Branding is a potential marketing rathole for startups, particularly early-stage ones. Startups who prioritise branding are putting the cart before the horse. Focus should be on product and business first - the real work to prove product-market-fit.Branding comes after PMF. "You don’t need a brand before you have PMF."Even when branding makes sense, a startup usually focuses on the wrong elements, eg: the logo instead of the targeting. Targeting matters, the value prop matters, positioning matters. The visual identity and brand values not so much.

The Branding Mirage for Startups

Do want to build a brand? Go sell some software. Want to improve your brand perception? Go sell some software. Want to have a distinctive brand visual territory? Go sell some software.

Branding may seem a hairy topic but it can be broken down into: <ul><li>Brand targeting: Who Do We Sell To?</li><li>Brand promise: Why Do They Buy From Our Company?</li><li>Brand positioning: Why Do They Buy Our Product?</li><li>Brand identity: Do We Look Like Us?</li><li>Brand values: What Do We Stand For?</li><li>Brand voice: Do We Sound Like Us?</li></ul>

6 elements of Branding

This is brandspeak for figuring out who you’re selling to.  Think STP (segment, target, position).<ul><li>Figure out a mechanism to segment the market — e.g., by company size, by vertical industry, by adjacent systems</li><li>Target one or more of those segments. For startups, fewer is better.</li><li>Position your product to those target segments.</li></ul>

Brand Targeting for Startups

The high-level expression of why someone should buy from your company, often more simply known as the value proposition. For tech startups they tend to fall into a few patterns:<ul><li>We are you (e.g., Mosaic, we built it for ourselves at Palantir).</li><li>We fixed it. We took the last-generation leader and made it better (e.g., Cube to Adaptive, Pigment to Anaplan)</li><li>We rebuilt it.  We run on the modern stack with modern technology (e.g., OnPlan to Vena)</li><li>We verticalized it (e.g., Plannuh for marketing, Place for SaaS)</li></ul>

Brand promises for Startups

Positioning comes down to answering one of two questions:<ol><li>Why buy one? (Benefit oriented)</li><li>Why buy yours? (Differentiation oriented)</li></ol>Startups who are alone in defining their category need to focus on the first question. Those in crowded categories (either a new market with several nascent entrants or a more developed category with the usual suspects), the emphasis needs to be on why buy mine.

Brand Positioning for Startups

Focusing on the logo and brand values before having a business is like putting the cart before the horse.

Products & Innovation 

Dave Kellog on Startup Branding

A supply chain is made up of interconnected parts of a whole, all of which add up to finished products bought by customers. Take automobiles, for example. Before a consumer buys a car, iron ore is extracted from the earth. The ore is transported to a plant, where it’s turned into steel, which is made into the chassis of the automobile. To make the car, various components—from engines to batteries, electrical components, rubber tires, a metal body, and paint—are assembled. Once the car is made, it’s sold in a retail setting to the end consumer.

Understanding Supply Chains

<ul><li>producers, which make or grow the raw materials for goods</li><li>vendors, which buy and sell materials</li><li>manufacturers, which make materials into goods</li><li>transporters, or logistics providers, which move those goods around the world</li><li>supply chain managers, which ensure that operations run smoothly in everything from planning to sourcing raw materials, manufacturing, delivery, and returns</li><li>retailers, which sell goods either online or in physical stores</li><li>consumers, who buy and use those goods and services</li></ul>

The Stakeholders

A supply chain includes all the raw materials and parts that are made into a product and distributed up the chain for manufacture and sale. In contrast, a <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/innovation-and-growth/globalization-in-transition-the-future-of-trade-and-value-chains">value chain</a> encompasses all the individual steps that are taken to create a marketable product. That includes not only physical components but also various value-adding activities that might be classified as part of the “knowledge economy”—things such as innovation, design, marketing, and sales—and that lead to the development of a product ready for customers.

