Product Lessons From a Profitable, $20M ARR Subscription App — Jesse Venticinque, Fitbod
发布时间 2023-05-17 09:00:00 来源
摘要
On this episode: the trap of building for existing subscribers, incentivizing word of mouth, and why paid marketing should be an accelerant, not the foundation of your growth strategy.Top Takeaways📱 Growth comes from focusing on product retention: Build a product users really want, creating an engaged customer base and fueling the growth loop down the line.🗣️ Build a viral growth loop based on word-of-mouth. A product that exceeds user expectations is the ultimate way to drive word-of-mouth — even if your app isn’t naturally social.👥 Paid advertising is an accelerant to user acquisition (UA) — not your sole UA channel. It should come after product focus and word-of-mouth virality.😀 Measure and improve retention by finding your minimum engagement milestone. Look to your ICP for clues.🙅♂️ Talk to your users who aren't subscribers. There's a tendency to focus user research on super-users, but they won't tell you much about why others aren't subscribing.About Jesse Venticinque👨💻 Co-founder and chief product officer of Fitbod, a fitness app offering workouts that improve as you do.💡 “There’s a trap of listen[ing] to super successful, engaged customers as a clue for what the unsuccessful customers are missing.”👋 LinkedIn | TwitterLinks & Resources‣ Check out Fitbod‣ Work with Fitbod (Currently hiring a Core Experience Lead PM!)‣ Jesse’s product approach‣ Connect with Jesse on LinkedIn‣ Connect with Jesse on TwitterEpisode Highlights[2:07] Solving a personal problem: The business has grown largely on revenue alone, thanks to what Jesse calls a “maniacal focus on product retention” and a goal of challenging the status quo.[5:56] Catching a big break: The key to scaling was pioneering a subscription model based on AI and machine learning, as well as having the right product-market fit by tapping into a “secret hiding in plain sight.”[8:26] Money in the bank: Although they found themselves in an underdog industry, the Fitbod team crucially found investors who aligned with their mission and values.[12:06] Viral growth loop: Word of mouth is still a major growth driver for Fitbod today — especially given that Fitbod isn’t a naturally social product. They’re also considering content as another growth loop, both blog-based and user-generated.[15:40] Hooking them in: The best consumer companies have discrete, repeatable actions to create a habit loop. Reward visibility and shareability are critical components of this.[17:58] Referral science: Offering free referrals is a way to understand and measure the growth loop. This approach also offers hard data, whereas word of mouth is more challenging to measure.[20:29] Everyday workout: Driving retention requires deep analysis of the metrics, like when users are canceling before the end of subscription periods and account dormancy.[26:27] Leverage = focus: When retention is good, focusing on conversion and activation is a viable way to drive mass adoption.[28:44] Contextualizing feature requests: Once you establish your ICP, scale and own the market for that audience. Then, build for the non-ICP.[31:32] Digging into activation: Jesse explains that user research is critical to avoid focusing too much on the most engaged users at the expense of less engaged ones.[35:09] The depth of need: Before building a feature, identify a participant pattern with (at least) medium confidence. Then you can develop a hypothesis.
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中英文字稿 
Welcome to the Sub Club Podcast, a show dedicated to the best practices for building and growing app businesses. We sit down with the entrepreneurs, investors, and builders behind the most successful apps in the world to learn from their successes and failures. Sub Club is brought to you by Revenucat. Thousands of the world's best apps trust Revenucat to power in app purchases, manage customers, and grow revenue across iOS, Android, and the web. You can learn more at Revenucat.com. Let's get into the show.
欢迎来到Sub Club播客，这是一个致力于分享建立和发展应用业务的最佳实践的节目。我们与全球最成功的应用程序的创业者、投资者和开发人员坐下来，从他们的成功和失败中学习。Sub Club由Revenucat赞助。全球数千款最好的应用程序都信赖Revenucat，以提供应用内购买、管理客户和跨iOS、Android和Web增加营收的服务。您可以在Revenucat.com上了解更多信息。让我们开始节目吧。
Hello, I'm your host, David Barnard, and with me today, revenue can't CEO Jacobiting. Our guest today is Jesse Ventesinque, co-founder and chief product officer at Fitbot. On the podcast, we talk with Jesse about the trap of building for existing subscribers, incentivizing word of mouth, and why paid marketing should be an accelerant, not the foundation of your growth strategy. Hey, Jesse, thanks so much for joining us on the podcast today. David, thanks for having me. And Jacob, always nice to chat with you. As always, here, excited. Apps, let's go.
