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Sean Ellis

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2024-09-05
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2024-09-05
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  1. “Before I ever heard the term product market fit, I remember the conversations back at log me in in the mid-2000s of kind of like, when do we step on the gas? What is the combination of factors that need to be in place before we start pouring fuel on the early fire? And so, yeah, I think the kind of nail it, then scale it. It's probably been a term that's been around for decades now. But it's all kind of pointing to that same concept of product market fit.”

    2024-09-05 · Lenny's Podcast · The original growth hacker reveals his secrets | Sean Ellis (author of “Hacking Growth”) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “I don't think it's that firm. To me, I think the real power is having some kind of target for the team to be shooting for that basically says we're not going to aggressively start to grow until we hit this target. And I think that as just a focusing piece is really, really important because I think one of the biggest challenges in an early stage startup is half the people feel like we're years from having this product ready to grow and half the people are like, what are we waiting for? Where if you can actually get people on the same page of what does product market fit look like for our business? And it's at that point that we're going to, yeah.”

    2024-09-05 · Lenny's Podcast · The original growth hacker reveals his secrets | Sean Ellis (author of “Hacking Growth”) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Start drilling in, start peeling back that onion, and just deeply understand them and make sure that you're ultimately your product roadmap is doubling down on the things that are important to your must-have customers, your onboarding is bringing new people to the right experience, your messaging is setting the right expectations, your acquisition campaigns are targeting people who actually have the need. And so it's all about getting the right people to the right experience and then even your engagement loop is about just reinforcing what to get people to experience that benefit more often.”

    2024-09-05 · Lenny's Podcast · The original growth hacker reveals his secrets | Sean Ellis (author of “Hacking Growth”) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Customers when I tested drowning an email? question mark, that set such a good hook that was the context that people were living in that they were really responsive to the message of find things faster with Zobni and then a description of what Zobni is. So I think when you can really dig into the context of why that must have benefit is important to people, you start to get the ingredients to build that flywheel that leads to long-term sustainable growth.”

    2024-09-05 · Lenny's Podcast · The original growth hacker reveals his secrets | Sean Ellis (author of “Hacking Growth”) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Then I run another survey where I turn it into a multiple choice question, force them to pick one of four kind of distinctive benefit statements. And then the question that follows on that next survey is why is that benefit important to you? And then I start to get really good context. So I actually came up with this question when I was working with an early YC company called Zobni, which is inbox felt backwards. And I when I ran that question, basically the people who said they'd be very disappointed without the product were focused on Zobni helps me find things faster in my email. So it's great to know, okay, that's the benefit. But when I asked, why is that benefit important to you? They said, I'm drowning an email. I kept seeing that statement as a written statement. And so when I then was trying to figure out how to.”

    2024-09-05 · Lenny's Podcast · The original growth hacker reveals his secrets | Sean Ellis (author of “Hacking Growth”) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Yeah, I mean, it does tell you something really important, which is, you know, you haven't created something that people don't care about. So that's an important insight. But until you deeply understand that product market fit, you kind of don't have the tools to be able to grow the business. So that's really the next step is to dig in and figure out who considers it a must-have. How are they using the product? What did they use before? What problem are they solving? One of my favorite questions is, so I tend to have a lot of questions that I build off of that I'm using that filter of trying to drill into the users who say they'd be very disappointed without the product. And one of my favorite questions is, what is the primary benefit that you get? And then I use that initially as an open-ended question to kind of crowdsource different benefits people are getting.”

    2024-09-05 · Lenny's Podcast · The original growth hacker reveals his secrets | Sean Ellis (author of “Hacking Growth”) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Right. And that ultimately moving retention is really hard, but it's usually much more a function of onboarding to the right user experience than it is about the kind of the tactical things that people try to do to improve retention.”

    2024-09-05 · Lenny's Podcast · The original growth hacker reveals his secrets | Sean Ellis (author of “Hacking Growth”) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Yeah, and I was coming at it from a marketing perspective initially. Over time, I positioned my more self more in a growth role with product and marketing as areas I could influence. But as a marketer, I probably didn't have a lot of influence on a engineering founded company to say, let's cut out stuff. it made more sense to say let's just sequence the onboarding so that we're highlighting this and onboarding to this. That was a little easier to sell.”

    2024-09-05 · Lenny's Podcast · The original growth hacker reveals his secrets | Sean Ellis (author of “Hacking Growth”) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “and then speed to value. And so the next cohort of people that we surveyed were at 40% saying they'd be very disappointed without the product. So that was literally took two weeks to make those changes. Six months later, it was 60% on the score. And then I think they hit the billion dollar valuation four or five years later on ultimately being one of the early unicorns. Interestingly, as all of those things were built into mobile phones now, they've completely changed the business, but they continue to do really well, but they've continued to iterate the business. I think that having that kind of finger on the pulse early in the business was important to build the muscle in the business to be really responsive as the market changed.”