Difference Between Value Chains and Supply Chains

When any link in a <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/diagnosing-the-pain-in-your-supply-chain">supply chain isn’t working optimally</a>, you might say the supply chain has been disrupted. Different issues can emerge. For example, an increase in inbound material costs, because one material costs more this year than it did last year, can have major implications on a company’s cost structure. Or <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/navigating-the-labor-mismatch-in-us-logistics-and-supply-chains">labour market mismatches can cause operational concerns</a>—for instance, if transport companies can’t find enough people who want to drive trucks to deliver goods.

Supply Chain Disruption

<ul><li>planning and supplier networks</li><li>transportation and logistics systems</li><li>financial resiliency</li><li>product complexity</li><li>organizational maturity</li></ul>Supply chain disruptions lasting one month or longer occur every 3.7 years, on average. And these disruptions can have a steep price: they cost the average organization 45 percent of a year’s profits over the course of a decade.

Five Areas Where Supply Chain Vulnerabilities Show Up

Although <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/how-covid-19-is-reshaping-supply-chains">the COVID-19 pandemic</a> has delivered the biggest supply chain or value chain shock in recent memory, other examples abound. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to the worst humanitarian crisis in Europe since World War II, as well as <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/supply-chains-to-build-resilience-manage-proactively">supply chain disruptions in critical sectors</a>, including agriculture, automotive, energy, and food. Changes in the environment and the global economy have increased the frequency and magnitude of these shocks. For instance, the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan shut down electronics factories.

Supply Chain Risks

Supply chain shocks are classified into four different types:Unanticipated catastrophes. These are historically remarkable events that can’t be anticipated and lead to trillions of dollars in losses.  Foreseeable catastrophes. Shocks in this category are of a similar magnitude to an unanticipated catastrophe but differ in that larger patterns and probabilities can guide general preparedness.  Unanticipated disruptions. These are serious and costly events but are on a smaller scale than catastrophes.  Foreseeable disruptions. Some disruptions can be spotted in advance of their arrival.

Classification Of Supply Chain Shocks

Organizations often focus on managing the shocks that they see most often. The COVID-19 pandemic is a reminder that while outliers are rare, organizations still need to consider such possibilities when making decisions and strategic moves. For most organizations, that will mean expanding supply chain executives’ long-standing focus on cost (and capital usage), service, and quality to include <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/future-proofing-the-supply-chain">three new priorities: resilience, agility, and sustainability</a>.

Resilience, Agility, and Sustainability

<a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/diagnosing-the-pain-in-your-supply-chain">Inflation can play a role</a> in supply chain challenges. When inflation occurs, costs for input materials (<a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/outsprinting-the-energy-crisis">such as energy</a>) can rise substantially, having negative effects on companies’ profits and losses. One way to adjust is to increase prices (fairly) for consumers. Organizations can make more informed decisions by using an <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/responding-to-inflation-and-volatility-time-for-procurement-to-lead">exposure matrix</a> to assess which categories of their products are exposed to market forces and whether the market is inflating or deflating.

Inflation And Supply Chains

<a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/business-resilience">Resilience</a> refers to the ability to withstand, adapt, and thrive in the face of internal and external shocks—both known and unknown. More specifically, <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/risk-and-resilience/our-insights/the-resilience-imperative-succeeding-in-uncertain-times">operational resilience</a>, which encompasses supply chains, is about businesses maintaining robust production capacity that can accommodate shifts in demand and remain stable amid disruption, without letting quality slide.

