Orbital Lessons Learned Talk

Since I don't believe my delivery did it justice, here is the transcript from my Orbital Lessons Learned talk from Tuesday night.

Hi I’m Darrell. I’ve spent the last 12 weeks identifying a problem, exploring possible solutions to this problem, iterating through various versions of these solutions and finally launching a narrowly focused idea to the public. It’s been quite an experience.  I won’t go too in-depth about my project, as I’ve been blogging the grittier details all along the way, but in short, I built 30Websites.com, which is a project based learn-to-code course that teaches front end development centered around actually building websites as opposed to the more common exercise or tutorial based approaches.  Since this is a lessons learned talk, I’m going to focus on two major lessons I’ve learned.  The first relates to my project. I spent the first 6 weeks of the bootcamp exploring solutions to a problem I personally experienced. Finally, with the help of everyone at Orbital, I zeroed in on a pretty solid solution.  I built out a landing page to collect emails and launched it to twitter. The reception was overwhelmingly positive. I had close to 100 signups in the first 48 hours and a solid 30% conversion rate of signups to website visitors. Which is huge. I was ecstatic. I'd found the diamond in the rough. I figured the hard part was over and now all I needed to do was start building.  No, Instead I learned a tough lesson. An idea does not equal a product. As much time as I spent refining the initial concept was nothing compared to the work ahead in building out a product.  Questions arose. What would it look like? What is the content? How do I deliver the content in an engaging way? How do I teach the material? What if no one uses it?  Each one of these questions is as equally complex as developing the initial idea. As it turns out, things don’t get easier once you’ve unearthed that great idea. This was an important take away. I'm now learning to enjoy the process over the achievement.  Now, the second lesson relates more generally to the Orbital experience.  Prior to joining orbital, I had been freelancing and working independently for quite a while. And, I’ll admit, it was lonely. I was sick of working in coffee shops or from my apartment with little attachment to the physical world around me or connection to like minded people.  I was as equally as excited to join Orbital for access to the space as I was for the bootcamp itself.  But, here I learned a big lesson about space. Which is, it’s not actually about the space at all. It’s about community. That’s what was fostered at Orbital over these last 12 weeks. I finally had a community that I felt a part of.  We inspired each other, learned from each other, helped each other, re-assured each other. We shared resources, skills, and perspectives.  We collaborated.  But most importantly, we supported each other. I cannot think of another group, team, or organization that I’ve been a part of that existed without an ounce of competitiveness. To me this was huge. It’s refreshing to find a safe space full of people that genuinely support you.  Which is what my gif relates to. I’m much more confident taking a leap knowing that I have a community behind me thatll help push me in the right direction.

So to conclude I will say my biggest lesson learned is that I never want to work completely independently again. It is not only a disservice to myself but also those whom could benefit from my experience and perspective.  I’m honored to have been part of the inaugural Orbital bootcamp and want to thank Gary, the rest of the instructional team and especially the other students. It was phenomonal spending the summer with all of you. We make a great community.

The first orbital bootcamp classes. Good looking group! #lessonslearned

We took group photos! (The first batch of Orbital bootcamp students after their public talks on Lessons Learned this week)

“Stop having meetings with yourself.”

Last week at Orbital, Allan Chochinov, gave a piece of advice that really hit home.

“Stop having meetings with yourself.”

This is a huge problem for me. I’m constantly assessing what I’m doing. So much so that it hinders my actual productivity. Here's a sample of my constant internal monologue:

“Is it the right thing to do?” “Should I be working on this?” “But I’m not that interested in this topic.” “But there are so many OTHER cool things I could make.” “What if nobody uses it?” “It’s so much work, what if its all a waste?”

...and on and on.

A little contemplation is fine but for me the constant questioning is almost debilitating. I need to stop thinking on such a macro level. Maybe it doesn’t matter what you’re making, maybe what’s important is that you ARE making something. When just starting out, it’s hard to know where something will lead, but if you don’t start on that journey you’ll never end up anywhere.

My current solutions:

a) To-do lists. If I only focus on checking things off the list, then there is no time to contemplate what I’m doing.

b) Hurry up and get the project done so I can move on to the other “cool” projects.

