"the Sha Ellis test such a seemingly simple idea that has had such a profound impact on the startup world the question is how would you feel if you could no longer use this product once you got a high ..."

"Alice Sean thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast thanks Lenny I'm I'm super excited to be on with you there's so much that want to talk about there's so many directions we can go..."

"question is how would you feel if you could no longer use this product and I give them the choice very disappointed somewhat disappointed or uh even not disappointed or not applicable I've already sto..."

"get a free month of gamma Pro that's G.A let me tell you about command bar if you're like me and most users I've built product for you probably find those little in product popups really annoying want..."

"and the idea is that if you 40 40% or more of people say they'd be very disappointed if they can no longer use the product you essentially have product Market fit I would say it's a leading indicator ..."

"pattern that you know once you got a high enough percentage of users saying they'd be very disappointed most of those very disappointed without the product most those products did pretty well and then..."

"product you can still get some some useful feedback about the product if if if it's resonating with anyone so I actually had a a company where um I I had committed to work with them it was right after..."

"choice question forc them to pick one of four kind of distinctive benefit statements and then the question that follows on that next survey is why is that benefit important to you and then I start to ..."

"sustainable growth so what I'm hearing is whether you have 40% whether you have 60% or even 7% the actual best use of this tool is look at that percentage of Highly disappointed and see what they're l..."

"until we hit this Target and I think that as just a focusing um piece is really really important because I think one of the one of the biggest challenges in in an early stage startup is half the peopl..."

"fit how often do you have you seen false positives with this test or someone gets 40% and something is not not right they they're actually far from it or is it generally pretty accurate if if you're h..."

"engine and I ran the survey thinking you know you you've had products like Wix and Weeble that have have come on to the market since this you know more Legacy website Building Product has been around ..."

"and speed the value and kind of all all of the all the other things I think about in go to market for an early stage product still were relevant but just the I think they're they were a little stronge..."

"that's kind of the ideal time to ask it got it so basically it's people that have activated whatever that means to you and have been using it for a couple weeks not not people like landing on your hom..."

"may be other other uh places as well that I'm not thinking of right now but that but it sounds like not many what I'm hearing is it's generally widely applicable yeah I think it is like at least from ..."

"acquisition side but um like customer acquisition is so hard that if you if you're not really efficient at converting and retaining and monetizing people you're gonna really struggle on the customer a..."

"I I would I'm I'm just like an intensely curious person anyway so I'm just trying to dig in and understand the customers and so I've always done lots of surveying but at at zne I was gonna ask it as l..."

"something that that is really bringing value to people then then the likelihood that that product's successful long term is going to be pretty low and so even interestingly at at Dropbox I through the..."

"yeah I haven't seen it really like fade back down but it's um but I've seen companies Fail You know despite having it and I think a lot of times then it's it's uh you know it's it becomes like an exec..."

"yeah what's a good sample size you look for just like okay this is actually good data I want to rely on that's really funny like I so so so much of the stuff I kind of like self-learned but I I I basi..."

"we're now down to an execution Challenge and there's this obvious element of you may have product Market fit with people but that group might end up being very small and the business you build around ..."

"becomes a bit of a strategic um a strategic conversation of of like you know do we do we want to have a better chance of surviving going after a a Niche that that we know we can serve well or have we ..."

"that's a really good Insight okay two more questions along this line and then I want to talk about growth strategy uh one very tactical question is there is there a tool you recommend for doing this s..."

"data so at bounce for example um they they had already intercom in place that had just introduced surveying but it was kind of a really crappy customer experience on on at least at that time that that..."

"cohorts is it just once you have enough data once you have a couple cohorts then start looking at that forget about the survey yeah what I would say is um uh like but retention cohorts don't don't giv..."

"bank if anyone wants to see how a company has actually operationalized this in the way they operate that there's an episode that we'll link to in the show notes where every new product at new bank the..."

"they were doing it I think from pretty early on in the business the reason they can do this is they have a lot of users they have millions and millions of users so they can ask some small percentage o..."

"would I would say that they basically ended up probably putting a lot more momentum behind the question than than it had even before they they posted something about how they did it on first round cap..."

"for everyone but not great for anyone and so that was my my fear of like trying to trying to read too much into the users who say they'd be somewhat disappointed but the the Superhuman guys actually f..."

"an awesome Insight by the way did Rahul and the team there just do this on their own or were you involved in any way in this super apprach I mean that's the same thing like I said I I wasn't initially..."

"it better and better and grow faster and faster and it's actually a good Segway talking about growth so even though you coin the term growth hacking you spend most of your time on the opposite essenti..."

"clarification so how did you actually initially frame it when you yeah I just I just said it's it's about you know looking at every single thing that you're doing and uh scrutinizing its impact on gro..."

