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Aaron Harris
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Aaron Levie
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Alex Wilhelm
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Andrew Chen
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1
This is such a great question, but it's also super hard to answer without much more context. Some businesses can survive without charging their customers because their path to scale is rapid enough, and their funding large enough, to get them to the point of making money. Others need to make money sooner because of their costs. 6-8% a week is pretty good, but I'd generally edge towards at least experimenting with revenue so you start to have an idea of what you're going to do. Of course, if you're going to run out of money before you get to profitability...you might have to charge sooner!
2
Initially our biggest challenge was that we didn't know what we wanted to be when we "grew up". We started as a consumer product that also worked for businesses, and eventually (about 1.5 years into the business) we determined that balancing these two very different worlds and use-cases wasn't going to lead to world domination. So we went back and forth a ton in the early days, but ultimately decided to "listen" to the market and go after a space where we felt we could best innovate (and compete). That was the enterprise market.
3
The market is crazy right now, but the key is to not focus on the stock market (or your stock price) in the near-term. You have to have conviction around what you're building and make sure you're executing for the long run. All the best companies in the world have dealt with either being somewhat misunderstood (see Netflix, Facebook, etc.) or dealt with crazy stock market volatility, and they've had to get through it. The cool thing is having been working at Box for 11 years now, we've dealt with MUCH greater challenges. Like raising our Series B :-)
4
Great question. The tradeoff of engagement and reach versus revenue is massive in certain circumstances. I think I philosophically lean towards the idea that more distribution will lead to more revenue over time, but that could be naive. Luckily at Mattermark our editorial work isn't accretive in terms of revenue, so I would certainly take wider distribution as there is essentially no cost.
5
When you're first starting out, you should use all the channels that the big guys can't use because they are focused on scale. So mailing lists, forums, online communities, offline gatherings, etc. Those are all great. Then you prove out the product and over time, scale your product into bigger channels.
6
For products that have found product/market fit, I mostly focus on finding feedback loops. How does one group of people end up "generating" the next set of users. Sometimes that's an SEO loop (discover content, some % make content, that gets indexed, more people find it). Or viral (get invited, then invite others). You can optimize these loops over time.
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Question
Aaron Harris
Wanted to hear your opinion on early vs later monetisation for an early stage startup.
Aaron Levie
What type of struggles and roadblocks did you face building Box in the very beginning?
Aaron Levie
Box's stock price hit an all-time low today even though you guys seem to be headed in a good direction. How frustrating is this for you?
Alex Wilhelm
I wanted to know your thoughts behind it in terms of reach/engagement vs. ad revenue. Which do you value higher?
Andrew Chen
Hi Andrew, what are some underrated channels to use right now to promote your product?
Andrew Chen
Hey Andrew - love your blog and thank you so much for doing this live chat.
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