hubstaff lean startup talk

HubstaffWhat we’ve learned so far...

What is Hubstaff?

Tracks employee time

Takes random screenshots

Records activity levels

Gives management dashboard & reports

Some Stats

14 months

4300+ users

15k new screenshots uploaded daily

88+ days of hours tracked daily

20k projects created

100+ countries

BackgroundDave Nevogt

Marketing/Operations

IU Business, Grown multiple 1MM+ online businesses

Jared Brown

Development

Purdue CS, 10+ years professional experience, freelancer

Overview

3 Biggest early mistakes

4 Biggest early wins

We’re still getting started, lots of mistakes still to make :)

The Plan

Present our mistakes & wins quickly

Give 5 mins for discussion

The Goal: Present a real problem in our business and collectively learn how to solve it in a lean startup way.

Mistake #1 - Not Building Features

Quickly Retention

Over-engineering (robust)

Flexibility is king

Waste time on worthless features

Example - Multi-Organization Support

Problem: Users work for multiple companies.

Our solution: Users can belong to multiple organizations. Avoid multiple accounts.

Issues: Complex, confusing permissions. Long build-out. Confusing payment process.

Results: 200+ customers have multiple, paid organizations

How can we stop over-engineering?

What would you do?

Do we put the effort in upfront or later?

Mistake #2 - Not Dedicating Enough

Time / Focus

Hard to leave current jobs

Opportunity window closes

Dedicating 100% = Exponential results

Example - Dev & Support Rule the Biz

Problem: Dev & support efforts take up 80% of our scarce time.

Our solution: Find a dedicated support person and do what we can (work overtime).

How can we dedicate more time?

What are our options?

What would you do?

Mistake #3 - Not Charging Sooner

Didn’t feel it’s fully baked

Don’t know most valuable demographic early

Higher retention of early users

Attract a different class of users

Example - Desktop clients had bugs

Problem: Desktop clients had bugs and web UI lacked core features.

Our solution: Slap a beta label on it and not charge.

How early should we have started

charging?

What would you do?

Win #1 - 50% split equity & opposite

skillsKeeps everyone fully invested

Nothing else can easily replace it

Makes it easier to get all tasks done

Is this the best way?

Many ways to do it

Has anyone had a bad experience doing 50/50?

Do you shoulder the burden and hand out small equity amounts?

Win #2 - Use services, platforms and tools

Heroku, hosted Postgres, ActiveAdmin, Intercom, InstrumentalApp, New Relic, Bootstrap, Rails, Themes, GetAmbassador, ReferralSaaSquatch, Desk, etc.

What services do you use?

Win #3 - Early validation of concept

and marketing White-labeled existing product

Tested conversion rates with real marketing campaigns

Created new landing pages

Other than white-labeling what ideas do

you have that could get you to a paying product in 30 days.

Win #4 - Buying Traffic

Made user acquisition automatic

Validate whether the market wants this very early

Validate whether marketing is affordable and scalable

Zero-in on keywords and roll that into SEO

What other traffic generations methods are really good and that we should be

doing?

Thank you!