[WDM 2015] 500 Startups >> Dominic Coryell, "The Hustler's Guide To Experimentation: Using Smoke Tests To Explore Product Ideas Without Wasting Time & Resources"
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This document discusses the concept of "smoke tests" as a way to quickly validate product ideas without needing developers. It advocates getting a bare minimum proof of concept launched within an hour to start collecting data and making decisions. An example smoke test is described where a feature was launched in a day, capturing email addresses from 25% of visitors and referrals from 10%, outperforming the typical month-long development process. Smoke tests are presented as a way to reduce stalling and wasted time by learning quickly through iterative validation and optimization.
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[WDM 2015] 500 Startups >> Dominic Coryell, "The Hustler's Guide To Experimentation: Using Smoke Tests To Explore Product Ideas Without Wasting Time & Resources"
- 1. SMOKE TESTS HUSTLE YOUR EXPERIMENTS w/o DEVS
- 2. WHO IS THIS GUY DOMINIC? ● Co-Founded 2 Companies ● GSEA In College Now I’m @DistroDom @500 Startups investing time and $ in promising startups #500STRONG @DistroDom - #WMD2015
- 4. == Product
- 5. Growth Is SLOWER than we want
- 6. Product Backlog is LONGER than we want
- 7. Product Backlog is LONGER than we want
- 8. YOU EXPECT….
- 11. KILL THAT SHIT Grow Without Waiting For Product - Get Hacky
- 12. MY OWN FUCKUP (one of the many)
- 13. MY OWN FUCKUP (one of the many) ONE ENTIRE YEAR WASTED
- 15. SMOKE TEST
- 16. WTF is this Smoke Test? WAY TO PROVE THAT YOUR PRODUCT BACKLOG IS WORTH IT + VALIDATE + LEARN + ITERATE
- 17. AN EXAMPLE
- 18. “TYPICAL” PRODUCT WAY BUILD a New Feature Called “Add To Box” (~2 Weeks) PLAN a New Feature Called “Add To Box” (~1 Week) TEST & RELEASE a New Feature Called “Add To Box” (~1 Week) ONE FUCKING MONTH POTENTIALLY WASTED
- 19. “TYPICAL” PRODUCT WAY LAUNCH (THAT DAY) PLAN IDEA => HACK (~1 hour) MAKE $$$$ BOoooOM :) And the RESULTS….
- 20. FIRE
- 21. BUT EVEN IF WE LOST….
- 22. RESULTS?
- 23. LET’S GET TACTICAL 1. What is the Absolute Bare Bones Minimum Proof You Need? 2. How Can you get that proof with NO ENGINEERS? 3. Get Traffic to your site 4. Get Leads 5. Get Referrals 6. Measure Conversion 7. Analyze and Optimize 8. Make a decision 9. Plan Operations
- 26. RESULTS <= 30% of visitors entered their zipcode & 25 % of people entered their email => & 10% shared
- 27. Vs. This Design - Asked for email and zip before live - Had a <3% Email Capture Rate Less than 2x as many leads