Allan Grinshtein

Announcing LayerVault 2

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:16:52 -0400

Allan and I are happy to announce the release of LayerVault 2 today. This release represents several months of work. We focused on our core product even better along with new great features.

What you’ll see at layervault.com now is something we’re proud of. We went through dozens of possible designs before landing on the one you’ll see now.

Let’s dig into what’s new.

(Any press requests can be directed to press@layervault.com. Full resolution logos can be found at layervault.com/about.)

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Big Things in Store

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 11:41:03 -0400

layervault:

We’ve been quiet for a little while.

On April 24, that changes. We’re finally ready to show you what we’ve been working on for the last few months. Please join us for the announcement at 11am PST.

We’re really proud of what we’ve created. We hope you like it.

Mark your calendars.

LayerVault Blog: Announcing Unlimited Storage and 60 Day Trials

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 13:43:57 -0500

LayerVault Blog: Announcing Unlimited Storage and 60 Day Trials:

layervault:

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…

kellysutton: Making the Jump Today, I quit my job in the best...

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 18:53:17 -0500

kellysutton:

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.

The Churn Burn: Bulletproofing against cancellations.

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 10:06:46 -0500

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?

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 00:18:36 -0500

Hey, Back Button — Watcha thinking about?

After having built a bunch of small but important go-nowhere...

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 09:48:00 -0400

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 :)

The Importance of Small, Go-Nowhere Projects

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 09:56:00 -0400

I’ve built more things for the web than I can remember (luckily, no one else can either). If your goal is to one day launch something of your own, small go-nowhere projects are the best way to cut your teeth. A few notes on the lessons you’ll learn.

1. Learning to launch/quit/fire

Especially if you’re working with others, you’ll quickly learn that weeks or months without launch is a huge red flag. You’re supposed to be building something small. The first time a deadline’s missed, time to make changes. If you’re still not able to launch, stop fooling yourself — get rid of people, or pull the plug.

2. Customer Acquisition

Building something that people will pay for is pretty tough. Small projects are a wonderful way to test whether you’re actually as good at making money as you think you are. That particular muscle gets stronger with each consecutive project, but I know of no other way to develop a sense for how to do this.

I’ve launched projects with exactly zero customers and others with nearly zero customers. Pingwire and Factotum eventually had customers in the thousands. Each time, it gets easier to build something that might leapfrog the last.

3. You’ve launched. Now what?

Post-launch is really damn tough and you should be putting yourself in the post-launch position as much as possible. Sometimes having no gameplan works, most times it doesn’t. All the blog posts or mixergy interviews in the world aren’t going to help you when you’re caught in the headlights and the clock is ticking.

Courseboss was a dud with no gameplan and no traffic. We bent over backwards to drive traffic to Zontik Games. Pingwire was built in the middle of the night and its traffic took down twitpic the next morning (and several times after that).

The End of Facebook.

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 11:32:31 -0400

Given today’s headlines about the beginning of the end of Facebook, I thought I’d do a quick Google search. Presented without comment:

Jun 14, 2011 - Has Facebook Peaked?

Jan 7, 2011 - Facebook hype will fade

Aug 17th, 2010 - Facebook May or May Not Be Growing As Quickly This Summer, Third Party Measurements Show

Aug 17, 2010 - The End of Facebook?

May 21, 2010 - End of Facebook Near? 60% Ready to Dump Site

May 12, 2010 - The Beginning of the end of Facebook

May 12, 2010 - The Big Game, Zuckerberg and Overplaying your Hand

Apr 1, 2009 - It’s the Beginning of the End of Facebook

Aug 10, 2009 - Has Social Networking Peaked?

Saving this for later

Fri, 20 May 2011 15:54:55 -0400

Posting this ASCII nyancat I made so that I don’t lose it.

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Google Cal and Outlook are far from a great experience, and a...

Sun, 15 May 2011 19:48:00 -0400

Google Cal and Outlook are far from a great experience, and a lot of the reasons why are nicely documented here and here. So, as a small weekend project, I started mocking up and building a bit. I’ve been noodling on it for only a short time, but here’s what I’ve got.

