Download - Greg Isenberg: My Million Dollar Product Mistake

My million dollar product mistakes

Greg Isenberg@gregisenberg

Saturday, 16 February, 13

Background. • Building products since I’ve been 13.

• McGill Computer Science Dropout

• Zynga, FedEX, AOL, TechCrunch

• Partner, Wall Street Survivor

• Now: CEO, fiveby.tv , Venture Partner at Good People Ventures.


8 biggest products mistakes in building Wall Street Survivor

$1.5M spent to learn the following lessons.

This is my gi! to you.


Big learning: Compelling copy is key to conversions and also making your brand human, friendly and fuzzy. Developers can’t write copy that

well. That’s what marketers are for.

#1 - Good copywriting is underrated


Mistake: Allowed developers to write copy



Key insight: Great copy is a huge di!erentiator. It connect your audience to your brand. It has a direct impact on retention and

engagement.



Big learning: Scale users quickly by onboarding communities. For us, we got schools, trading rooms and blogs. Influencers hold the key to

these communities.

#2 - Influencers are a big deal


Mistake: Thought that PR would drive influencers.



Key insight: The best way to onboard influencers is the old school way by building a real relationship. Pick up a phone, email them or best yet,

take them out for drinks.



Big learning: Ge"ing influencers onboarded is more di"cult than we thought.

#3 - How to sell to influencers


Mistake: Did not make a compelling enough o!er to get influencers involved



Key insight: Influencers love feeling special so the best way to get the involved is to give make them feel like they are VIP.



Big learning: New technology opens up opportunities for disruption (ex: iOS and the app ecosystem, HTML5 etc...)

#4 - Ride those waves


Mistake: Did not take advantage of mobile. Startups who were mobile-first like Kapitall who were competitors owned the space by the time

we realized it.



Key insight: Always questions how outside innovations provide opportunities for you to grow your business.



Big learning: Strategic alliances with partners helps create value-add for their userbase and helps you get tra#c (and SEO juice).

#5 - Distribution, distribution, distribution


Mistake: Should have embedded “missions” on other publishers sites from day 1.



Key insight: Embeddable widgets that allow users to distribute content across the web, particularly powerful when its their content.

Find your most compelling feature that can be embeddable and do deals.



Big learning: Who says FOMO doesn’t exists on the web? Invite-only increases hype and WOM. People like to be apart of an exclusive club.

#6 - Create exclusivity, urgency and scarcity


Mistake: Should have made our beta private and invite-only



Key insight: Emulate a land grab by providing users the ability to claim "land" on a first-come-first-serve basis (ex: About.me's vanity URL registration before launch,

Convore's chat room creation/moderation)



Mistake: Launched Wall Street Survivor at Finovate ’11 NYC. We rushed launch, built features that were cool to demo but not valuable for the

customers.

#7 - Dos/don’t at conferences


Big learning: Launching at conferences although good for morale, PR and se"ing a date to launch is not always good for the company.



Key insight: Only launch at a conference if it coincides with your product roadmap. Don’t match your product roadmap with conference schedules.

Tip: create a “canned” version of your demo in case internet goes down.



Big learning: Just as design has a process and development has a process as should growth hacking.

#8 - Become a viral baker


Mistake: Growth hacks (invites, sharing features, landing pages) were an a#erthought to product development.



Key insight: The most beautiful products don’t win, it’s the one’s that are marketing machines from the core.



UX makes or breaks companies

(Case study: Songza)


Example: Songza

Came late the game, entered an incredibly crowded space and created a seriously

valuable business.


Songza’s model isn’t really innovative.

Key insight: they just slapped on a killer UX towards music playlists.


(Not much different)


1) Built context 2) Copy that resonates with users

Key insight: They understood mood ma"ers with respect to music and created funnels around moods.

Why it works?


iPad: 1M downloads in 10 days

Songza’s mood is pre$y happy now.

They are is killing it.

50% retention rate.


Pandora (2.2B valuation) is freaking out.

“Pandora is threatened by Songza and that’s one of the reasons shares are

down” - Forbes


<3Thanks!@gregisenberg

[email protected]


mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

Download - Greg Isenberg: My Million Dollar Product Mistake

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