Latest / iwon™ podcast with Michael J Thomas / Buffer, Dropbox and Superhuman -The Exact Tactics That Drove Rapid Growth - iwon podcast - episode 14

Transcript

Buffer, Dropbox and Superhuman -The Exact Tactics That Drove Rapid Growth - iwon podcast - episode 14 · iwon™ podcast with Michael J Thomas

• 0:01
  If you're a founder, you know that social media tells you that everybody else has got it together and it can easily make you feel like you haven't got all the answers figured out.
• 0:10
  When you think you should, let me first just tell you that's bollocks, it's not true.
• 0:17
  And I'm going to break it all down for you.
• 0:19
  Nobody does what I'm about to do on screen for you and share with you, not very often.
• 0:26
  So I felt I had to do it because I really want to separate the difference between reality and fiction.
• 0:32
  I'm actually going to do a serious tactical breakdown in no time at all of Buffer, Dropbox and Superhuman to show you how to get where they are, how they did it.
• 0:44
  I'm going to show you how to validate your idea and get your first users, if that's where you are, or if you already have your own software company, how to validate that next big feature idea before putting it
• 0:58
  on your roadmap using real examples.
• 1:00
  I'm going to show you exactly how they did it so you can learn from it and apply it to your business.
• 1:08
  If you're building a SaaS or software or tech business or any other business, the dangerous moment, the most dangerous one is not launch day.
• 1:17
  It's a long time before that, perhaps six months.
• 1:20
  When you're building, excited, building more things, you need to think about what the market cares about and guess.
• 1:32
  Do the right people recognize the problem?
• 1:34
  Can they picture a better outcome with you?
• 1:37
  And will they actually take the next step?
• 1:39
  Today I'm going to show you what Buffer, Dropbox and Superhuman tested before they push towards scale.
• 1:46
  So this is all about SaaS, software, tech, call it what you want.
• 1:51
  Go to market and the real world.
• 1:53
  Not some theoretical framework, not some post every day and hope.
• 1:57
  These are three stories.
• 1:59
  No success stories, no bs and I hope one useful thing you can take away from each one.
• 2:07
  Pick from the bunch.
• 2:09
  Fundamentally, Buffer tested whether people would actually move towards paying before it was actually built.
• 2:15
  Dropbox, on the other hand, made the experience visible and understandable before it was even scalable.
• 2:22
  And Superhuman took a different route.
• 2:24
  They stuck to their craft.
• 2:26
  They held back when the evidence said that the right users of people they wanted you, wow.
• 2:33
  Did not care enough.
• 2:35
  I'll go through all of these and show you the real stuff.
• 2:38
  Then I will turn it into a simple notebook of sorts for you.
• 2:40
  A three step plan.
• 2:43
  Buffer is deceptively simple.
• 2:45
  They didn't ask the people, do you like your idea?
• 2:50
  They actually asked, will anyone move one step closer to paying for it.
• 2:55
  To me that distinction matters.
• 2:57
  The early version was a two page MVP that I'll show you in a moment.
• 3:02
  They explained the idea, showed the pricing and asked for something not a full platform, not enormous roadmap and certainly not hundreds of features.
• 3:12
  They were just trying to earn the next.
• 3:14
  Yes, I'll show you all of it, but first I'm going to show you Buffer.
• 3:20
  Okay, so first Buffer, now the first MVP they posted on Twitter or X.
• 3:30
  And they just started with the simple notion tweet more consistently with buffer.
• 3:35
  Choose times to tweet, add tweets to your buffer, Buffer does the rest relapse.
• 3:40
  And then just a length of pines and pricing it was very simple.
• 3:44
  Tweet more consistently with buffer.
• 3:46
  They recognized that people had a consistency problem.
• 3:48
  They made it clear that the product wasn't done yet.
• 3:51
  So you cut us before you're ready.
• 3:52
  We're ready.
• 3:54
  Back in 2011 I believe.
• 3:56
  And then 2015, as things changed and social media platforms changed, they focused on the easiest way to publish on social media.
• 4:07
  By that point they had thought about Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and now Pinterest.
• 4:12
  And as we go along in 2018, they had a lot more to focus on.
• 4:16
  So what do people care about?
• 4:17
  Save time managing your social media, Schedule your posts for later and then go Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google.
• 4:28
  Manage all your accounts from one simple dashboard.
• 4:32
  Posting, schedule ad posts, build your following.