Unexpected Clickthroughs

I had the privilege of being interviewed for a co-Orbiter’s blog post. Linda, who is working on Codebuddies.org, put together a post highlighting the learning paths of 5 developers. You can read the full post here: Learning to code but feeling lost? At the time, I jumped at the opportunity to be involved for no reason other than a chance to share my story. I’m fairly new to the world of coding and the amount of momentum I’ve gained in under a year could be inspiring to others. So I wanted to share my story. Little did I know what would come of it.  Linda published the post late one night and emailed the Orbital list asking for some help promoting it. Another one of the developers she interviewed who’s also a co-Orbiter, Lenny, took the liberty to post the link to Reddit’s r/learnprogramming.  Lenny’s reddit post got great traction early on which I learned recently is the key to success on Reddit. The post held the top place for the sub-reddit for the majority of the day and resulted in a ton of traffic to the blog post. Two days into it, Linda emailed us saying the post had received around 4,000 page views so far. For me, the highlight of this whole episode was the synergy between Linda’s blog post and my project. Linda asked us to include a brief bio introducing ourselves. I used this as an opportunity to promote 30 Websites and included a link to the project.  From that single link in my bio, 30 Websites received 93 visitors of which 42 signing up. Granted these were visitors whose interest was already piqued about the project anyway, but a 45% conversion rate is still pretty great!

Lessons Learned:

Don’t turn down an opportunity just because the “what’s in it for me” isn’t clear. You never know what’ll come out of it. 

Working together can pay huge dividends. I never would have written an article about developers lear-to-code journey but I’m really glad Linda had the foresight. 

Early traction on Reddit is important 

After 2 days the traffic almost stopped completely. This isn’t really that surprising but did illustrate an important point - promotion is going to be a major task. Hockey stick growth is rarely (maybe never) organic. It is meticulously planned and orchestrated. I have some planning to do. 

Launch Debrief

About a week ago I launched 30 Websites. By launch I mean I put the idea (not a finished product) out to the world for testing and feedback.  Overall the response was incredible. My strategy was two fold. First I tweeted the launch via my personal twitter. I then announced the launch to the Orbital student email list to solicit feedback and encourage them to help me promote it by asking for a retweet of my launch tweet.  This is what I learned:  1. Retweets and Favs

My launch tweet ended up with 20 RT’s and 16 Favs. This was surprising. One of the Orbital assignments is to tweet a status that garners 20 RT’s. This tweet fulfilled the requirements of that assignment completely unintentionally.  2. Pricing flop The first piece of actionable feedback I was from another Orbital student (thanks Angel!). He raised a concern over the $30 price point for the course. I got a similar response when Lenny posted the project to Reddit’s r/learnprogramming. The first comment on was:

This was surprising to me. In my mind I envisioned a comprehensive tutorial program of 30 lessons based on building 30 websites. Each lesson is complete with a step-by-step tutorial, a demo finished site and the solution code as well as a comprehensive list of curated resources to learn more. Each lesson would take 1-3 hours to complete. Priced at $1 per lesson, I thought this would be a no brainer. Turns out it wasn’t and this is why I think there was friction around the price: email.

The current iteration of the product is email based. People don’t want to pay for an email course. Something about an email course infers a level of superficiality. However, on the flip side of this, there is no way for me to prevent users from just forwarding the emails on to their friends. So, in theory, endless people could take the course and only pay once. That’s a loophole that hurts me but apparently not a strong selling point. 

Treehouse and CodeSchool have no issues charging $25-30 a month for their courses. The difference is they’ve each built out a very robust Saas product. Apparently I need to follow suit. If I build it out as a SaaS product then it's easy to offer a free trial for users to better understand the product and feel more comfortable paying for it. 

In the meantime, I’ve decided to make it free. It’s more important at this point to get a good product out in the world and build traction around it and less important to worry about monetization.