大家好，我是您的主持人David Barnard，今天与我一起的是RevenueCan't的CEO Jacobiting。我们的嘉宾是Fitbot的联合创始人和首席产品官Jesse Ventesinque。在这个播客节目中，我们和Jesse聊了聊建立现有订阅者的陷阱，激励口碑营销以及为什么付费营销应该成为加速增长策略的推动因素，而不是其基础。嘿，Jesse，感谢您今天参加我们的播客节目。David，感谢邀请我，而Jacob，和您聊天总是很愉快的。像往常一样，我很兴奋。应用程序，开动吧。
So Jesse, I am stoked to have you on the podcast. I often gush about our guests because I try and get people on whose apps I use, or, you know, businesses I admire and things like that. And I am a huge Fitbot fanboy. So you'll hear me gushing throughout the whole podcast because I was looking for a weight lifting app earlier this year and just fell love and have been using it weekly since. So it's going to be fun chatting today.
嘿，杰西，很高兴你能参加这一期的播客节目。我非常欣赏我们的来宾，因为我努力想邀请我常用的应用程序或我钦佩的企业等等的人。我是一个 Fitbot 的超级粉丝，你将会听到我在整个播客中一直在赞扬它，因为我今年早些时候正在寻找一个举重应用程序，对它一见钟情并且自那以后每周都在使用它。所以今天的聊天会很有趣。
I did want to kick things off. So as I was looking at Fitbot as a subscription nerd, I saw that y'all have passed $20 million in ARR and are profitable and are venture backed. So three interesting, not necessarily expected things to combine into one. So it must be quite a journey so far. So tell us a little bit about founding Fitbot and raising capital and kind of getting to this point.
我确实想开始谈话。当我作为一名订阅者控的控制者观察Fitbot时，我发现你们已经实现了2000万美元的年收入，而且盈利并受到风险投资支持。这三个有趣的因素并不一定都能结合成一种。因此到目前为止，这一定是一场相当的旅程。所以告诉我们一些关于创立Fitbot、筹集资金并达到这一点的情况。
Sure thing. And yeah, David, thanks for the support and the praise. Yeah, I think there's several factors that have allowed us to grow the business largely on our revenues alone. I think two of the most important ones. The first is a maniacal focus on product retention and building something that people want. So Alan, my co-founder and I, we spent the first several years, just the two of us building product, listening to customers before hiring, before fundraising, before marketing and really trying to leverage an engaged user base to spread the word. And once we did turn on paid advertising, the unit economics were pretty immediately scalable, I think particularly because of our strong conversion and retention or LTV, which kind of enabled fundraising, enabled hiring. And the paid marketing really acts as like an accelerant to our word of mouth viral loop. And so like as we ramped our paid subscribers, our organic subs kind of grew in line. And maybe lastly about product is around recurring revenue. So our subscription, like retention curve flattens out and we have users at 36 months, 48 months, and like 60 months that are still paying us. So each new cohort of users we acquire adds to this stack of recurring revenue, which is fundamentally about product.
没问题。是的，David，感谢你的支持和赞扬。我认为我们能够仅凭营收大幅增长业务的原因有几个因素。其中最重要的两个因素就是极度关注产品保留率和建立用户真正需要的产品。我的联合创始人Alan和我在雇员、筹资和市场营销之前花了几年时间独自打造产品，并听取客户的建议，试图利用忠实用户群来传播产品。一旦我们开启付费广告，单位经济效益几乎立即就能扩展，尤其是因为我们的强劲转化和保留率（即平均寿命期LTV），这种能力使得筹集资金和雇佣成为可能。付费营销实际上像加速器一样促成了我们的口碑传播循环。随着我们付费订阅者数量的增长，我们的有机订阅用户也相应增加。最后，关于产品方面，我想说的是关于循环收入。我们的订阅保留曲线是平稳的，我们有36个月、48个月和60个月仍在为我们付款的用户。每一个新的用户都会增加到我们的循环收入中，这本质上和产品有关。
I think the second reason, our goal with FitBOD to challenge the fitness status quo kind of mirrors our approach to company building. So the fitness industry and brands, there's a lot of snake oil, a lot of like shortcuts to success, like the six week plan or this new gadget to promise you the best shape of your life look perfect. The truth is that physical fitness should be a lifelong practice. And especially afterward in the best shape of our lives, right? Like as we age, it's even more critical to do this. And this is kind of a quip, but my fitness goal is to be like a kick ass 100 year old. Like I want to kick a soccer bottle like my great grand kid, right? And so we build a workout app with only one workout. It's your next one. In a sense, it's kind of your lifelong workout. It kind of meets you where you are. So similar to startups, especially in the past several years, the past 10 years, there's been this culture of using shortcuts to hit some idealized milestone. Like raising and spending money prior to product market fit. So I think it's kind of was less sexy at the time. Now it's a little more popular, the path we took, but it's almost like this kind of fitness ideology results take time and work. And we got a compound success.
