just bit into a baklava but it was a cement brick damn what a scam
It was a fun week. Tough, but fun! Zip doubled in size which is cool.
Startups are a cool thing where learnings really stack on top of each other regardless of the product/company…
Going to try our best to keep the growth going into next week!
Something that’s going well: updating users
Something I think I never got right at previous companies was updating users about changes to the product. But, after sucking at it for 10+ years I feel like I’m doing a decent job at it lately with Zip though.
For example, around ~10% of our users were having video issues. So, we made a fix and then I posted about it on our FB Group like so:
Then everyone in the comments hypes up the changes, you can also see below a user tags her friend who was having video issues and just updates her right here!
Another example is where we add new classes to Zip. Instead of just emailing everyone out, I also made a video explaining the new classes and posted that to the FB Group as well. (Twitter link for accessibility)
Another example, tons of users were struggling with finding new classes so we added filters and then told users about it on the FB Group. (Twitter link for accessibility)
Cool thing about these updates is that they are all public. So, if someone forgot about Zip they would see this and perhaps be motivated to check it out again! And, for those who already love Zip they end up loving us even more because its proof we’re listening to them and actively pushing out new updates.
We also really push parents to post on the FB Group. So, users are the one who are basically doing product updates for us. For example, we released an art class on unicorns and dragons two days ago and we just have an army of parents showing off their kid’s artwork. By doing so, other parents can be like, “Oh! Zip has a class on unicorn! Let me check it out!”. It’s much less annoying and more natural than a marketing email.
Or this one for our coral reef class:
Or this one for our class on cells:
Here’s one with a kid watching our black holes class wearing an astronaut helmet lol:
All of this is awesome because users are updating other users. It’s great.
Something that could be going better: personal planning
I think I could been like 5X-7X more effective last week if I just better planned my days out and was less reactive. I hateeeeee being reactive but it’s been hard to avoid. Random support tickets come in, random things break, random bugs happen, and someone has gotta attend to them. But when that happens, whatever you planned gets de-prioritized lol.
I think I just need to be more straight with myself when I switch tasks and time box it. Sometimes I’ll randomly switch to doing support b/c an important ticket came in and then I’ll spend 1.5 hours doing random support tasks that aren’t super high pri. But, if I just time boxed it be like a 35 min thing and then switched to the next most important thing to spend the next 35 minutes on I think that’d work.
Song of the week:
Acid at 7/11 by Yung Lean!