Dear Reader,
Hello and welcome to the 5th edition of the Good Reads newsletter by Malpani Ventures.
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I spent a lot of time down the Medium rabbit hole this week, and this weeks’ good reads will give you a good indication of that.
Selecting the Right User Metric
https://medium.com/sequoia-capital/selecting-the-right-user-metric-de95015aa38
We spent some time going through one of our portfolio company’s user data this week, and naturally for reference tried to understand how to analyze it. For reference, the company has a WAU/MAU ratio of 60% (and growing), and a DAU/WAU ratio of ~45% (and growing). From the post above, we infer that while the company’s product can be classified as a weekly use product (used 2-3 weeks a month), it may not yet be a daily use product (used ~3x a week). This is a good post to use as reference for your product.
How to Build Winning Products
https://kauffman-fellows.medium.com/how-to-build-winning-products-4329a791403e
“…the best product solves the right problem, at the right price, and creates a great user experience.”
“what matters most, the best product or the best distribution? …it’s both. In terms of math formulas, it’s A times B. If one of those multipliers is zero, then the end result is zero.”
Busuu’s ‘Metrics You Can Move’ framework for finding product-market fit
Two of the biggest takeaways for us were:
Why you should prioritize retention over acquisition, particularly in EdTech
What makes a good North Star metric and why you might need to iterate it
The post also shares a host of resources for founders to refer.
Ideal Customer Profiles
To end with some self promotion - I wrote about Ideal Customer Profiles (ICP) and thought you should read it. We work with a fair share of B2B startups that focus on outbound sales. In our quest to fund B2B SaaS startups, we come across companies and founders running those companies. We find that sales strategies which have an ICP in mind are best performing, least time consuming, and most productive. Which makes sense because everyone is not your customer. If you like reading it, please consider sharing.
That’s all for this week! See you next time!