Supply Chain Resilience

Firefighting. This refers to short-term, day-to-day actions that can help identify previously overlooked supply chain gaps. These tactics don’t build resilience, however, so they should be used only in concert with more complex, long-term reforms.Integrating and streamlining operations. Here, three actions can be critical to building resilient supply chains:<ul><li>creating a nerve centre to consolidate organizational responses</li><li>simulating and planning for extreme supply and demand disruptions</li><li>reevaluating just-in-time inventory strategies</li></ul>

Handling Long Term Uncertainty

Quick responses are easier to accomplish, but if long-term resilience is the goal, the following techniques can help:<ul><li>constructing a digital twin of the most critical parts of the supply chain, allowing for simulations and test cases</li><li>creating and testing “what if” scenarios</li><li>increasing data sharing with suppliers</li><li>considering ring-fencing a small part of the supply chain team</li></ul>

Achieving Structural Resilience

Supply chain management (and operations, more broadly) is now a CEO-level concern. Some of the strategic operational questions that CEOs have on their agenda include the following:Can we meet customer demand both today and tomorrow?Should we boost capacity to prepare for prolonged, rapid growth or reduce it to prepare for a slowdown?Where will we find workers who are skilled and digitally savvy?How do we decarbonize, minimize regulatory risk, and stay in business?

The Working Of Great Supply Chain Orgs

Incremental efforts aren’t enough to capture the full potential, and drilling down into the right supply chain structure and physical footprints is a critical starting point. Midsize supplier plants with 1,000 to 1,500 employees were nearly twice as likely as bigger or smaller counterparts to score in the top quartile on productivity. So having production divided among several plants rather than in a single mega factory could help a company move closer to customers and reduce location risks.

The Right Structure

Few established companies have fully digitized their end-to-end operations. But <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/the-ceo-architect-of-the-new-operations-agenda">digitization can be a feasible solution to operational challenges</a> seen across many companies and industries. <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-are-industry-4-0-the-fourth-industrial-revolution-and-4ir">Industry 4.0</a>, or the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), describes the impact that increased connectivity, automation, and more have had on technology, industry, and society.  Industry 4.0 has helped them sustain their operations during the COVID-19 crisis; over half said their digital transformations have been crucial to their pandemic responses.

Digital Supply Chains

Digitization, including advanced analytics, automation, and machine learning, can help operations become more productive, flexible, and geared for speed. Such approaches have yielded real results for some leading organizations—for example, reducing inventory and cost of goods sold by 30 percent, lowering the cost of quality by 50 percent, and improving cash and productivity by 30 percent. Surveys also suggest that digitization and an embrace of Industry 4.0 technologies can <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/lighthouses-unlock-sustainability-through-4ir-technologies">boost eco-efficiency</a> in supply chains.

Digitization For Efficiency

While some leading organizations have already realized value from digitization, others are lagging behind. Modernizing supply chain IT—for instance, to improve demand forecasting and planning systems—can have a powerful effect. For organizations looking to step up on IT for supply chain planning, three steps can help:<ul><li>Redesign processes.</li><li>Select vendors.</li><li>Create an implementation road map.</li></ul>Cumulatively, these changes can have a significant impact, especially when they support a successful rollout of integrated business planning (IBP).

Moving Towards Integrated Business Planning

Stashed ideas

What is supply chain?

Seeing paywalls is key for revenue on consumer apps. <ul><li>Most important metric is App Install → Paywall. Revenue moves (almost linearly) with this metric.</li><li>Second most important metric. Paywall views per free user. Around the 7th paywall view on average.</li></ul>Best setup to start with: Paywall BEFORE Onboarding + Paywall AFTER Onboarding + Paywall EVERY App Open. Best if the first paywall includes a screen recording. Show the user exactly what they are getting with a free trial.Send push notifications out daily. Each app open = paywall view.

Paywalls Views Matter

Run drip campaigns:<ol><li>Lower prices on day 0, day 3, day 7, day 14, day 30.</li><li>Send reminders via push but also SMS or email</li><li>Link to web checkout: You should have a URL like <a href="https://t.co/oDGocLt5G2">http://appname.com/checkout?app_user_id=100…</a> that deep links to your app after purchase.</li></ol>

Constantly lower price with drip campaigns

Sales can account for 20% of total revenue: <ul><li>Christmas</li><li>Black Friday</li><li>New Years</li><li>Memorial Day</li><li>Labor Day</li><li>Spring Sale</li><li>Fall Sale</li><li>Summer Sale</li><li>Father’s Day</li><li>Mother’s Day</li></ul>Offer a discount like 50% off.

