I’ve talked to so many early stage startups who are worried about the competition or people “stealing” their ideas, or even (god help us) want VCs to sign a nondisclosure agreement.
Rule #1. Nobody gives a crap about your stupid idea. Even if it’s not a stupid idea.
Y0u should be so lucky that somebody cares enough about your idea to try to steal it. They can steal your idea, but they can’t steal your brain. Ideas are worthless. Execution and commitment are everything. They can’t steal your execution, and they will undoubtedly lack your commitment — after all, it’s not their idea — it’s yours.
Here’s the truth.
Rule #2. Your competition is the “back” button. The total indifference of the world to what you are doing. When I hit that page, or start that app, and have the slightest doubts about the quality of what I’m seeing, I’m outta here and not coming back. I’m busy and I have too many choices.
If you’re doing something new, other players in your space help you, not hurt you when you’re young — because they’re helping socialize the idea that something like this might be something somebody wants. And people might use both products. Goodreads and LibraryThing are book review and cataloging services. I use them both, I like them both. Even though I’m building a semi-competitive book recommendation engine called The Hawaii Project. As you get bigger, and your category more established, thencompetition becomes more of an issue. In the early days, just stop worrying about.
Get over the cleverness of your idea, get out there and tell people about it.
And build it so well people don’t hit the back button.
In the early days of a startup, everything is training. You’re alway practicing. Talk to anyone who will listen. Think of yourself as an athlete, always training, practicing.
That party where you’re answering questions from some random person at your startup — 2 months later you’re going to get that question from a rock star reporter when you least expect it, and you’ll be ready with the answer on autopilot. Keep building. Keep doing stuff even when the payoff isn’t 100% clear. Invest yourself. Get paid later.
That random student who wanted to chat, you thought about blowing off? Turns out his mom is a VC. That candidate who you knew wasn’t right, but still wanted to chat? Turns out he knows the perfect person and introduces you after you do him the courtesy of a conversation. Invest. Share. It will come back to you in ways you never expect.
You don’t make your money now off your success now (mostly). You make your money in the next “life”. Because what you do in this “life” (your current gig) is what gets to that next, bigger gig, your next “life”, that’s an even bigger opportunity. You’ll have to earn it there, too, but you’ll never get the chance if you don’t invest.
Most of the money I’ve made, I’ve made via Endeca, when they/we were acquired by Oracle. And I worked my ass off for it. But I’d never have gotten the chance, if I hadn’t invested 5 “dog years” (seemed like 35 years) at PTC. It was a meat grinder, a hell of place to learn but an unrelenting grind. But because of the work I did there, and the reputation I built, I got a chance to take the next step up at Endeca. Invest.
I constantly speak to managers or leaders who are aggravated that someone who works for them makes more than they do. “Get over it”, I tell them. I’ve been everything from a manager of a few people to a VP running hundreds of people to a CEO. In almost every circumstance I’ve had someone reporting to me who made more than I did. They say you should hire people smarter than you. I agree. And that probably means they’re sometimes going to get paid more. And you know what — that’s ok, because they’re going to make me money, in this life or the next.
A few years ago, everyone seemed certain that ebooks were taking over, and companies rushed to form the first successful “Netflix for books” service that could provide readers with unlimited ebooks for a low monthly price. Amazon jumped into the market with Kindle Unlimited, challenging the already existing Scribd and Oyster for the ebook subscription […]
We’ve written previously about Scribd and the challenges of the ebook subscription model. Electric Lit reports that Scribd will more-or-less gut the service by imposing hard-to-understand limits on how much you can read on the service. It’s challenging enough to make an economic rationale for Scribd, in it’s current form (as I wrote here). This will make it near-impossible.
The news that Oyster is closing shop (or at least, abandoning their eBooks subscription business) suggests a re-evaluation of the subscription eBook business model is in order. We’ve written before…
I think it’s the endgame, until the publishers see this model as a benefit and revenue source, rather than as something to be tolerated.
The Hawaii Project is a personalized book discovery engine, kind of like a bookstore where every book in the store is picked just for you. When you first sign up for The Hawaii Project, you can pick from our “channels” to identify what kinds of books you are interested in (including traditional genres like “Historical Fiction” or “Romance”, and interesting “concept” Channels like “Noir” or “Exotic Places”. And you can identify authors you love. As you use the system, marking books you’ve Read or Want, we are learning what kinds of books you love, and this improves the quality of our recommendations. But, sometimes this can be time-consuming.
Today, I’m pleased to announce an easy way to jump start your interest profile, by importing your Goodreads library.
It’s quick and easy. Just sign in to Goodreads and go to this Goodreads page. Hit “Export Library”, which will create a “csv” file with your Goodreads Library in it. When it’s complete click on the “Your Export” link to download the file. Then head to the Hawaii Project’s Goodreads page. Pick “Choose File”, select the file you downloaded from Goodreads, and hit “Import Now” to import your library. Books on the “read” or “currently reading” shelf on Goodreads will go on your Read list; books on the “to read” shelf will go on your Want list on The Hawaii Project.
Loading your Goodreads library will give you a head start on tracking what books you’ve Read or Want, and quickly jumpstart your recommendations to take into account the books you’ve read (so we don’t show you those again, but DO show you books in a similar vein). By analyzing the metadata associated with those books, as well as the text, keywords, and books that are often mentioned along side those books, we produce a unique set of personalized, relevant book recommendations (and book news!) every day.
Startups obsess about their User Experience (UX). As well they should. Consumer expectations are sky high — if your product is ugly, hard to use, or confusing, they’ll abandon it in a heartbeat. There’s just too many options out there.
But are you worried about the right things?
