Transitioning to Lean

@DhruvBansal @JimEngland @TimGasper

Were in a predicament with DATA.

DATA

is the raw materials

DATA

involves many markets and data types

DATA

involves a wide variety of customers in undened markets

how does Infochimps t into the data landscape?

our existing products

Data marketplace Social media inuence IP intelligence Geolocated data

Our lean mission is to determine solutions to must-have problems for sizable markets.

new product hypotheses

foursquare data derivatives social media solutions

We have a signicant portion of the foursquare check-in rehose.

HYPOTH

ESIS

FOURSQUARE DEVS
Want venue hotness and venue ID matching for their applications.

How many 4sq devs are there?

How many would pay?

HYPOTH

ESIS

DIGITAL AGENCIES
Want venue hotness and brand comparisons for their clients.

How many brands want 4sq metrics?

How many would pay?

Must have Nice to have Dont need

killing a feature is just as important as building one :)

Social media data

DEVELOPERS
Wanted detailed and transparent inuence metrics and rankings.

trstrank

HYPOTH

ESIS

DIGITAL AGENCIES
Want detailed and transparent inuence metrics and rankings.

15+

interviews later...

Digital agencies actually wanted analytics research tools and dashboards.

PROBLEMS

Thats not our market. Thats not a feature set weve ever built. Leverages stuff we know, but little of what weve built. Sends the company in a very different direction.

youve found a market and a product; should you build it?

Learn from and measure what you already have. Diagnose whether to pivot or persevere.

Product

Optimization

Strategy

Pivot

Vision

You shouldnt dene where to pivot to unless you know why you should pivot.

You can only know why if... 1 2 3 4

1 Clearly dened hypotheses. 2 Clearly dened actionable metrics.

vs. vanity metrics

3 Youve been experimenting and optimizing. 4 The experimenting and optimizing still has you short of your goals of creating a sustainable business.

Pivots are a change in strategy. The lean canvas provides a powerful strategy framework.

ERICSTRATEGY ASH MAURYA RIES LEAN CANVAS

Product roadmap Customer denition Partners & competitors Business model Problem, solution & key metrics Customer segments & channels Value proposition, unfair competitive advantage Cost structure & revenue streams

the bottom line

Lean is more straightforward if you start with it from the beginning. If you havent been lean, you must revisit the past.

Move through the loop faster.

data web

TWO USE CASES, ONE WEBSITE

data scientists developers

DATA SCIENTISTS
business analysts, marketers, consultants, economists, statisticians, etc.

We provide data scientists access to data through downloadable data sets.

We provide developers access to data through RESTful APIs.

DATA SCIENTISTS?

NO PROBLEM
Downloadable data sets follow a typical web ow

homepage data set page search results blog twitter

signup download

MULTI-STEP

DEVELOPERS?

ITS COMPLICATED
API usage funnel involves many steps and is more difcult to track & dene

homepage data set page search results blog twitter

signup

new developer

new developer

active developer

A developer becomes active when they send over 1,000 API calls per month.

How do we convert a developer to an active developer?

HOWTOs CODE EXAMPLES

DATA SET PAGES API REFERENCE

homepage data set page search results blog twitter

signup
howto guide code example api reference data set page search results

active user

PLUS

PROBLEM CHNICAL TE
We need to connect user activity on the website with user activity on our APIs.

SOLUTION

TO THE RESCUE

GOOGLE ANALYTICS CUSTOM VARIABLES

We use Google Analytics to track visitor behavior on our websites.

There are a lot of other options

Cookie, JS-based data collection No servers to maintain APIs for reports

Without JS, client-side

behavior is a mystery Lots of work Potentially awesome

One identity is known to us. The other is known to Google.

Web

Data

?
Web Data

Google stores 3 cookies:

VISITOR

expires after 2 years

SESSION PAGE

expires after 30 minutes set on every pageview

Visitor Variables
Username First seen at Segment Original trafc source Milestones Signed up Downloaded Searched Bought Queried

Session Variables
Milestones Signed up Downloaded Searched Bought Queried

Page Variables
Category Completeness Pricing Distribution

CUSTOM VARIABLES

Visitor Variables
c=201110;ms=dev;ds=1;sd=1;u=dhruv

First seen in October, 2011 (c) Is a developer (ms) Has seen a dataset (ds) Has done a search (sd) Username is dhruv (u)

WE CAN GET THIS DATA OVER THE WEB.

WE CAN GET THIS DATA THROUGH AN API.

Web

Data

developers

developers

developers

developers

The web teams goal is to increase the number of active API users. But we dont have a traditional funnel for converting these users.

So, we started by focusing on the overall site experience for developers.

IONING TRANSIT

to Lean

We havent run any experiments on the website... yet.

brainstorm

web experiments

1 Developer-centric email campaigns

2 Improved getting started dashboard

http://twilio.com/user/account

3 Improved search experience

thank you
@DhruvBansal @JimEngland @TimGasper