Let’s get right to the point — We’re building some pretty amazing stuff here at LayerVault. We’ve iterated on nearly every aspect of the product, made huge improvements to things like user experience and reliability. Today, we’re releasing the next iteration of the LayerVault pricing.
We’re…
Making the Jump
Today, I quit my job in the best way possible.
Allan and I made a pact that if LayerVault could pay my rent, I’d make the jump and work full time. “Ramen profitable.” Two months after we launched at FOWA in London, I’m happy to say that time has come. We’re going to see this through. I am so proud of what Allan and I have been able to accomplish in two months. I can’t wait to see where we’ll be in another four.
Starting early next year, I’m going to put myself to the test. I’ve booked a one-way ticket to Berlin, my home base in Western Europe. My goal is to keep traveling east while putting in 60-hour weeks on LayerVault.
Now is an incredible time in history, especially for guys like me. Us developers are a weird class of folk: once relegated to our sunless parents’ basements, we’re now the most mobile class in the world. I’m going to put that to the test.
I’m not sure when I will come back to NYC exactly. Could be month. Could be six. In the meantime, Allan and I will continue building the foundation of a great software company. A solid business. With profits. Ten year plans instead of ten month runways. Our customers love us and we’re going to continue to make the best tools for designers out there. I’ll be posting pictures of progress on LayerVault and of my adventures around the world.
Here’s to the crazy ones.
Photo by the U.S. Army, licensed under Creative Commons.
LayerVault is lucky in that the majority of customers love the service, but cancellations happen. And when they do happen, your mind races — what went wrong? Where did we fuck up?
I haven’t been able to find a straightforward, bulleted checklist that a SAAS business can use to deal with and prevent cancellations, so here’s ours. We’ve defined the three areas responsible for cancellations as follows: positioning, on-boarding, and executing on promises.
Positioning
Positioning happens before the purchase takes place. Promises you’ve made and expectations you’ve set will be tested once your customer converts. This is our pre-conversion positioning list:
- Video demos or marketing videos
- Exposed help pages and tutorials
- Product tours and screenshots
- Blog posts demoing features
- Straightforward language refraining from exaggeration.
On-boarding
On-boarding post-signup is critical. Don’t blow it. The battle has two fronts – educating your users and removing ambiguity from features. If you’ve added product tours, video demos, and tutorials, your user may be well on their way. The best on-boarding happens before the customer converts. Either way, here’s what’s in our on-boarding list:
- Make sure placeholders, empty states, and default states look great. Meaning, make things look great when they’re empty or haven’t been used.
- Make sure it’s clear what the new user’s first step is.
- Checklists and rewards. A great way to on-board is to reward the customer for educating himself.
- Check-in with the user to see how his on-boarding is going. Automatically or manually.
- Getting started videos.
Let’s get real for a moment — In reality, the single biggest way to make on-boarding easy: Don’t build garbage. The start-up quote floating around is that if you’ve released something you’re not embarrassed about, you took too long. That’s great for companies who don’t have paying customers. For the rest of us, it’s not. Release garbage, you’re going to regret it. Just do less, better.
Executing
If you built a product that doesn’t live up to the promises you made, either fix the product, fix the positioning, or both. The recommended steps are:
- Under-promise.
- Over-deliver.
This is clearly not an exhaustive list, but it’s a start. There’s nothing worse than a cancellation, even if it’s one in a thousand. You messed up. It’s your job to figure out how to better manage expectations and deliver on them.
We’re lucky, though. LayerVault is fairly easy to improve because we really only do one thing: Simple version control for designers. Had we bitten off more than we could chew, I imagine things would have been a lot different.
Hey, Back Button — Watcha thinking about?
After having built a bunch of small but important go-nowhere projects, I got the itch to build something that fixes a bigger problem.
About a month ago, Kelly and I teamed up to fix an issue designers have with version control. Developers already fixed this problem for themselves — they’ve got git, svn, whatever. Designers have bupkis in the way of version control.
Today we’re privately launching LayerVault, a version control system made for designers. No command lines, no uploading, and the best part — no change in your process. LayerVault keeps every copy of everything you’re working on without you doing anything extra. How does this magic work?
The LayerVault application runs in your toolbar and takes care of everything. Each time you create or modify a file you’re working on, LayerVault saves a copy.
If you’re working on a Photoshop file, every single version of you PSD is available for download. Log in to LayerVault.com, flip through the versions of your PSD, and download a version from a few weeks ago. Pretty neat — and we’ve built some stuff that makes impact to bandwidth pretty much negligible.
A handful of beta invites are floating around but if you can’t find one, give us your email address and we’ll send you one when a fresh batch are ready. Also, reblogging this post will obviously guarantee yourself a spot at the front of the line :)
