Dropbox explainer video? You're missing most of their Lean Startup

Traffic Source: HackerNews, link to landing page with demo video targeted at early adopters

Result: Pass. Built list of around 5,000 interested prospects. The problem description resonated strongly with their targeted early adopter audience.

Step Back: Moving to a video format helped get across the product’s story more effectively. This made it more accessible to everyone. In and of itself, an explainer video is just a change in format–similar to how a bestselling book is treated as a candidate to become a blockbuster movie. Ultimately, a landing page that tests demand much get across the story well. The medium for telling that story is secondary to the relevance and quality of that story to the target audience.

As Dropbox’s initial target audience was quite technical, this explanation mapped to a number of tools and behaviors they already knew from software development. And they were more than happy to run with the write once, read anywhere concept. Arguably, this niche perceived other cloud storage as defective because it didn’t support this kind of functionality. As a result, they needed little convincing and persuasion to hop on board.

Hypothesis: Paid search can be a profitable engine of growth for Dropbox

Test Type: Growth hypothesis

Success Criteria: Customer Value > Customer Acquisition Cost

Traffic Source: Paid search engine marketing

Dropbox experimented with using paid acquisition on a landing page. This is not an early-stage landing page MVP test. It’s an attempt to figure out what will grow the company, not whether the product idea is attractive. They hired an experienced search engine marketer, who went out and made landing pages. On those pages, they hid the free option, replacing it with a free time-limited trial.

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James says

February 14, 2022 at 6:05 am

We’re trying to apply some of the principles here when launching TMchecks.com our free trademark clearance searching tool

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Why your riskiest assumption is a great place to start with any new product or idea says:

November 13, 2019 at 9:01 am

[…] average person in 2001. When they first started out, the very idea in its basic form seemed crazy. "Access your files from anywhere" by Dropbox. Send cyberpayments via PalmPilots for PayPal. And so on. Many of these startup ideas are based on […]

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Dropbox explainer video? You’re missing most of their Lean Startup story…

Hypothesis: Paid search can be a profitable engine of growth for Dropbox

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