我认为第二个原因——我们与FitBOD挑战健身现状的目标，反映了我们构建公司的方式。在健身行业和品牌中，有很多虚假宣传和快捷成功的捷径，比如六周计划或新的设备承诺给你最完美的体型。而实际上，身体健康应该是终身实践的。特别是为了在我们的人生中达到最佳状态，对此更为关键。这有点小巧，但我的健身目标是成为一个能力强大的100岁老人。就像我想照看我的曾孙一样，我想踢一个足球。所以我们构建了一个只有一种锻炼的训练应用。这是你的下一个锻炼。从某种意义上说，它是你终身的锻炼。它能够满足你的要求。与初创公司类似，特别是过去的几年，过去的10年，有一种文化，使用捷径达到一些理想化的里程碑，比如在产品市场适配之前筹集和花费资金。所以我认为这种健身理念是结果需要时间和付出。而我们要复合成功。
Yeah, that's such an incredible start to an app like this. I didn't realize that y'all had spent so much time dialing in some level of product market fit before you raised. What did that very early journey look like? Did you launch the app and actually start getting users? And did you have a little angel funding or was this like a side project before you found the product market fit and then eventually raised some funding?
是的，这是一个非常令人难以置信的应用开端。我没有意识到您们在筹集资金之前花费了这么长时间来打造产品市场适应度。那么，早期的旅程是什么样子的呢？您们是否推出了应用并开始吸引用户？您是否有一点天使投资，或者这只是一个副业，在找到产品市场适应度后才最终筹集了一些资金呢？
My co-founder Alan and I, my backgrounds in product design, I'd worked as a freelancer for his previous startup.
我的联合创始人Alan和我都有产品设计背景，我曾为他之前的创业公司做过自由职业者。
And Fitbot did start out, you know, after that one wound down, we did started as a side project and really solving like a personal problem. And I think we had a very unique approach to solving the problem, which we can get into a little bit later.
Fitbot起初是一个副业项目，而且是在另一个项目结束后开始的。我们实际上是在解决自己的问题。我认为我们对解决问题有着非常独特的方法，稍后我们可以谈一下这个。
But yeah, we put it into the app store and immediately saw a little bit of traction that I think kind of just built on itself.
没错，我们把它放到了应用商店，立刻看到了一些反响，我认为这种反响是逐渐累计起来的。
We did have like an early beta testing phase where we did make an important pivot from more of like an advanced tracker to a recommended workout plan. And you know, I think ASO, app store optimization actually was pretty important in the beginning, being able to kind of rank in Apple search results. Alan Moreso is the engineer, the analytical approach and he really spent time trying to like test keywords and ranking in those early days. So I think a lot of early users found us that way.
我们曾经有一个早期的测试阶段，我们从更先进的跟踪器转向了推荐的锻炼计划，这一点非常重要。我认为 ASO（应用商店优化）在一开始实际上是非常重要的，因为能够在苹果搜索结果中排名。Alan Moreso 是工程师、具有分析方法，他真的花了很多时间来测试关键字和排名。因此，我认为很多早期用户是通过这种方式找到我们的。
It was really interesting. It was kind of when users were like unilaterally emailing us and that email was growing over time of feedback and requests and praise. That was kind of the first inkling of product market fit.
这件事非常有趣。当用户们单方面地给我们发电子邮件，并且邮件随着用户反馈、请求和赞扬不断增长时，这让我们体验到了产品市场适应性的启示。这是我们第一次意识到产品与市场的契合度。
What was the actual tipping point then of like, now we're really onto something, we're going to raise some funding, start hiring and like, this is a real business.