Use Sales 

Price testing is useful but not as important as one may expect. First test weekly prices. Then monthly. Then annual. Analyze cohorts over time:<ul><li>For weekly, test $1.99, $2.99, $3.99, $4.99, $7.99, $9.99. Test 3 and 7 day trials. When you find a winner, go onto monthly.</li><li>For monthly, test $4.99, $7.99, $9.99, $12.49, $14.99, $19.99, $29.99, $49,99. Test 3 or 7 day trials. When you find a winner, go onto yearly.</li><li>For yearly, test $29.99, $39.99, $49.99, $59.99, $89.99, $119.99, $129.99, $149.99, $189.99. </li></ul>Alos test 3 and 7 day trials.

Test Pricing

Hide a cheaper priced plan in your subscription group. For ex, offer users $89.99/yr in app, but add a $59.99/yr product called Secret Discount.When users go to cancel, they'll see the discount. I've seen setups increase revenue by 10%.If the user cancels their trial, add a floating UI above your app’s homescreen showing them # of days till their trial expires. Link to a paywall with a discount.

Winback campaign with discounts

<ul><li>You must also be able to change questions very easily. Simplest setup is to show typeform surveys on app open. Add app user id as a hidden parameter. This lets you change questions over time.</li><li>Send two types of surveys out: trial cancel survey & product market fit (Asking how would user feel if the product went away). Use local notifications for trial cancel surveys.</li><li>For trial cancel survey, ask the following (1) why did you cancel? (Multiple choice) (2) how can we improve (free response). End with a discount via Stripe.</li></ul>

Dynamic User Surveys

<ul><li>The first rating request should be as fast as possible. Maybe even in the onboarding. Introduced with the text "How is it going so far?"</li><li>If the user completed a survey with a question "Why do you love the app?" use that text for the review. </li><li>After your first rating request, only ask for an in app rating after the use of a core feature.</li><li>Only ask if the app version is different from the last time you asked for a rating.</li></ul>

Get More Ratings

You must balance completion rates and paywall conversion rates. Higher completion rate = more paywall views. Longer onboarding = higher paywall conversion rates (due to sunk cost bias).<ul><li>Personal info like name, age, email etc. have the lowest completion rates. Offload as much as possible to after a paywall view.</li><li>Sort each step in descending completion rate. Lowest converting steps will have a higher chance of converting at the end due to Sunk Cost bias.</li><li>First paywall test should test your messaging. This will inform everything from feature development to later iterations. </li></ul>

Onboarding Tips

When your paywall is dismissed w/o paying, ask why in a free response survey.Use responses determine multiple choice Qs. Use a word cloud to analyse free responses.

Survey after paywall dismissal 

Being able to remotely update your paywall is essential. Use Firebase's Remote Config to alter pricing, text and images remotely. You can simulate a fully remotely-configurable paywall by using images as static UI elements.

Remotely Update Your Paywalls

Keyword at the beginning of your Title and Subtitle carry far more weight than those at the end. Frontload ing keywords is a popular hack. This is the time to care LESS about your brand and MORE about being practical.Use Apple Ads to find the best keywords for your description: <ol><li>Overpay for clicks if you need to. Don't worry about profitability</li><li>Send keyword attribution to your analytics tracking & see which have highest install to paid conversion & 30d retention rates.</li><li>Take the top result & change your app's title to “Keyword - App Name”. </li><li>Use the rest in your subtitle. Don’t worry about grammar.</li></ol>

ASO Keyword Payloading

Create in-app events via App Store Connect. Titles you use can rank organically in search results. Hint: If you choose a start date of around 1hr after you submit for review, your app review will be expidited.

