Lots of great stuff in Charles Duhigg's NYT article about consumer data mining and habits, but one of the things that stuck out the most to me is how Target will deliberately insert ads into a weekly circular for items it knows the intended recipients have no interest in buying. And this allows them to sell more!

"Then we started mixing in all these ads for things we knew pregnant women would never buy, so the baby ads looked random. We’d put an ad for a lawn mower next to diapers. We’d put a coupon for wineglasses next to infant clothes. That way, it looked like all the products were chosen by chance. And we found out that as long as a pregnant woman thinks she hasn’t been spied on, she’ll use the coupons. She just assumes that everyone else on her block got the same mailer for diapers and cribs. As long as we don’t spook her, it works."

There's so much interesting stuff about the irrationality of humans that we're only starting to unpack now.

Saw a good class at Ben Chow about on-boarding new users. My unfiltered notes:

Understanding: It's not enough to just explain your product. You have to 'take their hands' and show them
Tips:
1 grab hands and guide them
-- big arrow pointing to what they should do
-- Progress bar
2 sell your value proposition
3 get personal -- give personalized info/results as fast as possible
4 invite friends and make it make sense (give users a reason to invite)
5 help set up
6 measure performance, optimize funnel

What do you want the user to do every time they use the product? The users want the same thing!

Tell ppl what you do, how you do it, and tell the how they will use it. Think of all the reasons someone would say no and not use it, and preemptively address those

the thing we want to do is build habit. Get ppl coming back frequently. And every time they come back, show them something awesome

Videos do a great job informing but they are passive. Users need to start clicking and doing to build those habits. Not a big believer in using videos in the on-boarding flow because they take a lot of time. The user should move very quickly. Keep them moving and doing.

5-second rule: you have the users attention for 5 seconds. Give them something interesting to do/click every 5 seconds while on-boarding...each time they click, they are giving you another 5 seconds of their attention span.

enemies:
Confusion, apathy, and time
If they're confused, if they're bored, if they are not getting something quick, they're gone
Most users who are trying your app want to love it. So give them something to love.

"how does this product fit in my life?" contextualize for your users. Explain how you fit, how best they can use, etc

Get contact info as soon as possible. Eg get their email before their CC. That way if you lose someone before they complete a purchase you can contact them and offer a free trial or otherwise get another shot at converting them

Email marketing: back off the frequency every time they don't click on your email, otherwise you risk them unsubscribing.

Always a good time at CTO School. This week was Product-Focused Processes and Resets. I am feeling more and more at these that there's a big divergence in what being a CTO means, and the divide is primarily between big (bureaucratic, politically-fraught) organizations and startups (experimentation, continuous improvement, well-greased wheels). At this and the last one I went to, one of the talks felt like it was preaching to my personal choir, the other felt like it was above my pay grade and beyond my bureaucratic tolerance. Even so, I have found them all consistently interesting. Here are my notes:

