Xobni's path to 3 Million downloads and the PR strategies involved
Text of No One Cares About Your Stupid Little Startup
No one cared about my stupid little startup(and they dont care about yours either) Matt Brezina Co-founder, Xobni Matt@xobni.com Twitter: @brezina
Xobnis Path To 3 Million Downloads(a 3.5 year journey) Paid Drivers Nerd Scarcity Invite Beta Public Beta Private Beta Iteration GA Stealth
Stealth
Only 50 users
Very boring website: No screenshots, product descriptions
Traffic from blogging problems with email & entrepreneurship
Personal relationships with press and demo under embargo
(ask for help before you need it) 1.5 years 50 users Paid Drivers Nerd Scarcity Invite Beta Public Beta Private Beta Iteration GA Stealth
Private Beta
Launched at TechCrunch50
Too much demand
Added 10k users in 1 day everyone else sign-up
2 months 10k users Paid Drivers Nerd Scarcity Invite Beta Public Beta Private Beta Iteration GA Stealth
Nerd Scarcity
Leveraged excited early adopters
Badge program
Added users from beta list when we needed lab rats
3 months 12k users Paid Drivers Nerd Scarcity Invite Beta Public Beta Private Beta Iteration GA Stealth
Invite Beta
Users could invite 5 friends
Maintained forgiveness of beta users
Nearly 100% conversion on clicked invites (users were self selecting people whod want xobni)
3 months 50k users Paid Drivers Nerd Scarcity Invite Beta Public Beta Private Beta Iteration GA Stealth
Iteration
Needed product/market fit before exiting exclusivity
Wanted to accelerate WOM & virality for upcoming pop
100k user beta list
Focused on performance, user ed & virality
3 months 60k users Paid Drivers Nerd Scarcity Invite Beta Public Beta Private Beta Iteration GA Stealth
Public Beta
Hired PR firm 6 weeks before launch
Officially launched Xobni open beta in NYT
95k web visitors on day 1
70k visitors on day 2!!
Used demand for private beta as proxy for need of a solution to info overload and the value of a people focused inbox
1 year 1.5M users Paid Drivers Nerd Scarcity Invite Beta Public Beta Private Beta Iteration GA Stealth
Exit Beta
Reliable product
With product/market fit
That encapsulated our vision
Resulting in:
Strong WOM
Official adoption in enterprises
The ability to start charging
3 months 2M users Paid Drivers Nerd Scarcity Invite Beta Public Beta Private Beta Iteration GA Stealth
Paid Drivers
PR & virality arent predictably scalable
Aint nothing wrong with spending money to make money
Need business model to make the sausage machine work
6 months 3M users Paid Drivers Nerd Scarcity Invite Beta Public Beta Private Beta Iteration GA Stealth
When we got PR help In-house & PR Firm PR Firm PR Contractor (but mostly me) Me Paid Drivers Nerd Scarcity Invite Beta Public Beta Private Beta Iteration GA Stealth
No one cares about your stupid little startup5tips to make them care
Tip 1. Tie yourself to a bigger trend For us it was: The web inside your inbox Facebook crossing into the business world Email is the oldest online social network Enterprise software is now going bottoms up Email overload is drowning the information worker
Case Study: Email Me Instead Wehad 10k users and new blog/press relationships from our facebook app, before Xobni was even in public beta
Tip 2 Take every opportunity to meet a journalist in person Get product feedback Social events Make introductions Base your company where the media is
Case Study: WSJ
Tip 3. Engage heavily with users positive WOM is even better than press coverage
Case Study: Xobni Our 5th employee was customer support Elite Alpha forum of 500 users Phone call (and blog) with one user per week Special twitter handle for customer support Engineers do tech phone calls with users We send out a lot of tshirts
Tip 4. Journalists are lazy. Help them be lazy
Case Study: Xobni.com
Tip 5. Be a source of data
Case Studies: Tivo, Trulia, Facebook
Now, 3 million people care about my stupid little startup Matt Brezina Co-founder, Xobni Matt@xobni.com Twitter: @brezina