This is the Flickr set, including a neat video.

While working on this thing, it occured to me that there’s also so much squandered potential with standard calendars. They know where you’ve been and who you’ve been there with, yet they’re still only a record of time. Maybe I’ve been watching too much Doctor Who, but I’d love to see an app that’s able to organize time, place, and people.

DHL Express: 108% Improvement on Landing Page

Tue, 10 May 2011 13:46:15 -0400

This cracks me up. DHL Express saw a material improvement in landing page conversions by replacing a photo of a man with a woman.

Jon's ReVisualizer for Tumblr

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 11:36:10 -0400

Blip coworker Jon whipped up a neat bookmarklet for tumblr called ReVisualizer that visualizes a post’s notes.

The irony is that I’m not reblogging his original post.

Factotum 1.0.5 is out (includes Amazon Cloud Player support)

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 17:18:20 -0400

Good news!

An update to Factotum is available. It contains the following goodness:

Support for: Amazon Cloud Player, 8tracks (my new favorite music site), Purevolume, and the Mog Chrome App.
Menu options for increased awesomeness.
An instruction screen that appears the first time you run the app.

You know how those Mac keyboard media keys (like prev,...

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 10:28:00 -0400

You know how those Mac keyboard media keys (like prev, pause/play, next) don’t work with music services on the web? I decided to fix that.

Factotum makes music services as act more like iTunes by binding Option + Shift + Media keys to 16 major music sites. Basically, the next time someone interrupts you while you’re listening to music, you won’t have to scramble to find the browser window and tab that’s playing music.

If you’re someone who listens to music on the web, you should check it out. It’s available in the Mac App Store.

Last week I gave Kelly a mockup for his “Hipster Guide To...

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 13:15:00 -0500

Last week I gave Kelly a mockup for his “Hipster Guide To Berlin” project. I think he did a pretty good job with it. In related news, I’ve now put Bonanza Coffee Heroes on my list of places to visit.

The Godless Constitution

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 16:19:00 -0500

Deist, Infidel, “opposer of Christianity”, Atheist, and Devil are among the names Jefferson was called by his adversaries — most of them being conservative Christians. (A Reverend had warned that electing Jefferson as president would “destroy religion, introduce immorality and loosen all the bands of society.”)

and

In a staggering historical flip-flop, it [the Christian right] now celebrates the Constitution by denying its godless foundation, which so many religious leaders in the past clearly recognized and lamented. Having lost many times in its effort to put God and Christ into the persistently vilified godless Constitution and an atheistic national government, the Christian right today embraces the Constitution and its authors, rewriting history as it does so. Its adherents have falsely dressed the founders of American government and the Constitution in godly Christian garb, which they argue, later godless generations have systematically torn off. America today will suffer God’s wrath, we are now told, unless it returns to its founders’ abiding vision of a Christian American politics. Such is the vast distortion of American history offered by today’s preachers of religious correctness.

Found in a review of “The Godless Constitution” by Issac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore. Of course, if you’re not a laissez faire Capitalist, clicking through is not advisable.

An idea is much like a small flame and, without attention, lives...

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 01:04:55 -0500

An idea is much like a small flame and, without attention, lives for just as long.

Remember Pingwire? That thing I built one night when I...

Sun, 23 Jan 2011 15:49:00 -0500

Remember Pingwire? That thing I built one night when I couldn’t sleep? It blew up, ended up stealing a few days of my life, and then fell by the wayside.

Well, now it’s awesome iPhone app.

Using Twitter For Increased Indexation

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 11:17:04 -0400

Twitter Only Launch
GoogleBot averaged its first visit within 78 seconds of the first tweet.

Tweets with more than 3 RTs were indexed 325% faster, along with 125% more of its products and post indexed than tweets with no RTs.

Average indexation of the post or product was different depending on number of RTs

(via SEOmoz)

Twitter links may be nofollow, but there’s definitely search value in them. The gentlemen at SEOmoz have discovered a positive correlation between the number of retweets, index speed, and pages indexed.