We (Screenhero, W13) may well have been one of the many YC companies PG’s referring to! But instead of hoping there was some test to hack, we were worried that there was some unknown hack out there that we didn’t know. It was quite a huge relief when PG told us something to the effect of “all the successful startups have found their initial grown through just one thing: delighting their users with a great product”.
That realization / confirmation freed us four engineering cofounders from worrying about some “growth hack” we never learnt, and helped us focus on prioritizing our product development through talking to users. We then used Sean Ellis’ “very disappointed” survey methodology (which Rahul @ Superhman recently wrote about) and used it as our North Star to find the few features to focus on polishing.
We got acquired by Slack in 2015, and built out Slack Calls. I left last year, and I’m now in the final stages of launching a new product around super-charged meetings for remote teams (picking up where Screenhero / Slack Calls / Zoom left off), and am using the same principles again. No hacking of tests, just building a product that people want, and using their feedback as the only valuable bit of data in determining priorities. Thanks PG and YC (and Sean Ellis!) for startup principles and methodologies that have stood the test of time.
That realization / confirmation freed us four engineering cofounders from worrying about some “growth hack” we never learnt, and helped us focus on prioritizing our product development through talking to users. We then used Sean Ellis’ “very disappointed” survey methodology (which Rahul @ Superhman recently wrote about) and used it as our North Star to find the few features to focus on polishing.
We got acquired by Slack in 2015, and built out Slack Calls. I left last year, and I’m now in the final stages of launching a new product around super-charged meetings for remote teams (picking up where Screenhero / Slack Calls / Zoom left off), and am using the same principles again. No hacking of tests, just building a product that people want, and using their feedback as the only valuable bit of data in determining priorities. Thanks PG and YC (and Sean Ellis!) for startup principles and methodologies that have stood the test of time.