pay for
  • Finding a developer: HN monthly hiring, Ruby groups, referrals
  • Assess Developer – programming test, level of commitment, past work, references, gut
• Continue marketing and building your list
  • have a plan to generate traffic
  • Listen to episode #239 of Startups For The Rest Of Us

Launch Phase

• Goal: Get to breakeven
  • Generate traffic – read Traction by Gabriel Weinberg
  • Find out why people buy, don’t buy, use, don’t use and churn – speak to them on phone
  • Know your metrics and unit economics – traffic, conversion rates, MRR, CAC, LTV, churn, feature usage
    • feature usage tells you “sticky features” that make people happy
  • Develop Relationships – industry journalists, thought leaders, other CEOs serving same customers

Growth Phase

• Goal: Achieve your overall goal
  • Manage churn – don’t die by a thousand cuts
    • reducing churn doubled my LTV
    • every 30 days check which users didn’t use product for last 6 weeks and email them
  • Keep generating traffic – marketing is a tax you pay for being unremarkable. CAC < LTV
  • Systems – start building systems so the company can grow without you. Use software & hire
  • Vision – steer company towards your vision for customers, product and industry

-Christoph

The MicroConf Europe 2015 Talk Recaps can be found on the central “hub” page.

Website: softwarepromotions.com
Twitter: @thedavecollins

Dave published a shortened version of his talk here: The most sincere form of flattery: Useful & effective website ideas to make your own

 

Talk Recap

• “Good artists copy, great artists steal” – Picasso
• “The only art I’ll ever study is stuff I can steal from” – David Bowie
• We know our websites are important
  • But we settle for “Meh” – why is that?
  • Open your eyes to the design – beyond copy and popups and attention grabbers
• Get the originality for your website from copying!
  • Swipe file
  • Copy & Paste vs. Copy & Expand & Paste
• What’s the first thing a website does?
  • give a good first impression!
  • make clear what you DO!
  • make REALLY clear what you DO!
  • focus on the pain
• Why Do you do what you do?
  • Was offered a pay check with a substantially higher salary
  • SEO is kind of boring
  • Looked at our own website: “Does it communicate our why?”
  • never allow users to think “… What do I get now?”
  • Websites without email capture are a waste
• Who are you targeting?
  • adjust your language to your audience
  • Use Avatars
• Logos
  • no one cares about your logo
• Not getting stuck
  • Don’t leave your website visitors hanging
• Make it easy
  • forms need to be obvious, quick
  • reduce nav items where possible
• About what?
  • People like “About Us” pages with pictures of staff
• Balance
  • need to include what is important on website
  • we need to conform to standards
  • BUT: Stand out
• Nudges are good
  • the easier it is, the more likely people are going to use it
• Differentiation through identity
  • Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign
• Clarity beats Clever all the time
  • have obvious headlines

-Christoph

The MicroConf Europe 2015 Talk Recaps can be found on the central “hub” page.

Website: softwarebyrob.com
Twitter: @robwalling
Slides:

 

Talk Recap

• last 15 months of my story as a founder – mainly Drip

3-Step Marketing Playbook

• Build something people want
• Find your position
• Scale

Build Something People Want

• Drip: Revenue at Launch: 100% (All numbers relative to that)
• Stayed the same for ~6 months
  • new trials slowed down after launch
  • 40% trial-to-paid rate
• Rules of thumb
  • visit to trial 0.7%-2%
  • trial to paid: 40-60%
  • First 60/90 day churn: 20-40%
  • Post 60/90 day churn: 4-7%
• “Great marketing only makes a bad product fail faster” – David Ogilvy
• Ask for cancellation reason in a short email
  • How to filter out the useful feedback?
  • Lots of “too pricey” feedback –> Do NOT lower prices; change your product to justify price!
  • Ask customers “What do you need Drip to do to make $50/mo worth it?”
    • “I like automation rules like Infusionsoft”
    • “Tags and a rules engine”
  • Gut feeling: “Marketing automation will justify the price”
    • checked out Infusionsoft via Google image search
    • talked to mastermind group
• Build feature or not?
  • Does it fit my vision of the product?
  • Will this feature matter in 2 years?
  • Will it grow the business?
• Rules Engine
  • Didn’t want to build it: too much work; enterprise-y; not fun
  • building in small steps
  • Revenue went up to 150% – People started talking on Twitter, etc
    • No marketing during that time ==> trial numbers went down
    • Churn rate went down
    • Trial-to-paid went up
    • ==> Product/Market fit

