Launch Tomorrow

Landing Pages for your Lean Startup

  • About
  • Members
  • Blog
  • Products

Why early stage virality can indicate product readiness

June 26, 2020 by Luke Szyrmer Leave a Comment

In the early days, when I was just polishing off the manuscript of Launch Tomorrow, I gave it to a friend who also lived and breathed startups. I specifically requested that he keep it quiet and just asked for feedback. Professionally, he was a marketer but in this case I was hoping to get some honest “tough love” from him. To make sure the book would be good.

After speaking with him in person, I dropped a pdf into gmail, and forwarded it on to him. Coincidentally, I also happened to have an early trial version of Streak installed on my gmail account, which is an app which measures email opens, now primarily used by salespeople.

Over the next week or so, it turned out 37 people had opened that email 56 times in different locations around London and Europe. This simple indicator was enough to convince me that the manuscript is definitely at least a minimum viable product. If not a bit more. There were a lot of tweaks I wanted to make, but clearly my idea audience was enjoying and using it. Even though this viral spread was accidental, ultimately I was pleased that my friend had effectively proven to me that my product was ready.

This was a special case of someone who knew me well, the fact that he forwarded it without my consent and that it was re-forwarded so many times implied that my soon-to-be released product will be able to generate word of mouth referrals when I do launch. This was particularly poignant, given that this was a B2C product. Like most impulse buys, books (on their own) tend to be low $ value products. There is little margin for error with a high customer acquisition cost, yet you need to be great at generating awareness and discoverability. So you can only use channels that have a fixed cost up front but little additional variable cost of reaching another person.

Going Viral

While virality seems “free” from a financial point of view, it’s expensive in terms of your time. The idea is to create enough product (content in my case) which people naturally want to share. Once you have their attention, you include some kind of call to action which then turns into a conversion , like a sale. Or at least a micro conversion, like getting an email subscriber.

Your riskiest assumptions are probably related to your prospects and customers. Establish empathy quickly with your target prospect, figure out what's valuable, and get your innovation into the market.

Filed Under: assumptions, metrics, modelling Tagged With: faster time to market, growth, launch

« Kinda Disproved: the myth of the startup garage
Win the fight for attention by communicating with relevance »

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

By Role

  • Startup Founder
  • Software Manager
  • Remote Leader
  • Innovation Executive
  • You Like?

    Search

    Key Topics

  • Faster time to market
  • Early-stage Growth and Marketing
  • Product-Message-Market Fit
  • Experiments and Minimum viable products
  • Metrics
  • About Luke

    Luke Szyrmer is an innovation and remote work expert. He’s the bestselling author of #1 bestseller Launch Tomorrow. He mentors early stage tech founders and innovators in established companies. Read More…

    Topics

    • agile
    • assumptions
    • case study
    • communication
    • conversion rate
    • delay
    • experiments
    • extreme product launch
    • find people
    • funding
    • Growth
    • inner game
    • innovation
    • landing page
    • landing page MVP
    • manage risks
    • marketing
    • metrics
    • minimum viable product
    • modelling
    • modularity
    • personal
    • Pitch
    • podcasts
    • priorities
    • proof
    • release planning
    • Risk
    • software
    • startup
    • stories
    • time management
    • tools for founders
    • uncategorized
    • unknown unknowns
    • velocity
    • vizualization

    Tags

    agile funding attention automated testing CAC case study covid cringe cringeworthy customer development economic impact existential risk explainer video extreme product launch faster time to market founder market fit founders growth headlines hero canvas identifying needs landing page mvp launch lean startup links market risk message minimum viable product modularity numbers options planning principles prioritization product market fit real options relevance split testing stealth story systemic test driven development testing time management traffic underlier

    Copyright © 2023 · Log in · Privacy policy · Cookie policy · Terms & conditions