HOW TO (NOT) ANTAGONIZE YOUR

CUSTOMERSIN A LEAN STARTUP WORLD

Ryan Hops

Loyalty WorldMarch 2013

MY GOAL

How to succeed in the digital era, in the world of lean startup, and not piss off your

customers.

I WANT TO LEAVE YOU WITH:

ME:✓ 20 something entrepreneur

✓ Product guy

✓ From Chinese HedgeFund to fintech entrepreneur

✓ UWO - Bachelor of Finance

WALL STREET SURVIVOR SOME NUMBERS: 3M+ pageviews/month, 500k+ users

JOINT VENTURES: With huge financial portals like AOL and the Motley Fool

OUR TECH: Our tech powers 80% of the top business schools in the US

THE EVOLUTION OF WSS

Like many consumer internet startups, WSS is the poster-child for being a pivot machine.

Let’s create a gambling website(2007-2008)

IDEA #1

LEARNING #1

Gambling was a little too grey.

Yahoo Fantasy sports for stock market(2008-2012)

IDEA #2

LEARNING #2

Managing a sports team is a more fun than managing a

stock portfolio.

Financial Education3RD TIME’S A CHARM

LEARNING #3

Huge opportunity to integrate onto 3rd party sites.

THE 6 STEPS

WE TOOK TO NOT PISS OFF OUR

500 000 USERS

(AND NOT LOSE OUR $1,000,000 INVESTMENT)

#1 - WARNING

✓ Give people warnings...

✓ Like lots of warnings...

✓ Like early, often and everywhere...

SOCIAL MEDIA

BLOG

ON-SITE MESSAGING

EMAIL

✓ Don’t worry about your competitors.

✓ Stealth is VERY overrated.

TIP:

#2 - FIND YOUR CORE

✓ Who are your power users/customers? And how can you reach them?

Reach out and make it personal.

WALL STREET SURVIVOR’S TWO BIGGEST FANS

The Johnson brothers from West Monroe, Louisiana

TIP:

✓ the more passionate they will become about your company

✓ the more you will learn about your all users

TIP:The more you connect with your power users:

#3 - SHOW MOCKUPS

✓ Get feedback early. Show to your future customer base as well as existing.

FIRST MOCK LAST MOCK

TIP:

✓ Show, Show and show some more. The more you show, the less drastic your launch will be.

TIP:

#4 -

✓ Create an invite-only beta version

✓ Behavioral vs attitudinal data

BRING THEM INTO THE PROCESS

CROWDSCIENCE

QUALROO

Install Feedback-gathering tools

GETSATISFACTION

✓ If you are proud about your beta, you’re doing it all wrong.

TIP:

#5 - GIVE THEM OPTIONS

✓ People hate when change is forced on them

2,794,000

That’s how many people still use AOL dial-up!

Bottom line: Some people WILL not change.If it’s still profitable to do so, give them options.

2,794,000

Legacy.WallStreetSurvivor.com is still available.

✓ Make them feel like the old site is a rusty old car.

TIP:

#6 -

✓ Don’t listen to your customers too much

✓ Customers (sometimes the best customers) are biased

SOME CUSTOMERS ARE WRONG

✓ If companies only cared about what their customers wanted, there would be no iPhone.

TIP:

BONUS: CASE STUDY

DIGG V4

✓ Digg was founded in 2004 by Kevin Rose (picture on the right)

✓ In 2008, Google offered to buy it for 200m.

✓ By 2010 it was one of the ten biggest sites on the internet

DIGG V3

✓ In 2010, Digg relaunched the site with a brand new design and a totally revamped functionality

✓ In one month after their launch traffic dropped 34%

✓ The never really looked back. In 2012 they sold to Betaworks for $500,000.

DIGG V4

✓ They didn’t involve their power users.

✓ Digg was a community that thrived on it’s power users (less than 100 people).

✓ When the site launched, they were as shocked as everybody.

FATAL MISTAKE #1

They headed over to Reddit to complain and stayed there.

WHAT HAPPENED?

TODAY

Reddit.com is one of the most popular websites around

Image source: newsone.com

✓ They implemented features that none of their users wanted

✓ They built features like My News that no one wanted

FATAL MISTAKE #2

✓ Test, test, test.

TAKE-AWAY:

✓ Too much change - too quickly!

✓ No communication

✓ No roll-out of features

FATAL MISTAKE #3

COMPARISON: FACEBOOKFacebook has had as many unpopular changes as any startup but they roll-out their features slowly - not all at once!

2006 - mini feeds

2008 - the Wall

2009 - Fan pages and the Like button

2010 - the Wall is gone... the Newsfeed is here!

2011 - Ticker and Timeline

THANK YOU!Q&A TIME!

Ryan Hops

Linkedin.com/in/ryanhops@ryanhops