Find Your Position

• If you are in a market with ANY competition, you need to pick a position
• Invent a category (e.g. educate people on “Marketing automation” in 2003)
  • Usually something for funded companies
• Compare features
  • bad path
• Take a position in a category
  • comparing features makes you a commodity
  • better: “One click SaaS metrics for Stripe” – Baremetrics
  • “Drip is the best way to send emails to your prospects, trial users and customers based on who they are and what they’ve done.” –> Worst. Headline. Ever.
• The Choices:
  • Compare Features
  • “Email Marketing”
  • “Marketing Automation”
  • Mastermind group: “Fuck it! Call yourself ‘Lightweight Marketing Automation That Doesn’t Suck'”
  • That headline totally crushed it

Scale

• MRR today: 580%
• First steps:
  • set up email course
  • Retargeting

Concentric Circle Marketing

• Circles
  • Your Audience
  • Colleagues’ Audiences
  • Cold Audiences

• Circle 1: Your Audience
  • Figure out a way to talk about it in a way that your audience appreciates
  • added “Launch. A Startup Documentary“
• Circle 2: Colleagues’ Audiences
• Circle 3: Cold Audiences
  • “Powered by Drip” widget link
  • adding integrations to other software, get featured on “Integrations” page
  • SEO

Tactics we haven’t used

• no split testing (for a lack of time)
• paid acquisition – just recently started
• AppSumo deal
• Webinars – just recently started
• Outbound email – just recently started

-Christoph

The MicroConf Europe 2015 Talk Recaps can be found on the central “hub” page.

Website: jitbit.com
Twitter: @jitbit
Slides:

 

Talk Recap

• “You can teach a software engineer how to run a business, but you cannot teach an MBA how to write code” – Joel Spolsky
• Jitbit history
  • 100% self-funded
  • 10 years; first 5 years: just me, all alone, 2 years moonlighting
  • 4 people, 100% remote
  • Flagship product: help desk software app (Really, REALLY crowded market)

The Don’ts

• Don’t wait for an idea
  • start building before you have a product
  • tons of product-agnostic stuff:
    • website
    • blog
    • analytics
    • email list
    • payment gateway
  • less consumption, MORE creation
• Don’t target developers
  • (At least not with your first product)
  • Hard crowd to please – don’t make it hard on yourself
• Don’t worry about pirates
  • Software pirates never switch to paid versions – they switch to your competitor
  • We even tried “cracking” our own software and uploading it
• Don’t worry about incorporating
  • Revenue is important, “LLP or LLC?” is not important
• Don’t be afraid of competition
  • Don’t try to come up with some new cool innovative shit
  • competition is good news – they proof market exists
  • “Me too” products are fine – you can even clone a product
  • “First – learn to draw a horse” – Salvador Dali

The Dos

• Charge More
  • charge from day 1
  • price for the customers you want
  • $5 customer is different from a $99 customer – $5 customer is PITA
  • add completely stripped $5 plan only to prevent disruptive competition (if threat imminent)
• SEO
  • works on all stages of your company
• “Always be marketing”
  • where no one expects it: 404 page, 500 page,
  • support = cheap marketing (no hard selling, but delight people for word-of-mouth)
• “Marketing Mondays” by Mike Taber
  • whole team does nothing but marketing on mondays
• Content Marketing
• Log everything
  • links you build, AB-tests you run, posts you publish
  • have a “commit history” for your marketing – not just your code

Product Management 101

• Monitor feature usage from 1st customer
  • Monitor trial/paid users separately
  • Kill the unused ones
  • Enhance the heavily used ones
  • CRO inside the product

SEO

• SEO should be done by founder
• Do the basics (on page, mobile, speed, Annie Cushing’s SEO checklist, Google Webmaster Tools)
• target long-tail keywords
  • make all your internal content public – publish knowledge base, enduser docs, API docs, FAQs, installation guides, workarounds
• Build links from pages that rank for your keyword
  • even at #218. Export the ranking URLs (serps.com), check for link opportunities
• Build brand mentions
  • Google’s patents: “Non-linking citations are treated as implied links”
• Competitor backlinks
  • use LinksSpy.com
• Track rankings
  • if it drops, check the “marketing log”, check the Panguin tool
  • track top20 rankings to learn when your competitors improve their SEO –> reverse engineer

Other things we tried (Did it work or not?)