3. Traffic and Conversions

To illustrate how monetization would hinder adoption. Let’s look at some analytics.  On launch day: 

59 unique visitors 

11 signed up for the free lesson

19% conversion rate

- Then I removed the pricing component -

On the second day: 

87 unique visitors 

42 signed up for the free lesson

45% conversion rate

I’d rather have the signups than the money at this stage.  4. Don’t Disappoint 

The positive feedback on the idea and the high conversion rate to my email list both illustrate the potential for this product. To that end, it needs to be a good product. Not a perfect product but I don’t want to ruin the excitement with bad execution. 

My launch experiment validated the idea. People really seem to like the concept. Now it’s up to me to execute on it appropriately. I have my work cut out for me. 

I recently published an interview series on thecodingdiaries.com. After trending on the r/learnprogramming subreddit (actually, mostly *because* it trended on that subreddit), the post saw over 4000 unique visits, with an average stay time of 4:59 minutes.

Caption: Props to ...

Based on positive feedback from my QuickMVP experiment I’ve decided to move full steam ahead with 30Projects (renamed 30Websites, mainly because I could get the .com). So I’d like to officially introduce you to 30Websites - A daily website challenge delivered to your inbox. It's a 30 day course to teach beginners HTML, CSS and Javascript. Yes, this is a very saturated market but I’m approaching it differently. Instead of simply completing exercises, I’m focusing the course around actually building websites. Specifically, 1 a day for 30 days.  From the feedback I’ve received so far there’s value in this approach. Certain details tend to get lost in exercise based lessons. These seemingly minute details are what help a beginner better understand the bigger picture and how every piece fits together. I find this is immensely important and what makes the difference between simply going through motions and truly understanding what is being taught. Plus half the fun of learning is to show off what you’ve created. So go on, show off!

Quick MVP Results

I decided to do some conversion testing on the new iteration of the project I’m working on at Orbital. For this I used a recently released program called QuickMVP. The software allows you to create a landing page from a template with just enough features to make it effective without bogging you down. You then create an Adwords ad to drive traffic to your page and track conversion rates all within Quick MVP.

So I created my landing page: 30projects.co

After your page and ad are approved, the ad starts running. I chose a budget of $75 - about half what QuickMVP suggested ($155), but what I felt comfortable with for an initial trial. For the first 8-10 hours my ad received 0 impressions. The next morning I checked and had received all my traffic overnight. In total my ad received 956 impressions and 21 clicks. So my $75 bought me 21 clicks for a cost per click of $3.57.

QuckMVP has a two part approach to validation. The first is the call to action button. Once the call to action button is pressed it displays a page that says “This product is coming soon. Please enter your email address to be notified when it's available.” And then adds another field where the visitor can answer "What's the number one reason you want this product?”

For an idea to be valid according to QuickMVP, X number of visitors need to compete the feedback form (in my case 10). You select this in the setup process depending on the level of validation you need. 

Of my 21 clicks, 9 visitors clicked on the call to action button. None however filled out the feedback form.

Technically, according to their methodology, my concept was not validated, in part because I didn’t spend enough. However, I look at the data differently and am impressed with the results. Here’s why:

The copy on the landing page is sparse. A headline, sub headline, testimonial and three "features” blurbs is all that’s there to sell it. No pictures, demos, videos, about, more info, etc etc. To sell what I’m offering with such little context is very difficult. So to get the click throughs that I did is pretty impressive.

All the traffic came in one burst and overnight. There is a lot of optimization that could be performed with the traffic itself. I don’t know where it came from or from what search term. With a robust traffic breakdown there’s the potential for huge opportunities.

Yes, solid feedback from the form would have been validating, but the absence of it I don’t believe is invalidating. Personally, if I was trying to buy a product and instead of a check out process was told it was unavailable and instead prompted for feedback, I would just move along. I bet others are the same way.

Adwords is one of the most expensive forms of customer acquisition. $3.57 for a click that is not necessarily from a potential customer is expensive. The visitor could just be a curious passerby, a competitor checking out what else is out there (I’ve done this), or a host of other possibilities - all of which have no interest in purchasing the product.  I would say it’s more like 20-25% of Adwords traffic is from a potential customer. (I’ve been on the other end of this system for years as an internet marketer - a ton of Adwords traffic is of very low quality.)

