What a great write up and very open and honest. The timeline format is amazingly clean and I am a sucker for timelines.
I think the product is great and the name bannerbear really is memorable. I think that is a major key along with a great product. You have to be able to remember the name easily without effort and the two word format works well for human memory. Being high up in the alphabet is smart as well in terms of lists, it may not help much later but early on naming like this is important.
> I would do one week of code, then spend the following week tweeting / blog posting about what I shipped — then repeat
That is gold for indie/small business value creation and extraction. Many times marketing is like audio/sound for games, an afterthought for the programmer/creator/product person. Here you have a system that locked it in but only after creating, how it is supposed to be. I think it is a great way to avoid burnout as well, you are refreshed on both creating and promoting on those weeks.
I believe that there is value creation (product/creative/engineering) and value extraction (marketing/business/finance) and it has to be in that order. There has to be enough value created to value extract and this system is quite nice.
> Knowing your target market is good, knowing your target's Job to Be Done is better
> Jobs to Be Done is only something you understand after talking to users
> Upgrade your user, not your product
This is how you make products people love. Even if it is only a few minutes a day, when people use a product if it is fun or refreshing and makes their lives easier, that is game mechanic that is replayed. Same goes for games, it is all in the basic game mechanic, it has to be fun. Focus on the lives of the user/player of your product. I like to parallel that to like a fun game or a comicstrip, bring joy to people even if it is only a very small slice of their day, it will be a good part of their day. Make your product a "friend" of the user/player.
You have all the little details that make your presentation fun like a good indie game with details and easily approachable. Even your subscribe form has a refreshing way to look at the captcha, rather than "confirm you aren't a robot" it is "confirm Humanity". Nice touch, but your presentation is a series of nice touches. Well played, these things are hard to instill in company cultures and usually only present in smaller more product people, or even gaming, focused projects.
I just love everything presented, it has that thing that makes it fun.
Congrats on your success Jon Yongfook I am sure you are headed to much higher ground with your North Star in focus all along.
Imagine you have a product with 10 features. You want to generate growth. Your first instinct might be: time to add a new feature (upgrade the product). Another approach might be to investigate your users behaviour. You might find users are only using 5 of your features. You may then choose to educate your users on the other 5 features you already have (upgrade your user).
This is one of the purposes of marketing. You would be surprised how often a customer will say "I didn't even know I could do that".
I think the product is great and the name bannerbear really is memorable. I think that is a major key along with a great product. You have to be able to remember the name easily without effort and the two word format works well for human memory. Being high up in the alphabet is smart as well in terms of lists, it may not help much later but early on naming like this is important.
> I would do one week of code, then spend the following week tweeting / blog posting about what I shipped — then repeat
That is gold for indie/small business value creation and extraction. Many times marketing is like audio/sound for games, an afterthought for the programmer/creator/product person. Here you have a system that locked it in but only after creating, how it is supposed to be. I think it is a great way to avoid burnout as well, you are refreshed on both creating and promoting on those weeks.
I believe that there is value creation (product/creative/engineering) and value extraction (marketing/business/finance) and it has to be in that order. There has to be enough value created to value extract and this system is quite nice.
More excellent point:
> The best way to make money on the internet is to ignore everyone telling you how to make money on the internet, and just do some hard work. https://twitter.com/yongfook/status/1328865845527805952
> Knowing your target market is good, knowing your target's Job to Be Done is better
> Jobs to Be Done is only something you understand after talking to users
> Upgrade your user, not your product
This is how you make products people love. Even if it is only a few minutes a day, when people use a product if it is fun or refreshing and makes their lives easier, that is game mechanic that is replayed. Same goes for games, it is all in the basic game mechanic, it has to be fun. Focus on the lives of the user/player of your product. I like to parallel that to like a fun game or a comicstrip, bring joy to people even if it is only a very small slice of their day, it will be a good part of their day. Make your product a "friend" of the user/player.
You have all the little details that make your presentation fun like a good indie game with details and easily approachable. Even your subscribe form has a refreshing way to look at the captcha, rather than "confirm you aren't a robot" it is "confirm Humanity". Nice touch, but your presentation is a series of nice touches. Well played, these things are hard to instill in company cultures and usually only present in smaller more product people, or even gaming, focused projects.
I just love everything presented, it has that thing that makes it fun.
Congrats on your success Jon Yongfook I am sure you are headed to much higher ground with your North Star in focus all along.