• 4:35
  And then they started adding Instagram as well as a tool to help you save things that you think might be worth sharing and finally analyzing the performance.
• 4:46
  See, it went from tweet more consistently to then adding LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter as well as Pinterest to now a serious thing, save time by scheduling on all these platforms, being able to come up with ideas easily adding
• 5:06
  Instagram and then of course doing analysis so you know what's working.
• 5:10
  So that's back in 2018, 2020, which was just roundabout Covid they started to segment these ideas.
• 5:20
  So build your audience and grow your brand on social media with something they call publish down planning.
• 5:30
  And then they've got more brief 75,000 brands collaborate with your team.
• 5:35
  So these must have been features that people asked for as they went along.
• 5:40
  And then Instagram.
• 5:41
  It's much more than just connect Instagram direct scheduling, first comment show grade reminders and then of course analyze and reply.
• 5:49
  So they created Publish, analyze, reply as three tools to sort of distinguish themselves from everybody else.
• 5:56
  But learned from feedback as they went along.
• 5:59
  This is the present day.
• 6:00
  They talk about a Social media workspace.
• 6:03
  So effectively every single thing you can possibly imagine and things like cloud, Gemini chat, GPT, et cetera, publishing integrations turn any idea into a perfect process.
• 6:17
  Not changed dramatically, but it's about integrating with all these tools, human support and then tons of social media resources.
• 6:28
  And that are at 258,000 active users.
• 6:32
  So I believe 2018 they were 75.
• 6:36
  Okay, so three and a bit times bigger over seven years.
• 6:42
  And again, it's much more about integration with the tools that you already love.
• 6:47
  And it's a workspace, so it kind of puts everything in one place.
• 6:50
  So it's gone from stay consistent with Twitter to add more things, save time with social media, all these integrations, analysis and then to publish schedule nors.
• 7:05
  The social media workspace then integrates with all the tools that you use.
• 7:10
  So you see, over time they've gotten more and more refined with exactly what their target market wants to.
• 7:17
  And as you can see at the very beginning, going back to the mvp, look how little is on this.
• 7:24
  Here it is.
• 7:25
  Tweet more consistently with Buffer.
• 7:27
  That's four words.
• 7:30
  It's a very simple way of explaining.
• 7:33
  And remember that the page itself isn't trying to do everything.
• 7:38
  It is testing whether the problem is recognizable and whether the promise is actually strong enough to create some sort of movement or commitment.
• 7:45
  And again, they just posted that on Twitter, which is where they began.
• 7:49
  Of course, the pricing page is important because it changes the question from or the answer.
• 7:59
  That sounds nice, like, oh, that sounds great to I'd actually take a step towards paying for this.
• 8:03
  I think it's useful.
• 8:05
  If you look at Buffer today, as I showed you, the message is much broader because the users it caters for are much broader.
• 8:13
  It's now a social media workspace.
• 8:15
  But the first job was extremely specific.
• 8:18
  It was about people publishing more consistently on Twitter.
• 8:22
  And this really tells us what Buffer is choosing to focus its attention on and see what matters.
• 8:33
  We're only looking at whether the landing page, the product and the promise still line up because curiosity is not enough.
• 8:40
  The goal is to create the smallest page that tests one painful thing and one meaningful next step.
• 8:47
  What would you test with a click a wait list or pilot request this week before you build another feature.
• 8:54
  Now you see drawbacks had a very different problem, and that is that file sync as an idea is not sexy and it's not easy to describe and ultimately it sounds so boring in copy.
• 9:07
  But the results really important.
• 9:10
  I'll show you now Dropbox.
• 9:12
  The idea is a video so I can't play that right now, but you can sign up for the beta and then pop in your email address.
• 9:21
  So Dropbox, their beta saying was an MD key with an explainer.
• 9:25
  And the idea was that they would build validation that people actually wanted this thing.
• 9:31
  You can do the same with your existing users if you've got a software product right now.
• 9:36
  What makes Dropbox so good, I suppose is basically in the video we talked about the concept of file sharing and having a place to store all your stuff.
• 9:48
  It was a weird concept back in 2008, to be honest.
• 9:52
  So they just had a video and a landing page.
• 9:54
  So they just got people to sign up for the beta.
• 9:58
  And then 2015 was when it got very different.
• 10:02
  As you can see with 2008, it wasn't great, but it worked.
• 10:05
  Three words to describe your stuff anywhere was where they shifted in 2015.
