In early 2021, MeetEdgar was going through a period of stagnation that forced Laura to make some tough choices. And when she started reaching out to other Founders in her circle about what she was going through, it became apparent that this kind of downturn wasn’t uncommon — it was actually the norm: I think it’s good to talk about because you often don’t hear about any kind of ups and downs with SaaS.
For years now I’ve been obsessed with understanding unique product cultures and how they enable companies to build world class products. One particular product culture that has always fascinated me is Amazon and their unique writing culture. I love talking to Amazon employees about how the writing culture is interwoven into their product development process and the pros and cons of it.
One of the biggest myths/illusions that creatives make who want to build a passive income business is that the market is saturated. The market feels saturated when you’re not making sales. But here is a tip to help you stand out and make more sales: value-adds. Value-adds are features, improvements, or additional material that add utility or desirability to a product.
Notifications are crucial for user retention. But 50% of people decline notification prompts. So to re-engage users, Linkedin uses a clever (yet human) tactic. There is nothing rocket-science-like here, but just meeting users expectations that any app could and should follow.
What do you do when you don’t understand a word or phrase? With over 9 billion searches happening daily, you probably Google it. Considering that a significant percentage of people use search engines as a dictionary, it’s a no-brainer for you to create glossary pages — especially if you use a lot of industry-specific terms or jargon. And that’s exactly what the team at Databricks did. We like to call it the keyword glossary strategy.
4 years later, the answer remains: sometimes. VC = smart money. VC = value add. VC = helpful. This is how the VC industry markets itself to founders. But do founders really agree? VCs think they add about 30% more impact than founders do, with similar gaps in perception across most other areas.
A free experience that suits your product and user base is the foundation of any product-led growth strategy. And when you’re thinking about what product-led model is right for your business, typically only free trials or freemium comes to mind. But there are actually six distinct product-led models you can choose from. And each one has its own set of pros and cons depending on your product and user base.