• Remarketing ==> NO
  • people hate B2B/work-stuff on FB
• A/B testing ==> YES
  • be prepared that 90% of tests will fail
  • Always have a hypothesis behind a test – not just “lets try X and see what happens”
  • Don’t trust your guts
  • Statistical significance (long time + high-traffic pages)
• Email marketing ==> NO
  • at least not at the scale I hoped it would work
• Growth hacks (“invite a friend”, “RT to extend trial”) ==> NO
  • not in B2B
• Net Promoter Score ==> YES
  • surveying method to know customer happiness
  • delivers actionable data

-Christoph

The MicroConf Europe 2015 Talk Recaps can be found on the central “hub” page.

Website: writing-skills.com
Twitter: @emphasiswriting
Slides:

Key Takeaways

• Pick a small topic you can cover thoroughly
• Make the user better with each email
• Be supportive personal and confident

 

Talk Recap

• 5 day course: “Homeworking in Brighton”
  • only has 3 emails (!!) – half-finished
  • still converts!

How to write an email course

• Picking a course topic
  1. Everything oyu know about a topic != what you can reasonably teach someone in a week
  2. Example: “Speak in a Week”
     1. Seven-day course
     2. Objective: have a conversation at the end of the week
     3. Solve one problem ==> people think you’re good at solving other problems (Halo Effect)
• Make the reader a better person
  • Example: Brennan Dunn “Charge What You’re Worth”
    • Gets readers to ask questions in a worksheet
    • Focuses reader on problem
  • Example “Serve Mastery”
    • Asks readers to respond to initial email
    • Increases reader’s investment
• Tell people something useful
  • Write things that a user can act on
  • Don’t cram everything into an email
• Course is about more than knowledge – come across as a genuine person
  • Tell stories about your own struggle
  • encourage people to add you on Twitter/Facebook
  • Don’t be timid about giving advice – AVOID underconfidence

-Christoph

The MicroConf Europe 2015 Talk Recaps can be found on the central “hub” page.

Website: zenfounder.com
Twitter: @zenfounder
Slides:

Key Points From the Talk

• own your story
• know your past and the weaknesses & strengths you get because of your past

Talk Recap

• When you are the sole driver of your business, everything else matters WAY more
  • emotional well-being, enough sleep, physical fitness ALL affect your bottom line

How your past shapes your present

• Who you are right now in this moment is an accumulation of all the past moments
• If we don’t pay attention to the messages we received, we won’t be able to make the most out of our strengths and weaknesses
• Abuse, neglect and household dysfunction as a child is a robust predictor of how much healthcare support you will need in your adult life
  • People with 4+ categories of “Adverse Childhood Experiences” were 2x as likely to be diagnosed with heart disease or cancer than someone with <4
  • People with 4+ ACEs were 460% more to suffer from depression
  • 6+ ACE shortened an individual’s lifespan by almost 20 years
• We can’t change what happened in childhood, but we can change adoption of health-risk behaviors
• The same things that can hurt us can also make us incredibly strong
• The important thing is NOT how scary your liabilities are, the important thing is that you do NOT look the other way
• the golden child
  • gives you a lot of confidence
  • shadow side: you might lack grit
• the loner
  • incredible ability to trust your own ideas
  • good problem solver
  • you don’t seek permission
  • shadow side: difficult to understand your customers, lacking empathy
• the pleaser
  • growing up in a demanding family (“You’ll be a lawyer!”)
  • able to anticipate needs & wants of others
  • shadow side: perfectionist
• the survivor
  • great ability to protect yourself
  • good at competition, a lot of grit
  • shadow side: difficult to feel accomplishment

The past matters

• From the founder origin stories
  • lots of adversity – but enough support to hang in there
    • use friends/masterminds to talk through tough spots
  • The need to create an original path
    • not following a script
  • intelligence, curiosity and hard work
• Own your story
• not owning your story
  • forcing what has never worked for you

Practical Strategies to own your own story

• Start tonight
• write your personal story
  • go on a retreat
  • use a free writing method
  • work with a coach or therapist
• tell your story in your matermind group
• write or record the origin story of your business
• cultivate self-reflection to watch your story unfold in front you

 

-Christoph