• 10:13
  Your stuff anywhere.
• 10:14
  Sign up or sign in wherever you are, share with confidence, safe and secure.
• 10:21
  And what you see is they're actually talking about actual outcomes and benefits.
• 10:26
  They were talking about the idea that people actually care about, which is having their stuff wherever they want and being able to share confidently and confidentially.
• 10:39
  Now, before we go, this is the present day business and again, the likes of Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, whatever.
• 10:52
  And the idea here is get to work with a lot less work.
• 10:55
  I love that.
• 10:57
  Really simple.
• 10:58
  So we went from trying to explain what a file sharing platform was back in 2008, the backend stuff and your files everywhere, anywhere, and then get to work with a lot less work.
• 11:12
  So these days it's all about collaboration and the fact that you can integrate with everything.
• 11:17
  So context is there, share with them clearly what you can see as you go on, it's point it fast every time.
• 11:25
  Share files without slowdown.
• 11:27
  The whole idea is share files without slowdown, collaborate, all that malarkey.
• 11:32
  So there's a lot of collaborative work going on with Dropbox.
• 11:37
  So over time they found the markets that I talked about here on construction, media, technology, professional services, et cetera.
• 11:47
  So again, I would say to you, whether you want your perfect thing or you're, I suppose whether you want your next feature or you're scrapping a startup from scratch, really think about who it is, who really wants your
• 12:03
  solution and who's going to benefit from it most and how you learn things over time.
• 12:10
  You also start hearing things that people say and think, such as file sharing is tedious.
• 12:17
  I just want all of this work in one place and I hate it.
• 12:20
  I have Google Drive, I have all these other things Myself and I know where they are.
• 12:26
  I don't.
• 12:27
  But it's the idea of finding the right files fast, information in one place and then of course I'm just going to dive in.
• 12:40
  So I'll look at the advertising side of things.
• 12:42
  It all looks very corporate.
• 12:45
  Secure storage and backup, secure file sharing, virtual data rooms, Dropbox for business.
• 12:53
  They become much more than sort of just a freelancers tool.
• 12:56
  They're focusing much more on business collaboration.
• 12:59
  Work smarter, not harder.
• 13:01
  And then you've got different things into that with your document tools.
• 13:06
  I'm sure you can find that useful because it's all about thinking about what different segments of your market really want.
• 13:14
  My third example is really different based on this core idea that I totally love.
• 13:20
  Superhuman.
• 13:20
  So these three brands I think are brilliant.
• 13:25
  Back in 2017, Superhuman launched with this idea of being brilliant at email.
• 13:32
  I love the idea of be brilliant in your email.
• 13:35
  I get bombarded with emails.
• 13:36
  I'm sure you do too.
• 13:38
  And often it's quite hard to keep your inbox clean and clear.
• 13:42
  And the idea they've got is to rebuild the inbox and wrap it up.
• 13:49
  They were talking about AIs.
• 13:51
  I know it's the buzzword now, but back in 2017 I believe they started talking about, oh, AI triage.
• 14:00
  There you go, right there.
• 14:02
  And so over the years it didn't change much.
• 14:06
  In fact, the only thing that changed was sign up to request access.
• 14:14
  So obviously they had a lot of demand for the product and they didn't want to overdo it.
• 14:20
  It's so simple and it's a great test.
• 14:24
  You'll notice that like I just showed you, 2020 was exactly the same and the only difference was that changed the headline a little bit.
• 14:33
  Fastest email experience.
• 14:35
  Be brilliant at email.
• 14:36
  So fastest email experience and then requesting access.
• 14:40
  So they had some form of demand and created demand that was very specific to their audience.
• 14:48
  But the fastest email experience is something that stays consistent even in 2020.
• 14:54
  So I just go here, the fastest email experience ever made.
• 15:00
  And you see Superhuman isn't just another email platform or problem.
• 15:08
  It stays the same and they stick to a core promise and an obsession about solving a particular problem.
• 15:13
  And that problem is email.
• 15:15
  So they said it's all about making things fast and simple.
• 15:20
  So again, as we go on into 2024, when we were really getting into the AI powered email built for high performing teams, but they've stuck with the fastest email experience ever made and they've got a lot more proof
• 15:36
  there.
• 15:39
  Fly through your email, eliminate email anxiety once and for all solving a pain, they kind of highlight the different audiences that would benefit from this, obviously scheduling, replying faster, et cetera, et cetera.
