18 insights of top online entrepreneurs

The founders of Crazy Egg, KISSmetrics, Unbounce, Olark, Moz and Grasshopper share thoughts on how to work with large clients, how to determine the true price of a product, who brings money to the project, what things you shouldn’t spend time and energy on and how to do everything.


Hiten Shah, co-founder of Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics
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1) Always have a free rate.

“Once at Crazy Egg (heat map service) we decided to“ kill ”a free tariff for new customers. The measure allowed an increase in income for some time, but in the long run it was not the best solution. If I had founded the SaaS service today, I would never have touched the “free” plan.

By the way, the same regrets his companion Neil Patel.

2) Speed ​​is everything

“I consider speed the greatest weapon of startups. When I see an obvious solution, I want to embody it as quickly as possible. The fate of a company often depends on the speed of decision making. I even came up with my own formula “Speed ​​= concentration + sequence”. Break your development into small steps. So you will have a clearer movement towards the goal, without rushing to the side. ”

3) Study and use expressions that your customers use.

“Pay particular attention to how your target audience formulates its problems and tasks. This is very useful in the description of solutions on the site and promotional materials. Interview, learn about forums and blogs. ”

Rick Perrot, Director and Co-Founder, Unbounce



4) Use Facebook ads to test ideas.

“When I had a problem and needed a solution, I wanted to understand how important this is for other people. It turned out that the same problem torments many of my friends tape. Then I created an ad on Facebook, I started fellow marketing experts and sent them to a page with a questionnaire. As a result, I received 42 email users interested in the solution. The more feedback you get, the more viable your business idea is. ”

5) Resist the pressure of large customers.

"It is very difficult to resist the temptation to meet a large company that says:" Hey, guys, finish this feature, then we will buy. " This is an illusion. In Unbounce (constructor of landings), we spent two years trying to please everyone who asked us to finish something.
Focus on a specific audience segment and work for them. ”

6) Do not be afraid to raise prices

“At first we had tariff plans for $ 10 and $ 25, despite the fact that the acquisition of one customer cost about $ 150. The average lifespan of a paying user was 4 months, because the majority simply experimented with Unbounce (at the time it was a new product on the market), and also took a lot of time and money for technical support, an explanation of the nuances of work.

And only after the price increase, we began to attract marketers with a good budget. Support costs declined as it was a savvy audience.

You must have a balance between the cost of the product and the profile of consumers. In other words, attract people who understand the value of the solution and are willing to pay a reasonable price for it. With cheap tariff plans you will get a crowd that will forever not be satisfied with some things. She will simply devour your time and energy. ”

Ben Congleton, director and co-founder of Olark



7) Conflict can be very valuable.

“When start-up co-founders spend as much time as possible with each other, this allows you to quickly find the best ways to interact, how to solve these or other problems. And here conflicts help a lot. Yes, do not be afraid to argue and swear. In the "battle" of characters a strong team is born. In addition, you will learn the whole truth about yourself) "

8) Hire yourself to work

“Despite the fact that this is a startup, you should not feel poor. As soon as an opportunity arose, we began to pay ourselves a salary even before we hired the first employee. ”

9) Determine the boundaries of paying and free users.

“We modeled on the chart data on working with the service (online consultant) and realized that the threshold followed by active use is 20 chats per month. This is the figure we set in the plan free. Users with fewer sessions rated the role of service in their business much lower.

Determine the exact criterion (number of sessions, number of projects created, work time, etc.) product values ​​in the eyes of your customers and focus on the active part. Do not remove the free plan. Many of these users are “brand advocates” + word of mouth ”.

Neil Patel, founder of Quick Sprout , co-founder of Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics



10) You REALLY have plenty of time

“When someone says that he doesn’t have enough time, it’s just nonsense. It's all about priorities. There is no time to write an article to the blog, but there is time for 3 hours of sitting in front of the TV or going to the bar with friends. Yes, most likely, you will have to give up for a while the "little joys of life." If you really want to achieve something in business - set priorities in what to invest your time and energy.

The Rescue Time tool helps me. It shows where I waste time and how to set up a business schedule to focus on the most important tasks. ”

11) Wake up earlier

“I do a lot of work in the morning, regardless of the urgency of the task. In the morning it is much easier to do some complicated things that the hands do not reach in the afternoon.