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Cto school notes may 14

/Cto school notes may 14

Malcom Casey: @malcolmcasey from Skillshare

• Process
  • Align product vision and goals
    • Everyone on team is involved
    • Not top down
    • Product planning and prioritization
      • Identify top problems the product is facing or the users are facing
      • 2 weeks
      • Ask why 5 times
      • What does successs look like, how can we measure thay
    • Product sprint
      • Identify owners and milestones
        • This can be a junior person.
        • Doesn't have to be an expert
        • The owner is in charge of just keeping everything on track, not necessarily implementing all of it
        • They call the owners 'zookeepers'
      • Don't micromanage
      • Strategy
      • Product design
      • Implementation & deployment
      • Verification!
        • Make sure after releasing that the hypotheses were validated
        • Decide whether to keep or kill it
      • Meetings
        • Keep them focused
        • Use hip chat/email/etc, get the feedback
        • As soon as they are ready to make a decision, then schedule the meeting
        • Keep the meeting to 15-30 mins
    • Product design
      • Sketching
        • Everyone on team would sketch, come up with a few solutions
        • 3/1 process (cf apple)
        • Come up w 10 solutions, pick the best 3, refine that, pick the best 1
        • After everyone has done this, agreed, likes it, the move on to wireframes, flows, etc
      • Wireframes
      • User stories & flows
      • Product design != ux/ui design
  • Never "launching" always shipping
• Tools
  • Product design
    • Ux/ui.
  • File mgmt
    • Dropbox
  • Product mgmt
    • Trello
    • Google docs
    • Used to use pivotal tracker but it didn't work for then
  • Bug tracking
    • Lighthouse
  • To do list
    • Behance action runner
    • Asana
• Culture principals
  • PayPal mafia (graphic showing how all the early founders went on to start new successes)
  • It's not about making ideas, it's about making ideas happen
  • Creating great team
    • Not about rock stars, about finding a team that meshes well.
  • Over communicate
  • Transparency
    • Tell employees about vc talks, where the company is going, etc
  • Create solutions not problems. Think about how to fix, mot just pointing out problems
  • Ship it
    • Done is better than perfect
  • Startups within startups
  • Set unrealistic deadlines
    • Estimate what you can do, then aim for 1.5x that
  • All new hires sign an agreement that they understand and agree with the culture
  • Simplify and enhance focus
• Focus
  • Finding the most important thing to work on is critical
  • Startups don't starve they drown (in ideas)
  • Focus means saying no to distractions, not saying yes to the one thing (Steve jobs, paraphrased)
• Questions
  • How to get focused?
    • What experiments do you want to run, what can get done in 2 weeks
  • How many hats do ppl wear?
    • 3-4. Helping creative process, (developing), analytics driven (a/b testing), teaching everyone SQL to look at DB, recruiting
  • Does all the shipping cause bad bugs to go live?
    • Baseline testing. Err on shipping first, fixing later
    • They have had critical bugs but they fix quickly, they keep users happy
  • What's the turnover?
    • Haven't had anyone quit. Everyone who has left has been the company's decision
    • Very transparent, strong culture
  • What's the hiring process?
    • Mostly referrals
    • Don't use recruiters
    • Inbounds/branding/team branding
    • Etsy does a good job of this and is an inspiration
    • Very thorough process, multiple phone interviews, homework, meet everyone, check references, keep it within 3 weeks
    • Try to hire for where you want the team to be 12 months from now
  • How many have you let go?
    • About 5 in a year
  • How do you find the balance of too much and too little process?
    • No right answer.
    • Play around with it
  • Any special incentives to keep ppl engaged/motivated?
    • Allow ppl to take as many classes
    • Allow ppl to go in groups of up to 4 and spend company money to do anything they want
    • Give lots of freedom and responsibility

CTO Artsy Daniel Doubrovkine: Pressing the big reset button (@dblockdotorg. Slides).

