Eugene Woo from Vizualize.Me presented an amazing case study for the group.
Here are a some key notes from the discussion:
- Won StartupWeekend, 2000 signups on the first day
- Thousands of signups per day -- now over 100,000
- After a month, decided to pursue it full-time
- Did a "press push" about winning StatupWeekend, etc. but didn't really take
- Made an Ashton Kutcher sample and pushed to blogs
- Didn't really get much on the blogs
- But major press picked up on it somehow
- Led to articles on FastCompany and Mashable
- "You don't learn when you're building"
- No mockups, built a working prototype quickly
- Important for learning -- wouldn't learn the same things with a mockup
- Customer development can be depressing, but is also exciting
- Priorities are not clear, but at least you know the problems
- 1-3 months away from "true" MVP
- So far 100% equity, seeking a seed round
- 10 or so competitors have emerged
- So far they have a huge branding head start
- 50% conversion rate from signup list, 15-20% fill rate for Wufoo survey
- Lots of wrong assumptions and learning: eg. Thought people wouldn't need to edit inline
- At least 5 phone calls per week, lots of email and surveys
- Use MixPanel for data collection
- Started out collecting everything, but now focusing on a few key metrics at a time
- Biggest potential competition: If LinkedIn builds similar capability
- Jobs market is ripe for disruption
- Best source of leads/signups: LaunchRock, Twitter
Thanks again Eugene for sharing, and looking forward to see Vizualize.me continue to grow and evolve!