AppStore In-App Events

<ul><li>Use native ad SDKs when you can. No need to use Appsflyer for Facebook ads.</li><li>With FB, stick to Automated App Ads (AAA). They let you upload 50 images or videos and 5 sets of text. They handle the rest (including audience). </li><li>Optimize for trial starts if you have enough events</li><li>Create two AAA campaigns to begin with. Tier 1 targeting only the US. Tier 2 targeting Canada, UK, Australia and Germany. Split spend 90% Tier 1 and 10% Tier 2 countries.</li></ul>

Ads Tech Setup

Hiring influencers (via TikTok mainly is essential). Use them to create content for ads, not for an ROI positive influencer campaign, that’s too hard to achieve on a small scale.<ul><li>Pay out influencers based on performance if you can. Again, this isn’t to make sure you’re ROI positive, it’s to make sure interests are aligned so their videos make for great ads.</li><li>Buy / negotiate the right to use your influencer’s videos in your ads. Don’t use them without asking! Use them in your AAA campaigns.</li></ul>

Influencers based campaigns

<ul><li>Target users with ad creatives, not with ad settings. Its always cheaper to cast a wider net with open targeting – videos & text will attract users who resonate with the problem your solving and the solution you are advertising.</li><li>Ask “who do you think would benefit most from using your app?” These responses are your personas. Make ad creatives for each of your personas.</li></ul>

User Creatives from Users

Don’t hide old feature releases from new users. They aren’t as curious as you think. Take screen recordings of new features as you release them. Send email + push notification tips on how to use them. Send every 48 hrs. Start from the beginning for each new user

Market Old Features As New

Practical ideas on monetising mobile apps

Monetisation Secrets from Jake Mor

What does that look like in the context of the user journey? For a ride-sharing app with a simple user journey, it might look like this:Aha moments are emotional and impactful, creating a powerful impression that keeps users coming back for more. Ideally, your aha moment should happen the first time users try your product—usually during onboarding .The aha moment is a moment of sudden insight or discovery. In software, it’s the pivotal moment when a new user first realizes the value of your product and why they need it.

What is an Aha moment

That moment things click—when a user realizes that they can truly benefit from your app—is their aha moment. Sometimes users actively realize this moment, while others experience it more subconsciously. Either way, the aha moment is the switch that turns an evaluating user into an activated user. It also often separates the users who stick around from those who churn.

Why Aha moment is important

<ol><li>Start with data you already have—in particular, your user analytics and user feedback</li><li>Supplement with user feedback</li><li>Learn from churned users</li></ol>

How to find your product's aha moment

Knowing which actions or events in your product trigger aha moments allows you to create more tailored onboarding experiences for different types of users.For example, Duolingo asks the user to choose if he's new to the language or if he knows some.

Personalize your user's journey to “aha!“

Signup forms, multiple tabs, installs, tutorial videos—the more work you make a user put in before they hit their “aha,” the less likely it is that they’ll stick around for it. If you can get users to their aha moment before requiring them to enter credit card info, agree to Terms of Service, or even log in—do it! That moment of activation will work in your favor—don’t gate your aha moment if you don’t have to.Take a look at how Airbnb gives you access to all their listings before asking you for any information.

How to get users to aha faster

Use tooltips to point users where you want them to go, leading them directly to your aha moment with a step-by-step breakdown of what to do. Instead of telling users what to do via a boring guide or video, tooltips show users exactly how to get to their goals. When new users don’t have to figure things out on their own, they’re more likely to reach “aha.”

Tooltips

Great ideas on how to start with the aha moment. Spoiler alert: Add it in onboarding

In this comprehensive guide, we'll cover how to define, design, personalize, and optimize your own product's aha moment.

Product

The aha moment guide: How to find, optimize, and design for your product

There are four key factors that shape every marketplace:<ul><li>network effects;</li><li>type of supply;</li><li>incentives;</li><li>size and frequency of interaction.</li></ul> Understanding those factors — and structuring your platform accordingly — can make the difference between a wildly successful marketplace and one that never gets off the ground.

