Dear Reader,
Welcome to the 87th edition of the good reads newsletter by Malpani Ventures. Sharing your weekly dose of articles for this weekend’s reading!
Solving the “Cold Start Problem”: expert tips and advice
https://gopractice.io/product/solving-the-cold-start-problem/
Advice on the classical chicken-and-egg problem that poses product owners with the question of who to focus on first–the users who provide goods or services, or the users who buy them.
You have to take insanely great care of your earliest users on the supply side, because that will help people on the demand side have better experiences, too.
If you’re not aware of what is driving demand–and differentiating your product based on that–it can be difficult to fulfill promises you’re making to suppliers.
If you’re feeding a customer something that feels fundamentally opposed to what they’re used to (and that they know is easy) – they’re just going to assume that what you’re putting on front of them is hard, and not worth the inconvenience.
How to Take Bigger, Bolder Product Bets — Lessons from Slack’s Chief Product Officer
Weiss likes to start any project by asking three questions:
1. What is the problem we are trying to solve for customers?
2. Why do we think this approach would help them?
3. What impact do we expect this to have? Whether measurable or immeasurable.
CRO Confidential: 5 Ways to Get Your SaaS Revenue Back On Track with Gong’s SVP Sales
Good takeaways from the post:
Rippling has an onboarding tool, so when an existing customer onboarded a new hire, Whenever Rippling received a survey marked with a 9 or 10, they would ask them to share a post on LinkedIn about the experience to receive a $25 gift card. That $25 was far more effective for seemingly organic posts than paying LinkedIn directly to surface ads.
Data shows that the customers we visit are worth 40% more than those we don’t.
Until next time!