Regards

Donna

Thanks for the response. A few quick thoughts. First, when I say, I think optimization can help accelerate the path to PMF, I don’t mean that the aim of the optimization should be to maximize conversion through the funnel to the point of marginal returns. I just mean that you should optimize just enough to get enough users so you can consistently test them. So, the focus is on maximizing the number of times through the iteration loop by shortening the feedback loop not on maximizing your ROI on conversion. I’m not convinced that I am necessarily correct on this, just putting it out there for feedback. Second, and I would love to hear your thoughts on this, as it could shed light on my first point and clear it up for me, there seems to be something of a chicken and egg problem here. To achieve PMF, one needs to survey users and then realign the product around what resonates with the must have users, but you need users to survey. Assuming you go live with too few users to survey, you need some way of getting users, otherwise, you can’t collect the data you need to achieve PMF. Going from zero users to enough to survey probably requires some level of optimization as you need to get people from visitor>sign up>experiencing the core experience. The tradeoff would be worth it when you are going from zero users to enough to test.

The details of tracking are pretty confusing but I’ll do my best to explain them (with some help from my friend Hiten Shah at KISSmetrics). User level funnel tracking refers to using people as the base unit of measurement, NOT pageviews, visitors or events. Think of this as being able to drill down to see individual people who dropped off at a specific point in the funnel versus just seeing a count.

Most packages, including Google Analytics, won’t track user level funnels. In the past this type of tracking was only available by building it yourself. Packages on the high-end such as Omniture do have user-level tracking, as part of their comprehensive solutions, but the costs for high-end packages make them not an option for startups. Hope this helps clear it up.

I agree that more active users would help most startups achieve product market fit more quickly. However, I don’t believe it’s worth borrowing resources pre p/m fit from core product just to get a higher percentage of users through the funnel. This is debatable and I’d love to hear thoughts on why you think it may be worth the tradeoff.

Your business is one of the exceptions I mentioned – existing users benefit when you add more active users. Because of this network effect, you guys should be optimizing from the beginning.

And when you say off the shelf analytics software won’t track the user level funnel, do you mean Google Analytics – or just other simpler analytics package?

Great post, just a quick question. Can’t early optimization also help a company achieve PMF more quickly? Optimization of funnels that drive users to the core experience should increase the speed at which you get enough users to start surveying for PMF and it should increase the frequency at which you can survey, thus, shortening the feedback loop and iteration cycle. Doesn’t that jive with your assertion that it’s important to remove bottlenecks and roadblocks from the core experience to expose the love? Isn’t that essentially what optimization is about?