Four key factors that shape every marketplace

Simplistically, a marketplace is a place where buyers and sellers meet to conduct commerce. In the online setting, that definition still holds true — online marketplaces give buyers a choice in what they would like to buy and sellers a variety of people to sell to. I classify Airbnb as a search marketplace, where the guest selects where they will stay, choosing what to “purchase” in the marketplace.In recent years, the definition of a marketplace has stretched to include on-demand models that are considered marketplaces because of the independent contractor relationship on the seller side.

Definition of a marketplace

Advantages:<ul><li>They involve low capital costs, as inventory is brought to the market from the suppliers.</li><li>The market can self-correct by offering more of the good or service as buyers demand it more, making each marketplace function like a mini economy.</li></ul> Disadvantages:<ul><li>Because marketplaces need a certain amount of supply from day one, they are super hard to start.</li><li>It is hard to control the quality of inventory.</li></ul>

Advantages and Disadvantages of marketplaces

All marketplaces exhibit a form of network effects, where each additional user on either the demand side or the supply side enhances the utility of the network for all users. Airbnb has global network effects because travel is global. Companies like DoorDash and TaskRabbit have root density network effects - each market grows independently of another. Supply gains little value from demand growth in another market, and demand gains little from supply developing in another market. These businesses grew from being the first mover in each market, then aggressively building supply, city by city.

1. Type of Network Effects: How will your marketplace grow?

Another factor that dictates the dynamics of the marketplace tremendously is the uniqueness of your supply.Airbnb offers heterogeneous supply, meaning that each listing is unique. This creates a competitive moat — it is hard to replicate that supply — and an inherent advantage to Airbnb. Heterogenous supply generates cognitive load. Many other marketplaces offer homogeneous supply, meaning that one supplier’s goods are roughly indistinguishable from another’s. Unfortunately, that makes it easier to replicate the business, as the supply is not unique and can be quickly copied (think Uber)

2. Homogeneous vs. Heterogeneous Supply: Is your startup a search marketplace or a matching marketplace?

Heterogeneous - search marketplaces, guests are responsible for finding their desired listing. Once you have unique supply, it is up to the product team to build a compelling demand-side product experience that simplifies search, creating as much of a one-click purchasing experience as possible. Homogeneous - matching marketplaces, where demand doesn’t care which supply they receive as long as it is above the standard.Homogeneous marketplaces compete on other aspects of the product offering, like price, greater loyalty, brand distinction, or what values the marketplace ultimately stands for

Homogeneous vs. Heterogeneous - continued

There are two broad incentives to keep transactions on the platform: trust and convenience. Technology can bridge trust by offering:<ul><li>Identity Verification —Can I trust them?</li><li>Reviews — What do other have to say about it?</li><li>Assurance — If something happens, can I get help?</li></ul>Technology can offer greater convenience by facilitating:<ul><li>Payments — Will I get my money or the product/serivce?</li><li>Messaging — Can I easily communicate and reach out to the other party?</li><li>Transactions — Did I buy the good or service? Did it reduce the burden of going back and forth multiple times?</li></ul>

3. Two-Sided Incentives: How will you keep both buyers and sellers in the marketplace?

The size and frequency of interaction in a marketplace are paramount to its health. Frequency of interaction determines how much liquidity there is on the platform. . Larger-dollar transactions are better for the platform because they generate more economic activity. Some businesses are high dollar but low frequency. Airbnb fits squarely in this category. Every marketplace should strive to drive higher-frequency usage. Liquidity is key. Making sure that transaction volume is thriving is more important to a new marketplace than getting the largest revenue per transaction.

4. Size and Frequency of Interaction: What are the unit economics of your marketplace?

The six years I spent building products at Airbnb, scaling the marketplace over 100X, transformed how I understand the work of starting a marketplace platform. No startup is immune to hiccups and…

Dave Kellog on Startup Branding

What is supply chain?

Monetisation Secrets from Jake Mor

The aha moment guide: How to find, optimize, and design for your product

Four Questions Every Marketplace Startup Should Be Able to Answer

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