    2024-09-05 · Lenny's Podcast · The original growth hacker reveals his secrets | Sean Ellis (author of “Hacking Growth”) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “It was a pretty easy mental leap for people. And so now we knew okay, it's antivirus that people really valued. And so step one was just reposition the product on antivirus. So that kind of creates a filter. So anyone who now is coming in to sign up for the product who doesn't care about antivirus is not going to convert. And those who are excited about antivirus are going to convert. We already know from the initial survey that that people value that after they convert. So by setting the right expectations around it up front, you're going to bring people in with the right expectations. But then the second thing that we did was we streamlined onboarding so that the first thing that they did after signing up for the product was to set up the antivirus and then get a message you're now protected from viruses. And so it's really the combination of those two things. It's set the right expectations.”

    2024-09-05 · Lenny's Podcast · The original growth hacker reveals his secrets | Sean Ellis (author of “Hacking Growth”) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Yeah, yeah. So the company called Lookout, it's mobile security company. And now most of the things in Lookout are built into iPhones and Androids. But at that time, the product had everything from like backup my data to find my lost phone to protecting your phone from with a firewall and antivirus. And so when we ran this initial survey, I dug into the 7% who said they'd be very disappointed without the product and found that most of that 7% were focused on the antivirus functionality. So they were like, they know they need to protect their computer from viruses. Smartphones were becoming more like computers. So it just made a lot of sense for them that they'd need to protect their phone. And interesting at the time, I think there was only like one kind of phone virus that had ever even happened.”

    2024-09-05 · Lenny's Podcast · The original growth hacker reveals his secrets | Sean Ellis (author of “Hacking Growth”) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Grow and they're only at 7% right now. It might take six months to get the 40%. Am I doing them a disservice by being in a growth role and being on payroll during this period of time? But fortunately with the signal and the information we got from the initial survey, we were able to get them at 40% in two weeks.”

    2024-09-05 · Lenny's Podcast · The original growth hacker reveals his secrets | Sean Ellis (author of “Hacking Growth”) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Yeah, I mean, so for me in particular, when I come in to a company, my goal is to help them grow. And so I don't want to put myself in a situation where I'm going to fail because no one actually cares about the product. And so it can really be asked at a company of any stage. It's helpful to understand who your must-have users are. But essentially, once you have even an MVP of it, like a very first MVP on the product, you can still get some useful feedback about the product if it's resonating with anyone. So I actually had a company where I had committed to work with them. It was right after I left Dropbox and I committed to work with these guys for six months to help them grow. I ran the question and it came back at only 7% of users saying they'd be very disappointed without the product. And so I'm like, I have six months to help them.”

    2024-09-05 · Lenny's Podcast · The original growth hacker reveals his secrets | Sean Ellis (author of “Hacking Growth”) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Time as I at the time I was working for a couple of YC back companies. And so those companies were all pretty connected. And so I would share the question with a lot of other startups in Silicon Valley. And so over time, I started to see there was a pattern that once you got a high enough percentage of users saying they'd be very disappointed, most of those very disappointed without the product, most of those products.”

    2024-09-05 · Lenny's Podcast · The original growth hacker reveals his secrets | Sean Ellis (author of “Hacking Growth”) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “I would say it's a leading indicator of product market fit. The lagging indicator is do they actually keep using it? So probably retention cohorts are more accurate, but the problem is your time at Airbnb, how long do you have to look at a retention cohort before you know that you've actually long-term retained someone? And so with this question, you can kind of find out day one. You don't actually even need to be You don't need a good analytic system in place to be able to see if product market fit exists. And so yeah, the 40% was not something I originally had in there. I was ultimately I was trying to have just a filter so that I was not treating all feedback from customers the same, but I was trying to find feedback from customers who actually really cared about the product and then was over.”

    2024-09-05 · Lenny's Podcast · The original growth hacker reveals his secrets | Sean Ellis (author of “Hacking Growth”) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “It's a simple question that helps you figure out Does anyone consider your product a must have or ideally who and how many people consider it but ultimately it's about trying to figure out is your product a mufts have which could be equated to having product market fit and so the question is how would you feel if you could no longer use this product and I give them the choice very disappointed somewhat disappointed or even not disappointed or not applicable if already stopped using the product. And what I'm trying to find are those people who say I would be very disappointed if I could no longer use this product. And that's a really powerful vein to dig into when you discover that you actually have some people who would give a crap if your product disappears.”

    2024-09-05 · Lenny's Podcast · The original growth hacker reveals his secrets | Sean Ellis (author of “Hacking Growth”) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “It's usually much more functional of onboarding to the right user experience than it is about the kind of the tactical things that people try to do to improve retention.”

    2024-09-05 · Lenny's Podcast · The original growth hacker reveals his secrets | Sean Ellis (author of “Hacking Growth”) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Ignore the people who say they'd be somewhat disappointed. They're telling you it's a nice to have. If you start paying attention to what you're somewhat disappointed users are telling you, and then you start tweaking, onboarding, and product based on their feedback, maybe you're going to dilute it for your must-have users”

    2024-09-05 · Lenny's Podcast · The original growth hacker reveals his secrets | Sean Ellis (author of “Hacking Growth”) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “The question is how would you feel if you could no longer use this product? Once you got a high enough percentage of users saying they'd be very disappointed, most of those products did pretty well. If you fell too low, those products tended to suffer.”

    2024-09-05 · Lenny's Podcast · The original growth hacker reveals his secrets | Sean Ellis (author of “Hacking Growth”) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source