• 15:55
  And then in 2026, which is effectively the present day, integrate into the AI age and kind of the fact that everybody's linking up the tools and what they've been very, very consistent with throughout.
• 16:13
  And I look so as you know, especially in the case of Dropbox and Superhuman, which, you know, they both seem to integrate with tools, bring AI into every app and tab.
• 16:27
  With Superhuman, go get help from agents, right, where you work with your email.
• 16:33
  Save 4 hours every week with email and scheduling, and you see they've been consistent throughout over the five years.
• 16:41
  They didn't even change their headline on the homepage.
• 16:46
  How many software websites do you see that actually stay the same?
• 16:52
  Because solving one big problem is the key and they are laser focused on this idea.
• 16:59
  And talking about things that people care about makes it easier to connect with, such as your team, say, four hours every week and get help from AI agents.
• 17:13
  So when it comes to validating your next idea, what major problems do your target market have?
• 17:19
  Are they the right target market?
• 17:23
  Do they care about those problems?
• 17:25
  And are they really painful?
• 17:27
  Well, so for fundamentally, can the right person name the problem without you doing all of the explaining?
• 17:36
  Like I said, Buffer, and you can get this guide from me if you scan the link above, I'll send it to you as soon as it's done.
• 17:46
  But essentially, Buffer made it really obvious.
• 17:51
  Social media was and Twitter specifically initially was inconsistent.
• 17:56
  Inconsistent and at best really, really annoying.
• 18:01
  And you have to ask yourself, can they picture the better outcome in seconds?
• 18:07
  Do you tap?
• 18:09
  Do you sign up?
• 18:10
  Do you request access?
• 18:12
  Bur showed how they came up with a simple way of explaining it.
• 18:16
  Dropbox, on the other hand, because file sharing was a really strange, unique thing back in the day in 2008, they had to demonstrate the result on a video because the promise was hard to understand in words.
• 18:30
  They needed to highlight and educate why people would need that.
• 18:34
  What you're really trying to do is ask yourself, will they take a meaningful step forward that saves them time, money or effort, or makes them look good.
• 18:45
  Buffer had clicks to pricing.
• 18:48
  Dropbox had demand for waiting lists with a clear explanation.
• 18:51
  Superhuman needed stronger commitment from the right user before it scaled, believe it or not, 22%, I believe maybe 23, said they wouldn't miss it if it disappeared early on.
• 19:08
  And they knew that this was a big problem.
• 19:10
  So they focused very much on the right users and they got it nearly to 60% would miss it.
• 19:17
  So they nailed their ICP, they nailed the problem, they improved and stuck with it long before it scaled.
• 19:25
  So one other important question to ask yourself is does the technology you're using make the existing promise more valuable or less valuable to users?
• 19:35
  Or are you using technology and terminology to distract from the fact that your promise is totally unclear?
• 19:42
  Think about it for a second.
• 19:44
  What thing you're going to test first, the problem, the promise, or the path?
• 19:53
  Do not avoid this.
• 19:56
  Design the smallest test that can give you a reasonable signal In a week, 10 days, whatever it may be, and make sure that for those of you who would love the whole playbook with all of this in there,
• 20:15
  I will share it with you.
• 20:16
  Just scan that QR code or click on down below.
• 20:19
  I'll get to work on putting this together for you.
• 20:23
  And please do.
• 20:25
  It'll be a simple worksheet really, to help you test your problem, your product, and your path before you spend another month or more building a feature that nobody really wants as much as you might like.
• 20:37
  So let me know.
• 20:39
  Which are you testing first, Promise, product, or path?
• 20:44
  Every week I pull apart real stories and turn them into practical playbooks that you can use to grow your business.
• 20:53
  If you know the podcast, I interview successful founders and experts very regularly to share the knowledge that no one else really does.
• 21:01
  If you found this useful, please make sure you hit that subscribe button and I will see you for the next one and I'll bring you lots more amazing interviews very soon.
• 21:12
  If you found this particular video useful, where I break things down from a marketing point of view and a growth point of view, please let me know in the comments.
• 21:23
  I'll do more of it.
• 21:24
  If you like it alongside founder interviews and the news, please do hit subscribe.
• 21:30
  Like I said, I'm trying to hit a thousand subscribers by February.
• 21:34
  It's totally free.
• 21:36
  Thank you so much for watching and have a wonderful day.