Twitter’s acquisition of Posterous is a great outcome and nearly all the credit goes to Sachin. I’ve worked for many founders and Sachin’s tenacity, humility and smarts place him squarely at the top of the list. Much has been written about our pivot to Posterous Spaces last September, but I thought I’d share the hidden benefits or underappreciated gems of our pivot.
First, some context: Rewind back to April, 2011. After a growth spurt at the beginning of the year, Posterous’ growth had flattened out. Share-everywhere substitutes were numerous, and while we had a loyal and active base, we were clearly being outpaced by Tumblr and Instagram.Rather than chase our competitors, we chose to build Posterous Spaces, a new service that allowed consumers to share smarter. The bet was that controlled sharing to multiple streams was the inevitable outcome for social networks, and the first company that made it as intuitive as real life would win. We had some compelling data on the growth of controlled sharing's growth among Posterous users, so we decided to go for it.No matter how you look at it, the results of the Posterous Spaces launch were fantastic – we immediately tripled our new user growth rate and doubled our monthly active users. But underneath it all, the “new” Spaces product offered no new features – it was simply a repackaging of Posterous that elevated the private sharing use case with a fair amount of new infrastructure. So what drove the increase and how was our pivot responsible?
- Unlocking the extra 25%. Probably the biggest factor of all was the energy the pivot infused into the company and the resulting bump in the team’s performance. Working on weekends became the norm and, when we told the team we were launching at TechCrunch Disrupt, the hours logged after midnight skyrocketed.
- Time to polish. Posterous was the poster child for agile development – every day for three years, we had pushed new builds multiple times a day. Great for engineering morale, but the user experience suffered as new bugs were introduced each week. Most of these were found by our users – many of whom got fed up and eventually left. The launch of Spaces meant a fresh set of eyes on everything and our “normal” bug debt was paid off in one fell swoop.
- Positioning matters. You’d expect this from the marketing guy, but with startups increasingly focused on UX and MVP, a unique positioning that differentiates you from competition is often lost. Pivoting into Posterous Spaces allowed us to craft an experience for the use cases we wished to own.
- User (re)education. The opportunity to re-tell our story to our users - many of whom had joined when Posterous offered only email blogging - resulted in a huge jump in feature usage, and, more importantly, an increase in their evangelism. Of course, a few of our long-time users squawked about the changes but our metrics revealed that the silent majority were using the service in ways that they had never done before.
- Culture booster shot. With ten new team members added in the first half of 2011, we hadn’t yet gelled as a team. The Herculean efforts from individuals like Adam Singer, David Hsu, Vince Chu and Adam Huda became legendary in the company, as did the hilarious launch-day celebrations, strengthening the trust and belief each of us had in each other.
Of course, each company has its own rationale for pivoting – if you’re considering it, I’d offer a few suggestions.
- Be bold when you introduce it to the team. While it’s important for everyone to own the decision, a company is not a democracy. We led with compelling data which made it easier to obtain buy-in, but the first impression can’t be underestimated.
- Confront naysayers head on and get rid of them if they aren’t behind the decision. This is absolutely critical as you can’t afford negative voices sniping at you in the background three weeks before launch.
- Put your money where your mouth is. The cost for launching Posterous Spaces at TechCrunch Disrupt was nearly twice what we had spent on marketing in the prior two years combined. This commitment sent a powerful message to the team and helped secure the extra effort we needed to be successful.
In case you’re wondering, I decided not to join the rest of the team going to Twitter. I have no doubt Sachin and team will raise the bar and make a big impact on Twitter's media integration and brand pages. As for me, I’m looking for my next gig with another consumer startup.
Optimism abounds as M. makes his Majors debut
I'm always game for a debate on how marketing can drive growth for a company, but even I can't swallow this one. A new consumer agency doesn't have a prayer of solving AOL's problems.
People familiar with a request-for-proposal sent out by AOL said the company is looking to refresh its image and get the word out on "why people should care about AOL again" noting that consumers don't know "what we're up to today" or "what value we deliver." It's understood that the company is looking to award the assignment to an agency by early March.
via Ad Age
Tim Armstrong claims that he wants to put AOL at the forefront of where the Web is going. He can't do this under a brand that has enormous baggage and is no longer relevant to consumers. Quit pissing money away on the AOL brand, double down the investment on your (still respectable) products and media properties and pursue a house of brands strategy. Leave the AOL brand in the history books and HBS case studies where it belongs.
Considering my general lack of handiness, I was pretty surprised that M. and I were 3 for 3 on launches and just one "crash" landing.
I am not and never will be a bird watcher, but the birds of Galapagos were so amazing I decided to classify them for easy identification.
Most likely to have a zero IQ: The blue footed booby has the perfect vacant look.
Male bird that works hardest to get a date: The Frigatebird shows his red throated sac to any female who flies by.
Most interesting way to cool off: The Pelican opens its mouth and lets the air do the work.
Best hunting technique: The boobies dive in formation to stun fish for easy pickings.
Most likely to beat Michael Phelps in 50 yard freestyle: The Flightless Cormorants zip around underwater like bullets.
Top of the food chain and they know it: As the top predator on the islands, the Galapagos hawk is afraid of no bird or human.
We would have been nominated for a Darwin award if we had gotten munched while mugging for the camera.
The male sea lion is patrolling the beach in defense of his harem, swimming about 8 ft from us.
After spending the morning at the Darwin Research Center where we saw tortoises being bred, we went on a hike that led us to a field teeming with wild male tortoises.
We were close enough to hear them breathe. I guess when you're 140 years, it's perfectly ok to weigh 500 pounds.
More tortoise photos below including a shot of their enormous poops and cute babies!
The creators of Godzilla must have been inspired by marine iguanas.
We spent the pre-dusk hours cruising in our zodiac around Isabela island having seen hundreds of prehistoric marine iguanas laying in the sun at water's edge, lifting their heads occasionally as if to tell us they were the endemic ones.
But our captain noticed two male marine iguanas doing a crazy head dance and moving towards each other quickly (at least for iguanas). A 60 second battle ensued involving repeated head-butts, frantic head-bobbing and many evil eyes.
After a spirited battle, the smaller iguana was pushed over the cliff tumbling 10ft. He scrambled back up halfway and appeared to taunt his opponent ("That was a lucky head-butt") with more head-bobbing before laying down in the sun to recharge.
A fitting end to a day that featured multiple hawk sightings, enormous land iguanas, dozens of turtles, two sharks and snorkling with penguins in 64 degree water.
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