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.

Another approach is to repurpose a backlog management service like uservoice or a kanban tool like trello combined with audience interaction. You can create a backlog of writing ideas, and then have your existing audience vote on them. This way you are naturally spending your time writing things which is attractive for them. It’s effectively a vetting and prioritization system for content, similar to prioritizing features in agile software development.

If you’d like more ideas of how to experiment with growth, take a look at Your First startup experiment my book on getting you to that first experiment. De-risk your startup idea and figure out how to grow, grow, grow with Your First Startup Experiment.

Key Takeaways

  • Virality can be an engine of growth because it rapidly raises awareness at a low per-user cost
  • The key is that you have each person refer more than one person to your product
  • While the best way to get and keep this effect is to build a great product that addresses a market need, you can experiment with some tools to help engineer in virality

<< Help Yo' Friends

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

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