• How do we feel about resets?
  • It's negative, happens as a consequence of failure
  • Always happens with drama. 'slam the breaks'
  • Compared to changing the wings on a flying airplane
• Examples
  • Exhibit 1 Microsoft windows vista/longhorn
    • Dev began in 2001
    • Very feature-bloated. By 2004 clearly going nowhere
    • Reset in 2004 on top of windows server 2003
    • In 2006 it was released as vista (major failure)
  • Exhibit 2 Microsoft office 98 & netdocs
    • Netdocs was created by microsofties who thought the Internet would kill office
    • Net docs 1 was java, effectively an office reset
    • Net docs 2 reset in C++
    • Net docs 3 reset as a service
    • Spent $500M over the years, 500 devs
• Why do resets happen? Survey of about 2000 reset projects. Data from CTO club in NYC and personal network
  • 4/10: sunk cost kept them from resetting
  • 100% say due to some type of failure
  • 7/10 faced strong opposition to resetting
  • 2/10 blame pure product failure
  • 3/10 blame pure tech failure
  • 2/10 blame ppl failure
  • 3/10 resets led to success
  • 4/10 led to failure
  • 100% of projects that weren't reset failed
• When is it right to reset?
  • always, provided you are 100% sure the project is failing (Ed: tautology?)
  • Find truth-Sayers, trusted ppl who will be honest & help you know if it is really failing
  • Measure how much cost sunk & how much value it is providing
    • Questioner points out: this is the sunk cost fallacy, better to focus on the value
  • Don't be a chicken
    • (chicken & pig committed v involved story)
    • Only those that are committed should decide
  • It can be a smart career move to make the hard choice
  • Can be very dumb career move if you fail or the organization doesn't support you in the reset after you hit the button
• How to reset
  • Act now, decisively
  • Invest in trust capital
    • Have to compromise in order to gain trust. For every year of trust capital you have a about a month to burn when in a reset
    • Build it by helping others achieve their goals
  • Double or nothing
  • Split execute
  • Under promise & over deliver
    • Audience points out: this is the exact opposite of Malcolm Casey's strategy
• Aftermath of a reset
  • People forget very quickly how bad it was
  • Don't expe t to be glorified afterward. This is just part of your job
  • Making decisions about when/where to continue dev paths is always part of your job
  • Foster a culture of frequent but smaller resets
    • Experiment often
    • If things are posed as experiments, and you let devs try their ideas, you will keep evolving (Ed: and they will be happy)
  • Stop at the top
    • When you're at the top, don't get comfortable...try resetting then to make it even better
      • Ed: wha?!
• Questions
  • How is the data calibrated?
    • (audience grumbling/saying 'let him speak')
    • Somewhat anecdotal
  • How does that affect the code base?
    • Depends, not necessarily software/code (e.g., could be purchased CRM software, when to throw in towel?)
  • When ppl from the outside advocate reset, it's not good. Is that a personal opinion or from the data?
  • How do you connect the concept of reset to tech debt?
    • They are well connected. I don't like working in environments where you need to explicitly pull out tech debt. That should go without saying
  • I pivot on market more than on technology. When you pivoted/reset the tech/rewrote did you get the founders to buy in too?
    • Yes, that is critical, also critical to show that it is promising quickly

I went to the Lean Startup Metrics class on Friday. My notes:

Why metrics important. "what gets measured gets done" Avoid biases in judgment. Numbers don't lie.

5 types: vanity, actionable, predictive, cohort, funnel

Vanity: impressive but don't really mean anything to your business. Vanity metrics are usually aggregate. Funding is too. It doesn't directly relate to success (bc funded startups fail all the time)

Actionable. When you measure it you know what to do. Measure the outcomes and see if your hypothesis is holding true. You have to agree ahead of time what metric to base success on. Cost per acquisition. Find that out early. Big data: FB learned that when women update their profile photo men spend more time on the site. And women are more likely to change theirs when they see other women change. You can use this to get men spending more time on site. Actionable metrics are per-person metrics.

Predictive metrics: Value: What we are doing adds value for customers. Net promoter score: "how likely are you to recommend this?" 1-10. 8-10 are promoters, 1-6 are detractors. Promoter - detractor / total. This is the nps. This is something that you can compare cross industries and products with.

Must-have metric: how disappointed would you be if you can't use this product? You want to see 40% of your users very disappointed. (determined by Sean Ellis) This helps you see if you have something unique.

FB growth metric: w/in 4 weeks of launching a campus, got 90% of the users FB value metric: missed it

Groupon: they started out as a WP blog selling 2-1 pizza coupons.

Groupon's growth model: paid. Their customer is the business, and they have salespeople to get more businesses to sign up.

Funnel metrics: They measure the life cycle of your user. AARRR acquisition activation retention referral revenue Measure how customers move through these stages Determine weaknesses.

Cohort metrics Segmenting user based on when they joined. This helps smooth out seasonal/temporary metrics. Kissmetrics. Mixpanel. Most startups will have to build custom solutions to capture their metrics, because each startup's important metrics are different.