The 10 feedback completions requirement seems kind of arbitrary and doesn’t take into account customer acquisition costs or profitability of product. If a product has a huge profit margin, then maybe a 1% conversion rate is all it takes to have a profitable venture. This is determined quantitatively and the rate at which feedback becomes irrelevant. 

With that said, I still think there is a ton of value in QuickMVP. It allowed me to run this test without coding a single line and without leaving their interface. I received valuable data around my idea. If for nothing else, I now know the cost per click for a certain type of Adwords visitor and rough conversion rates on the call to action button. From this I can make more informed pricing decisions as well as use it as a basis point for optimization going forward.

I like to think that in order for any of us to really do anything new, we can't know exactly what it is we are doing.

Emmet Gowin

Codable Research/Feedback Session

This past weekend I interviewed some front end web developers who had recently completed a 3 month in-person front end development course that met once per week.  My goal was to get an idea of their level of comfort with their new skills as well as their next steps.  Later on in the session, I presented my idea for codable to gain feedback.   Everyone I chose to interview was interested in pursuing full time employment.  Although an employment goal isn’t a requirement, I figured this would be a decent parameter upon which to base engagement in the material.  Read: if you’re looking to change careers, you’ll take the material much more seriously.  Highlights of feedback sessions: - Every one wants to continue learning front end dev - Not one felt employment ready - even in a junior role - Majority had trouble finding positions that matched current skill set Feedback on codable: - Hard time grasping what it actually is      - Value proposition obscure  - Those who got it - great idea, but doubted if they’d use it Time for an iteration? My main takeaway from these sessions was that codable would be much easier to sell if positioned as an intermediate level training course.  Instead of providing a framework within to learn, it seams people would get more value from a structured course style resource.  How I see that coming together would be project based courses/tutorials based on more advanced front end development skills.   A huge benefit of this is the ability to charge for it!  If I were just providing practice sets for front enders, the value proposition is small.  But if you sell it as a learning opportunity people will open their wallets.  In theory - to be tested.

The Problem

Everyone wants to learn to code. Never before has there been such a huge push to teach coding skills. The narrative goes:  If you’re unhappy with your life, then learn to code and magically everything else works itself out. You will be more fulfilled because you are actually creating things as opposed to pushing papers. If you’re stuck in a dead end job, learn to code and the job potential is endless. Want to be an entrepreneur? Learn to code and finally launch your startup!   High schoolers, college students, stay at home moms, bored professionals, you name it, no one is sparred from this campaign.  Just check out the tag lines from some of the premier teaching resources:

"Treehouse teaches the in-demand technology skills you need to land your dream job or build a startup.” -Treehouse “Expand your career options. Learn in-demand skills and network with our growing tech community.” -Thinkful "Learn the in-demand skills that will get you hired.” -Skillcrush

"Level up in your career with our 8–12 week, part-time, evening and weekend programs.” -General Assembly

The problem is, learning to code is not a finite endeavor. If you complete Codecademy’s HTML/CSS and JS track, you’ll definitely have a intro level understanding of front end development. But it’s just that - intro level.  There seems to be a void in the market for intermediate level learners. Maybe they’ve gone through Codecademy’s tracks or even something more extensive like General Assembly's Front End Web Development course. What do they do next? The narrative drops off at this point. Apparently you’ve learned to code and are now hirable, or ready to launch your startup. Possibly the latter depending on what your startup is, but typically not the former.   A quick perusal of job listings returns a ton of keywords that are foreign to the intro level coder. Bootstrap/Foundation, Cross browser, Photoshop slicing, Angular/Backbone/Ember, LESS/SASS, Coffeescript to name a few. Jobs are looking for these skills. The narrative says if you learn to code you can a change your career. Well here you are, you’ve learned what they were selling, but you’re not quite employable yet. So you start looking for intermediate level training. Other than CodeSchool.com more advanced training doesn’t really exist.   That’s the problem I’m looking to tackle during my time at Orbital. I have a good idea of a potential piece to the solution that would provide intermediate level practice to these intro level coders.   I want to create practice projects that directly address these intermediate level skills. Need some Bootstrap practice? There is a project that provides direct hands on experience. Want to see what angular is all about? Then check out the project that builds a simple web app using angular.   This is just a rough idea. At the core, I’m trying to organize an easily digestible way for intro coders to become intermediate level coders. So that they can ultimately complete the narrative. So they can “level up.” What it will end up looking like, I don’t know.  And that’s ok.