Startups have a tendency to agonize over their user interface, but not necessarily the right parts. Fussing with buttons, changing colors, re-arranging pages, tinkering with the home page. Assuming a user flow that’s the typical “previous visitor comes back to the the home page, then hits the link we want them to hit, and takes the actions we want them to take”. This is often not where the big win is.
Here’s the reality. Your first time user experience IS your user experience. It’s the only thing guaranteed to be experienced by all your customers. All those fancy features you are implementing don’t mean a thing if people don’t onboard well. If they onboard well, they’ll come back — and you’ll have acquired the necessary information (e.g. their email address) to pro-actively reach out to them to get them back. If they don’t onboard well, all that other stuff doesn’t matter. Invest in optimizing your first time experience!
What are the key ingredients of a great onboarding experience?
Tell the Story with Progressive Exposure
Incremental Rewards
No friction
Context aware
Multi-channel aware
Easy off ramps
Tell the Story with Progressive Exposure. As people onboard, it’s your chance to tell them the story of your product. Simon Sinek calls this “Start with Why”. “People don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it.”. This is your chance to sell your mission, to tell them that story.
Tell them that story. And what your product’s benefits are, and how it works. But gradually. Make sure you expose the right information first. Gradually reveal details — people can’t take it all in at once. Many details can be deferred to a follow up welcome email, and that gives you another change to help refine the onboarding and drive re-engagement. For example, with The Hawaii Project, I follow up a day after registration with an onboarding email, and if they have not filled out certain bits of information (e.g. their favorite authors!), I will offer them the chance to do it then.
Give them incremental rewards along the way. As they give you information, give them something back, so they invest in the process.
No Friction. Ask the easy questions first. Don’t ask the hard questions til later. (for example, in The Hawaii Project’s onboarding for book recommendations, the first question I used to ask was for people’s favorite authors, via a blank search box. Data and user interviews showed me that many people got stuck on this question. And then abandoned the entire onboarding process. So I moved that question till near the end, made suggestions for them based on previous information I’d gleaned, and made that question optional). If the question is hard, get rid of it or move it to the end once people are invested. Don’t ask for information you haven’t earned the right to yet — for example, asking for payment details when I don’t really even know what the service does yet.
Context Aware. You have to be aware of how people came to your site/app and why they did so. Quite possibly (most likely) they didn’t start on your home page! They probably started on some other page, if it’s a web app — make sure the onboarding process can be started from there, and is contextually aware of that page and what it means for the user. Maybe it’s a book page for their favorite author — take advantage of that knowledge in onboarding.
Multi-Channel. People may have found out about you by visiting your website and then downloading the app. Or your app and website need to interoperate. Or your website points people to download your app. Where possible be aware of this multi-channel exposure and take advantage of it.
Easy Exit Ramps. Give people an easy way to stop the onboarding process, while leaving with confidence that their information isn’t lost and that they can come back later to finish. Many times people stumble on something interesting, suddenly realize they have a meeting to go to and can’t finish then. Don’t lose them.
Here’s an example I recently came across that breaks too many rules. I saw some ads and articles for an “all you can eat” magazine subscription service,Texture. While they have a website, all the ads (and the positioning on the site) point me to the app. So I downloaded the Android App and fired it up. Here’s what happened.
First three steps on Texture Onboarding
Screen 1. Fine. I guess, why not put sign up first, not second — once people have signed up and signed in, they aren’t going to sign in again? Since you’re advertising a mobile app, why not assume that’s where people are coming from? (I.E. — the only reason I’d need to sign in is if I created an account on the web, then downloaded the app — which is not what your website leads me to do….but fine. So I hit “sign up”, — what wha???? Why am I suddenly cast out of the app into a website? Completely lost my flow already and a bit confused. You’re selling a mobile app, let me create my account in that app without sending me off someplace strange! In that one event I’m already starting to lose trust in this app.
I get a page full of info, instead of a signup form. Ok, so I figure out I’m supposed to hit the button (again) to “Start Free Trial”. (In fact, if I scroll down, there are TWO kinds of free trials to choose from…gack! So I enter my info, and BOOM — Texture wants my credit card!?!!? I don’t enough know what this thing is yet? I know it’s magazines, but I don’t know how it works, what magazines they have, nothing — and they want my CC info. This is WAY too much friction. And you haven’t earned the right to ask for my credit card yet!
Honestly, if I were a normal consumer, and not someone looking to explore onboarding experiences, I’d be out of here, never to return. I’m a lost customer to them. But, I sign up. Here’s the next three screens:
Good grief. After I create my account, it tells me I need to download the app (iOS no less, even though I came from Android)! I already did download the app! That’s why I’m here! If you’re going to send me off to a website to sign me up, at least keep the context that I came from an app and respect it! They’ve lost the context of who I am and how I got here.
Then I get a screen with some high level info — it’s OK, but it’s not the primary content and it’s a lot of info to consume. So I just hit continue, and (finally!) get to the money screen — where I can pick which magazines I want to read! From there it’s no so bad, but in reality they lost me 3 or 4 screens ago. A better user experience would have a) let me start personalizing before asking for my payment, and b) let me create account and payment afterwards, in a native UI. I can’t get away without providing payment info either way, but in this way I’m motivated to pay vs irritated to pay.
Now, Texture seems like an interesting product and I’m sure they’ll refine all this — it’s just an illustrative way of pointing out that all the care they undoubtedly spent on their product UI is potentially wasted because I never got to it.
Your First Time User Experience IS your user experience. Treat it that way.
(are you a Book Lover? Sign up for The Hawaii Project and check out our onboarding. It’s by no means perfect, and comments/critiques are welcome!)
If you’re interested to explore how others tackle Onboarding, there’s some great collections of first time experiences:
I’ve talked to so many early stage startups who are worried about the competition or people “stealing” their ideas, or even (god help us) want VCs to sign a nondisclosure agreement.
