Video · 48 min

How to Build Products Users Love

Kevin Hale · Kevin Hale, Y Combinator (How to Start a Startup, Lecture 7) Free Beginner

How to Build Products Users Love

Hale (Wufoo) makes the math of this question vivid: cutting churn by 1 percent is worth as much as adding 1 percent conversion, and far cheaper. He treats existing customers like a marriage that needs constant care and shows how Wufoo's whole team did support to stay close to users. Watch it to feel why keeping the first 10 beats chasing the next 10.

  • Growth equals conversion minus churn, so reducing churn compounds
  • Everyone doing customer support keeps founders close to real problems
  • Treat existing users like a marriage, not a one time conquest
Watch on YouTube ↗

It answers 3 questions

  1. Should I just copy the UI patterns of apps my users already use, or does that make my product forgettable?
  2. What are the warning signs a developer is building the wrong thing?
  3. How do I actually keep my first 10 customers so they don't quietly churn while I go chasing the next 10?

Read with it

  1. The single best thing ever written on customer conversations. It teaches you to ask about the customer's life and past... momtestbook.com Book · ~130 pages The Mom Test Rob Fitzpatrick
  2. The permission slip to recruit users by hand, do things manually, and deliver 'insanely great' experiences to your first few... paulgraham.com Essay · ~15 min read Do Things That Don't Scale Paul Graham
  3. Video · ~25 min How to Talk to Users Eric Migicovsky
  4. Run by the managing partners of Prime Venture Partners (Sanjay Swamy, Amit Somani, Shripati Acharya and others), this is a... Prime Venture Partners Podcast Prime Venture Partners Podcast Prime Venture Partners
  5. Turns the vague feeling of product-market fit into a number you can move. Ask users how they would feel if they could no longer... First Round Review Article · ~20 min read How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product/Market Fit Rahul Vohra
  6. The free tool for running the how-would-you-feel-without-this survey that underpins the Superhuman method, giving you a... Sean Ellis and GoPractice Tool · Free tool Product/Market Fit Survey Sean Ellis
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