Delight Customers - The Really Hard Stuff is Always Simple.wav

Speakers: Willy Schlacks (Co-CEO & Co-Founder at EquipmentShare)

Key Points

• It’s easy to retain customers in an existing industry where you know what the demand is and you are just carving away at market share. In new industries, you want to get a product out as quick as possible for people to use and get reactions to iterate on. There are a lot of companies that get stuck into the freemium model and they don’t know how to quantify the value you are providing. You should charge something sooner rather than later if you are providing value. You can even craft your pricing where it looks free so that you can get a little revenue while getting customers in the door.
• Most accelerators or early investors push for high quantity and low quality but smaller numbers and higher level of quality lead to much better outcomes in the long term.
• In the early days, top line revenue is all that matters (with some exceptions). Investors are looking for growth not cash flows or margins. The one margin that does matter is consistently driving your average customer value to customer acquisition cost or gross margin up. If you are losing money to acquire users or your gross margin is negative you probably need to change your business model.
• Do not overcomplicate OKRs. Keep it simple. Also, there is no need to celebrate OKRs you are supposed to be hitting these milestones.
• Generally everyone’s early product is the same or worse than the industry and where you will be different is with your vision and customer service.
• You don’t want to copy your competitors you want to be in a position where they are copying you.
• Customer retention in the early days shouldn’t be high and if you are retaining all of your users it could be an indicator that you are moving too slow. It’s okay for users to be upset. It is good and it is a milestone to actually rolling a product out and receiving feedback.
• Read - Measure What Matters (Great book on OKRs)