Congratulations on Your Engagement!

(Push Product OUT)

At Promus Ventures, we invest in products that constantly engage us (built by passionate and visionary teams). We have to see, touch, feel, smell all areas of the product, and we want to get wrapped up in its magic. We view our initial weeks with the product as imperative as I give up early if it doesn’t sweep me off my feet.

Many startups err in not immediately pounding on doors asking its target users to bang away at their product. Make the barriers as easy as possible for people to play around, ask questions, and let them give feedback. News flash: how you think people will use your product is often very different than reality.

The best teams get this right from the get-go. They architect the initial build to get at the heart of its core thesis, and get the product in many hands immediately. Feature sets are down the road — early days are for finding elusive product/market fit. Great founders are constantly A/B testing, throwing everything up on the proverbial wall to see what sticks.

Every team should constantly be asking themselves this simple question: “So what’s working?” There’s always plenty that isn’t (and if numerous failures don’t come to mind, then it’s clear the team isn’t risking/testing enough). Best to be bold with your product if you want to build something that changes the world.

Every startup is different (KPIs obviously vary from B2B to B2C companies) and revenue is always fantastic, but basic user time/engagement on product (time per day/month, session length, profile/data build, etc.) is the area we most closely examine. Downloads mean little if everyone leaves the following week.

Data doesn’t lie, and these engagement metrics are your eyes into the soul of your users. Scaling comes after you nail engagement not before it. I’ve unfortunately seen too many high-burn flameouts that could have been avoided had the team been silly-focused on learning how people were using the product vs. how they thought users would use it.

Get engagement wrong and you can find yourself quickly in trouble. Get engagement right and, well, that’s when the fun begins.