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No one cared about my stupid little startup (and they don’t care about yours either) Matt Brezina Co-founder, Xobni [email protected] Twitter: @brezina

No One Cares About Your Stupid Little Startup

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Xobni's path to 3 Million downloads and the PR strategies involved

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Page 1: No One Cares About Your Stupid Little Startup

No one cared about my stupid little startup

(and they don’t care about yours either)

Matt BrezinaCo-founder, Xobni

[email protected]: @brezina

Page 2: No One Cares About Your Stupid Little Startup

Xobni’s Path To 3 Million Downloads(a 3.5 year journey)

PaidDriversStealth Nerd

ScarcityInviteBeta

Public Beta

IterationPrivate Beta

GA

Page 3: No One Cares About Your Stupid Little Startup

Stealth

PaidDriversStealth Nerd

ScarcityInviteBeta

Public Beta

IterationPrivate Beta

GA

1.5 years

50users

• Only 50 users• Very boring website: No screenshots, product descriptions• Traffic from blogging – problems with email & entrepreneurship• Personal relationships with press and demo under embargo(ask for help before you need it)

Page 4: No One Cares About Your Stupid Little Startup

Private Beta

PaidDriversStealth Nerd

ScarcityInviteBeta

Public Beta

IterationPrivate Beta

GA

2 months

10kusers

• Launched at TechCrunch50• “Too much demand”• Added 10k users in 1 day – everyone else sign-up

Page 5: No One Cares About Your Stupid Little Startup

Nerd Scarcity

PaidDriversStealth Nerd

ScarcityInviteBeta

Public Beta

IterationPrivate Beta

GA

3 months

12kusers

• Leveraged excited early adopters• Badge program

• Added users from beta list when we needed lab rats

Page 6: No One Cares About Your Stupid Little Startup

Invite Beta

PaidDriversStealth Nerd

ScarcityInviteBeta

Public Beta

IterationPrivate Beta

GA

3 months

50kusers

• Users could invite 5 friends• Maintained forgiveness of beta users• Nearly 100% conversion on clicked invites (users were self selecting people who’d want xobni)

Page 7: No One Cares About Your Stupid Little Startup

Iteration

PaidDriversStealth Nerd

ScarcityInviteBeta

Public Beta

IterationPrivate Beta

GA

3 months

60kusers

• Needed product/market fit before exiting exclusivity• Wanted to accelerate WOM & virality for upcoming pop• 100k user beta list• Focused on performance, user ed & virality

Page 8: No One Cares About Your Stupid Little Startup

Public Beta

PaidDriversStealth Nerd

ScarcityInviteBeta

Public Beta

IterationPrivate Beta

GA

1 year

1.5Musers

• Hired PR firm 6 weeks before launch • Officially launched Xobni open beta in NYT• 95k web visitors on day 1• 70k visitors on day 2!!

• Used demand for private beta as proxy for need of a solution to info overload and the value of a people focused inbox

Page 9: No One Cares About Your Stupid Little Startup

Exit Beta

PaidDriversStealth Nerd

ScarcityInviteBeta

Public Beta

IterationPrivate Beta

GA

3 months

2Musers

• Reliable product• With product/market fit• That encapsulated our vision

Resulting in:• Strong WOM• Official adoption in enterprises• The ability to start charging

Page 10: No One Cares About Your Stupid Little Startup

Paid Drivers

PaidDriversStealth Nerd

ScarcityInviteBeta

Public Beta

IterationPrivate Beta

GA

6months

3Musers

• Companies need a Z-combinator• PR & virality aren’t predictably scalable• Ain’t nothing wrong with spending money to make money• Need business model to make the sausage machine work

Page 11: No One Cares About Your Stupid Little Startup

When we got PR help

PaidDriversStealth Nerd

ScarcityInviteBeta

Public Beta

IterationPrivate Beta

GA

Me

PR Contractor(but mostly me)

PR Firm

In-house&

PR Firm

Page 12: No One Cares About Your Stupid Little Startup

No one cares about your stupid little startup

6 tips to make them care

Page 13: No One Cares About Your Stupid Little Startup

Tip 1.

Tie yourself to a bigger trend– The web inside your inbox– Facebook crossing into the business world– Email is the oldest online social network– Enterprise software is now going bottoms up– Email overload is drowning the information

worker– Microsoft sucks

Page 14: No One Cares About Your Stupid Little Startup

Case Study: Email Me Instead

I had 10k users and new blog/press relationships, before Xobni was even in public beta

Page 15: No One Cares About Your Stupid Little Startup

Tip 2

Take every opportunity to meet a journalist in person

• Get product feedback• Social events• Make introductions• Base your company where the media is

Page 16: No One Cares About Your Stupid Little Startup

Case Study: WSJ

Page 17: No One Cares About Your Stupid Little Startup

Tip 3.

Engage heavily with users – positive WOM is even better than press coverage

Page 18: No One Cares About Your Stupid Little Startup

Case Study: Xobni

• Our 5th employee was customer support• Elite Alpha forum of 500 users • Phone call (and blog) with one user per week• Special twitter handle for customer support• Engineers do tech phone calls with users• We send out a lot of tshirts

Page 19: No One Cares About Your Stupid Little Startup

Tip 4.

Journalists are lazy. Help them be lazy

Page 20: No One Cares About Your Stupid Little Startup

Case Study: Xobni.com

Page 21: No One Cares About Your Stupid Little Startup

Tip 5.

Be a source of data

Page 22: No One Cares About Your Stupid Little Startup

Case Studies: Tivo, Trulia, Facebook

Page 23: No One Cares About Your Stupid Little Startup

Now, 3 million people know about – and care about - my stupid little startup

Matt BrezinaCo-founder, Xobni

[email protected]: @brezina