12) Create content for paying customers.

“When we first started doing content marketing, we wrote“ for everyone, ”just to get traffic. This was a mistake because they chose the wrong goals. We taught people how to optimize a blog. At the same time, our audience is not bloggers, but SaaS and e-commerce.
Content should benefit first of all potential clients - those who are willing to pay you money, those who are helped by your product. ”

For more information about the experience of Neil Patel, see the article “7 Neil Patel's revelations: how to avoid mistakes of 100 million, how not to“ fly ”a startup and what is the ROI of a helicopter” .

Rand Fishkin, co-founder of Moz



13) Set extraordinary, bold goals

“My favorite example is the moon mission. Send a man to the surface of the moon and return him safely to Earth. Extremely clear, measurable goal and exact criterion of the task. Very relevant in IT and e-commerce. So you understand exactly what to do. Figuratively speaking, build a spacecraft, calculate fuel, develop special shoes for astronauts, and so on. One is big, and there are short-term goals around it. ”

14) You can build a corporate culture with a minimum of money.

“Just find the things that unite you. Playing together an online game after the work day, getting together for a picnic at the weekend - you don't need a lot of money for this. ”

15) Optimize ways to communicate

“Two things support my communication — email and a calendar. All tasks there. I practically do not respond to messages in Facebook and LinkedIn (sometimes up to 700 messages accumulate there). Because it will take all my time.
Choose 1-2 convenient communication channels, otherwise “drown” in the flow of information. ”

For more information about the experience of Rand Fishkin, see “How to build a company with a turnover of $ 35,000,000 without a single seller. The Rand Fishkin Story .

David Hoser, Director and Co-Founder, Grasshopper



16) Squeeze all that is possible from each situation, each meeting

“Building the servers and placing them in the data center according to preliminary calculations should have cost us a million dollars, but we received it for $ 150,000. Because we learned how to sell our“ history ”and agreed on crazy people in good terms with contractors and suppliers. In fact, they loaned money in the form of equipment.

We did not turn to large companies, but went to small businesses, where we spoke with the owners of the companies — telling the story of how we are going to work for hundreds of thousands of clients. As a result, a year later we had the opportunity instead of one to buy 20 servers.

Yes, we showed a business plan, but ultimately sold the product vision, the business vision. ”

17) Paid advertising works

“The“ experts ”who broadcast about viral marketing, free ways to disseminate information, get bored. Yes, we have a blog, communities in social networks, but I am convinced that we would have missed huge opportunities because of the refusal of paid campaigns (contextual advertising, Facebook). It just works. People buy a product because they see ads. ”

18) Do not waste time on the promoted resources

“Publishing on sites like TechCrunch will give you a boost in SEO thanks to external links, but this is the only benefit. It's great to be in the TOP of Hacker News, and what's the use of it if you don't get into your Central Asia?
The funny thing is that TechCrunch stubbornly did not want to write about us. With that, they posted material about our competitors with much smaller amounts of revenue.

Go where your potential customers are. Huskies and views on the TOP-resources do not give anything except vanity. "

Commentary founder Alexander Yagla.ru Alimov

For ourselves, we found a whole series of moments that we also encountered in our project. Moreover, this is not always the same vision as that of top colleagues. For example, an opinion about the free tariff at Hiten Shah. In Yagla, we also went through freemium and through trial. In the end, they decided to "kill", since only paying customers were engaged in the actual product implementation. In more or less complex services, the free category simply does not reach a measurable result: registered - “poked” - abandoned. Or did not try to do something. In RuNet, the mentality is very different to put aside “for later”. In 99% of cases, this means never.

Rick Perrault's insights from Unbounce - straight to the point. Until now, we constantly hear the objections "guys, let's finish this and that, then we work with you." And just from large customers. We answer that if another 10 customers ask for the same feature, we'll do it. In fact, the "vital function" of the weather does not. We simply did not show the full value of the product. Same thing with prices. In the summer, we increased them 4 times. At the same time, revenue increased by 26%.

Which of the 18 insights are close to you? Share your opinions and experiences in the comments.