"growth hacking but I I think it at least open the conversation to to getting more people thinking about maybe maybe we should be thinking about growth in a different way than as it's traditionally tau..."

"a name and so sat down with a couple of friends came up with a name and it stuck and um but but yeah obviously from from day one it was pretty pretty divisive with different groups that's a fun story ..."

"just acquisition which is how most companies think about you know initially it was awareness then maybe the more developed way was like oh let's at least focus on profitable acquisition but in my expe..."

"is like some something that reflects how many people are coming in and experiencing that that product Market fit experience whatever that is and it's not just me telling them here's what your Northsta..."

"I think I touched on it a little bit earlier but generally the sequence that I like to do is start with activation because that's that one's just so critical and it's easy to get lost in between uh es..."

"from from that before I get involved with a company what I'm hearing is when you come into a company and they're asking Sean how do we how do we figure out how to grow this thing you actually Focus fi..."

"important for people to hear so again the reason you invest first and focus a lot on onboarding slash getting people activated is because that is very correlated to retention and this must have custom..."

"the time free remote access for your computer and uh so you install software and you can control it from any other computer so 95% of the people signing up never once did a remote control session and ..."

"for people to try if they're like hey how do I improve my activation rate how do I improve my conversion rate is just like drill further into what is stopping people from progressing like ask them why..."

"the most people the other element of this is coming up with an activation metric and aligning on like here's what we consider someone activated I know this is very dependent on the product but any adv..."

"give you an example from the first company I worked on was a game company where I actually flipped it and basically instead of making a traditional funnel where they could play our games after they si..."

"would be I actually think of kind of like um I'm not sure how it would map to this but like demand generation versus demand harvesting and so you know one of those examples would be a demand uh genera..."

"so I couldn't do that at Dropbox like no one was looking for Dropbox when I went there and so you know we we we tried a little bit with with search to see can we can we make it work on you know cloud ..."

"like they I Google I search Google for folder sharing like like there's so much there that I think to skip over I think the reason that you don't actually kind of hear people taking the obvious route ..."

"this by the way I I don't know if I knew this so you helped develop the Dropbox referral program I was there at the time I basically when I um even when I first started talking with with Drew before I..."

"awesome point and something I was just going to ask about and just kind of coming back to this topic of growing engagement growing referrals as a as a growth mechanism what do you look for to tell you..."

"going to be more likely to work well with referral and then I think on the engagement side a lot of it comes down to just the nature of the product like you Airbnb you're not going to use it every day..."

"had a a really big impact on making that product way more addictive to the point where obviously they ended up in Congress for uh you know or get a lot of push back I'm not sure they got went Congress..."

"framework of ways to to think about a Northstar metric but I think it's really important for it to be a a Time capped group conversation and if if you give a team 30 days they'll take 30 days if you g..."

"there's there's some other things but I think that would be the most important is that it's uh something that could be up and to the right over time and reflects value that you're delivering to custom..."

"think you know focusing on value is is all revenue should be up a byproduct of doing things right it shouldn't it shouldn't kind of guide your day-to-day actions to make this even more concrete for pe..."

"quantifiable way if you're just kind of taking an aggregate number over time it always looks like it's going up so it's an engagement element how often are they engaging yeah okay any others any other..."

"driven on customer acquisition was enough to win and you know being test and data driven on customer acquisition position all the other companies were were like CPM focused and and you know to so like..."

"but I I think it's um I think it's possible it's what I obsess about all the time is how how how do you how do you get cross functional teams working together on growth now and it's still a huge Advan..."

"think I one just quick note on ice is that um you know in order to be able to effectively run a high velocity testing program you need to be able to Source ideas from across the company and that's why..."

"amazing seg wait to the final question the actually final question is I wanted to ask you about any ways you've been using AI or ways you think AI will impact the work you're doing or other folks are ..."

"because I think it gives us a glimpse into how your brain has developed these really simple seemingly simple ideas that end up being really powerful and it feels like the advice is just think about th..."

"wow yeah amazing okay we'll link to that book in the show notes do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show really enjoyed yeah so I've been binging the Olympics I love that just you know watching ..."

"it's also also uh interesting on like Egos and and other things that like everybody's good and friendly in the beginning and then uh and then egos take over and things get a lot harder later on that w..."

"called the pack gear suitcase uh pack gear hanging suitcase organizer so cool gonna check that out uh two more questions do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to that you find use..."

"more learning and as I got more learning the reputation grew and so um yeah there's a really good Corel there with customer support like if someone just hates your product and wants a refund just give..."

"Tok bands oh man Bittersweet I hope they don't pull you into some hearings Sean this was incredible this was everything I was hoping it' be I feel like we collected so much wisdom here for folks to he..."