1. Your name
2. Your company name
3. The amount of your revenues, users, customers, or email addresses
4. What your company does in real-person words
5. Why doing this is important/how it came about
6. What’s notable about who’s onboard
7. What you need/want from the person listening to you (one thing, not nine)
8. How that person can get ahold of you if s/he wants to help you
9. A closing thanks

Investors, users, mentors, and press are busy. Give them the goods and get out of your own way.*

Yours to customize…

My name is John Smith, CEO of Jiminiboo, and we’ve already made $100,000 by licensing our software to 10 enterprise companies that use our platform each day to track customer sentiment.

• More than 300 customer service and marketing execs use Jiminiboo to see daily infographics of their customers’ feedback from Twitter, Facebook, and email.
• I built it after working at Verizon and wishing we could see customer trends faster — today, Verizon is a customer.
• My co-founding team including Jane Smith of Apple, and our investors include 500 Startups and Fortify Ventures.

We’ve raised $100,000 to support our growth so far, and now we’re looking for angel investors with enterprise experience to help us get to $1M in revenues.

If that’s you, please contact me at johnsmith@jiminiboo.com or 123.456.7890.

Thank you!

———————–

If  you don’t yet have traction …

Go get some first! Ok, maybe this version instead:

My name is John Smith, CEO of Jiminiboo, a new application for companies that want to see daily infographics of their customers’ feedback from Twitter, Facebook, and email.

• Customer service and marketing execs can track consumer sentiment over time.
• I built it after working at Verizon and wishing we could see customer trends faster.
• My co-founding team including Jane Smith of Apple.

More than 100 users have signed up already, and now we’re looking for angel investors with enterprise experience to help us get to $1M in revenues.

If that’s you, please contact me at johnsmith@jiminiboo.com or 123.456.7890.

Thank you!

———————–

* The whole “We’re like Gilt Groupe for eBay” way of describing startups *can* be helpful. But it puts the listener in the awkward position of (a) having to know those two things you’ve chosen and (b) interpreting what the hell you mean.

Same with the question-as-the-lead, like “Do you hate spending so much time in your inbox?” The risk is the listener says no — or doesn’t care enough to say yes — or is a dickhead and won’t give you the satisfaction for asking such a “gimme” question.

So, many founders result to talking AT LENGTH about the problem, their solution, the market … stuff that’s only worth saying if the listener is still actually listening.

header img source

Google Search is still leading search even without changing its UI, and Amazon has become so reliable that I buy my toothpaste from them.

Similarly, one of the (many) things I love about Dropbox is that it solves the niche problem of file-sync confidently and succinctly. Then it shuts the hell up.

Even the mobile app doesn’t attempt to sell me — “do you want us to sync your photos/videos?” it asks … I select “yes,” it syncs, and doesn’t bother me again. Lovely. 

People who throw around the word “engagement” like I do the word “awesome” could seriously benefit from asking themselves: “Have I built a daily-use product/service?”

If so, and acquisition or churn rates suck, then improving product or marketing makes sense.

If not, all the marketing and feature development in the world won’t help — finding a daily-use application for the problem you’re solving is the answer.

It’s really not rocket science, but it DOES require stepping away from “the vision I have for what COULD be” and recognizing that users’ incentive to adapt you into their lifestyle DOESN’T EXIST until you are relevant to them.

When I was working on FastCustomer, we did a bunch of design and marketing work before recognizing:

1. We had been solving a problem for very happy users since Day 1, that our users didn’t have the problem but just a few times a year, and that THIS WAS ALL TOTALLY OK
2. Business was booming on the enterprise side because these people had a daily problem we could solve, at a huge scale of need, and WE COULD FOCUS ON THIS TO GROW 

Of course, brilliantly solving a problem people REALLY have on a daily basis is way harder than adding “share” buttons.

—–

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• Copywriting: Rachel Kaufman
• Copywriting: Joanna Castle Miller
• UX Content, Writing & Editing: Carolyn Wood
• Content Strategy & Copywriting: Megan Whalin
• Content Strategy & Copywriting: Relly Annet-Baker
• Content Strategy & Copywriting: Ahava Leibtag
• UX Design & Usability Testing: Laura Hahn & Pete Manning
• UX Consulting: Whitney Hess
• Visual Designer & Developer: Jeff Witters
• Visual Designer & Developer: Val Head
• Product Design & Development: Dan Mall
• Mobile Designer & Developer: Sarah Parmenter
• iOS & Android Design & Development: Paul Murphy
• Android Development & RoR: Guille Carlos
• WordPress Development: Will Rees
• Drupal Development: Petar Canic
• Django Development: Ben Lopatin
• Social Media Marketing: Neil Callanan
• Lettering & Sketching: Carolyn Sewell
• Lettering & Sketching: Jessica Hische
• Photography: Jim Darling
• Photography & Videography: Ryder Haske

The problem is clear: there is no active or loyal user base yet. So if the product relies on having a user base to be valuable enough that users would want to return, it HAS to cater to a first-time user FIRST.

For example, when I first got into Rdio very early on, I saw music there already. I started listening immediately. I then had a lower threshold for inviting friends because the proof was in the app when I first logged in. I also already was ENJOYING the app, so returning (and becoming a paying subscriber) was also easier for me.

Now imagine if Rdio required me to upload music first because the listening library had a minimum number of songs to start. Imagine if I had to connect my Twitter or Facebook account BEFORE I had a chance to use the app.

What’s my incentive?

A first-time user is there to kick the tires. To change behavior and encourage users to come back for more, there has to be a clear strategy that caters to that first-time user’s context FIRST. That mainly means answering questions like “what the crap is this, why am I here, and is it worth my time?”

Here’s a real example of the norm. My buddy Will invited me to Biogrify. Its homepage says nothing about what it is. So I asked Will “what the crap is this?” He told me it was something like the New New Social Network with Infographics. I don’t need this in my life, but Will is awesome, so I signed up via Twitter, added profile info, then skipped the “invite friends” part of the 3-step process.

Once in, I see content created by people I don’t know.

Why didn’t I see Will’s posts? He invited me. And what’s my incentive to do a Quick Post, “Create,” or “Connect with Facebook to find more friends” at this point? I’m kicking the tires, but why would I want to create content for strangers to see? And why would I want to invite friends without seeing what this product really is all about … but wait, is that the only way this would be relevant to me on first view?

Instead of optimizing the sign-up process and UI to a first-time user like me, the product is built for the business. It’s got fun visual tools without context of why a first-time user should use them. It offers the chance to make posts without friends. Each of the features and networking aspects requires me to take actions without ever telling me why I’d want to take them. In the meantime, my inbox starts filling up with “X is now following you” messages that try to draw me back into the application.

Startups here are optimized for power users who “get it” and become evangelical. This is definitely one tactic to take, and my buddy Will is surely onboard. I’m not. Would I be if the UX was customized to creating a more oriented, powerful, and conversational first-time experience? Yes. It’s fun.

But it’s not worth my time to figure out why it matters to me. That’s the startup’s job. Taking the pitch of why it needs to exist and making it a core aspect of the UX is the best way of communicating with the first-time user, whose buy-in is essential to success.

Building a product for most of us is an attempt at building a business; it takes time. Think Jack Cheng’s “slow web” time. If startups could launch products the way they launch conversations — with an “I’m working on this app for people who love infographics” rather than “connect twitter, tell friends, create posts!” —  and guide them in that first-time experience, more of us would actually stick around for the good stuff that makes us incorporate the new app into our daily lives. Which makes the business grow for realz.

With SOOOOO many other risks startups face, why risk leaving your first-time user to fend for herself and “discover” the value of the app through its features?