"Your ability to become a successful entrepreneur is about taking your current “informed pessimism” idea and turning the corner into “informed optimism”. If every time you get to the disappointing “informed pessimism” stage, you impatiently hop back to a new idea at ‘uninformed optimism’, you’ll get caught in a never ending cycle. You have to be patient long enough with your idea to see if you are able to turn the corner." - Vinicius Vacanti

http://viniciusvacanti.com/2010/08/03/new-ideas-can-kill-your-startup/ (via jwan622)

"Great ideas are Obvious in retrospect.” - Biz Stone

Obviously. (Like what I did there?) The problem is great ideas are not obvious in the present. Often times it can actually be the opposite. Great ideas are very obscure in the present.   Take Twitter for example. In it’s early days it was met with enormous skepticism. Just check out the comments on this TechCrunch article from 2006: 

(Actually, just check out the original title of the article in the URL - “Is Twttr Interesting?") Clearly people didn’t get it. I’m not even sure the founding team got it at that point. But they were dedicated to an idea. That idea was the ability to share oneself in an informal and real time manner.   This got me thinking about the concept of an idea. Maybe an idea isn’t a product or service you can visualize in your mind. Instead, maybe an idea is more like a commitment. A commitment to investigating a concept further.   Even the creator struggles to fully conceptualize a yet-to-be-formed idea. This can make it difficult to discuss and share the idea with others. However, it is here that the value lies. Forcing yourself to verbalize and communicate the concept can add tons of value.   To this end, I was selected to take part in the Orbital NYC bootcamp this summer. Myself and 25 others have committed to flushing out our ideas. I believe very few of us actually have a solid grasp on what we’re creating. But we all have an idea that we’ve committed to investigating further.  We’re embarking on this journey in a very public manner. We’re blogging and sharing our paths publicly. We meet as a class once a week to share our statuses and receive feedback from our cohorts. At the conclusion, we will be hosting a public talk on the lessons we’ve learned.   I expect it to be a fantastic journey.  Follow us at #orbitalnyc on Tumblr and Twitter.

With album sales on seemingly permanent decline, readily quantifiable EDM consumers offer the industry a raft of ways to make money. Festival culture is chief among them. Modern EDM festivals like Electric Daisy Carnival, HARD Fest, and Skrillex’s Mothership tour are massive productions that dwarf their predecessors: most “laptop” artists and DJs were, until recently, lucky to have shoddy projections on a poorly hung bedsheet as their visual backup. But when Daft Punk brought their massive LED-coated pyramid to Coachella in 2007, things started to change.

Shut up and spend: inside the electronic music money machine (via thisistheverge)

The riskier route

This past Tuesday was our first Orbital class.  Class discussion was based around how technology is lowering the barriers for people to create and the transformative effect this is having on society.  In short, the traditional "one job for life" paradigm is dead and people are instead creating awesome things.  As this route becomes more popular it also becomes less risky to take the “riskier” route.  Here’s what I mean:  Recently I’ve seen a lot of new products/software that make it even easier and cheaper to create things.  Yesterday I listened to an interview with Trevor Owens of Javelin and serial entrepreneur Jonathan Siegel where they discuss idea validation.  Javelin recently launched a new SaaS product called QuickMVP for validating ideas.  The basic use case is that you create a landing page for your idea and then the software integrates with AdWords to create a campaign and test conversion rates all within one dashboard.   Although this validation concept is not new, the one stop shop convenience is.  Before, one would have to first develop a landing page, integrate analytics, hop over to AdWords to create the campaign and finally, check analytics to track conversions.  Not impossible, but having it all in one dashboard definitely makes it easier.   So back to my point, if taking the creative route and launching a project were a inconsiderable market, products like QuickMVP wouldn’t be built.  It’s only from the popularization of this new model that these support products are launching and in doing so, ultimately, making it less risky to take the riskier route.  Thoughts?