那么，真正的关键点是什么呢？什么让我们确信，“我们真的找到了点子”，并开始筹集资金、招募员工，创造一个真正的企业？
It was probably when we first monetized, which was still maybe a year and a half before we closed our first seed round. And monetizing and you know, this was 2016 as consumer, SaaS or subscription was kind of early, right? And it was surprising to us at least that someone would pay a subscription for kind of a utilitarian product that wasn't necessarily like a content based.
这大概是当我们第一次开始盈利的时候，那时距离我们第一轮种子融资还有一年半的时间。而在2016年，消费类SaaS或订阅服务还处于早期，这让我们感到有些惊讶。我们的产品不是基于内容的，而是一个实用性的产品，但会有人付费订阅，这对我们来说是出乎意料的。
So it's like, okay, people are paying us for this thing. And then looking up and realizing like, hey, our unique approach leveraging AI and ML to produce like these customized string training prescription, it seems very scalable. It's a large problem out there and we have this unique tech. So that was kind of how we gain confidence.
这就像是，好的，人们正在为我们的这项技术支付费用。当我们仔细思考时，发现我们的独特方法利用人工智能和机器学习技术，可以生成定制的弦训练处方，这似乎非常具有可扩展性。这是一个很大的问题，而我们有这种独特的技术。所以这就是我们获得信心的方式。
Was there and this is, I guess I'm asking for the founders like in this situation, it's a common dilemma is like, well, can I get this thing off the ground? Do I need to bring on outside capital? Because you know, the truth is you bring on outside capital, you got to unload outside capital, right? It like puts you on this trajectory, which there are variations to that path, but it starts to narrow your pedantra future options.
这里的情况是，创业者们经常面临一个常见的困境，就是他们是否需要外界资本来启动项目？如果要引入外部资金，就必须放弃一部分公司控制权。这将限制公司未来的选择。虽然未来的道路有很多变化，但引入外部资本通常会明显地缩小公司未来的战略选择。
What was the big impetus for you guys? Like it was like, hey, like we want to be able to go faster or was it, hey, we want this to be venture scale or what was the decision making and wasn't even a decision. Was this like, we're going to do this and now we're able to or what was your thought process?
你们的主要推动力是什么？是想要更快地发展，还是希望让公司规模扩大？这个决定是如何做出的？是一时决定，还是在思考后做出的决定？
There was a question of whether to run this as kind of a small business or raise funding, right? And as you mentioned, like when you raise from investors, the game changes quite a bit.
有一个问题是是否将这当作一个小型企业运营还是筹集资金，对吧？正如你所提到的，当你从投资者那里筹集资金时，游戏会有相当大的变化。
The early product market fit and just the prospect of being able to scale like a very underrated form of exercise. Like I think string training is the secret hiding in plain sight.
早期产品市场适应性和能够扩展的前景，就像一种被高度低估的锻炼方式。就像我认为弦训练是藏在明处的秘密一样。
And it really could make a really dramatic impact. I think it's kind of what the world needs in a sense. If you think about it more broadly, maybe with healthcare, right? And freedom from pain, being able to move about the world, right? I think there's come some fundamental ideas there that we got really excited about.
这项技术的影响可能非常巨大。在某种程度上，我认为这正是世界所需要的。如果更广泛地考虑一下，可能涉及医疗保健和解脱疼痛、能够在世界各地自由移动等方面，这里有一些基本的想法，我们对此非常兴奋。
And I think we found a great initial partner and Jason Calicanis to lead that seed round and get it going. That's the guy with the podcast. That's right. Yep.
我认为我们已经找到了一位很好的初始合作伙伴，Jason Calicanis将领导种子轮并使之起步。这就是那个播客的家伙。对的，没错。
The podcast. So with Money in the Bank and a profitable company, you mentioned that paid marketing has been a factor in growth. And because you have really good fundamental numbers, that was an accelerant.
播客。所以，你提到在银行和盈利公司方面，付费营销是增长的一个因素。由于你有非常好的基本数字，这是一种加速剂。
Was there pressure to just go raise $50 million and like blow it up with as much paid marketing as possible? And how did you navigate that landscape? I imagine venture capitalists were just wanting to throw money at you in that phase of a funding.
当时是否有压力只拿到5000万美元并投入尽可能多的付费营销活动？您是如何应对这种情况的？我想，风险投资家在资金阶段恐怕只想往您身上投钱。
And it's not required to say yes, whether or not it's true or not. You know, when we launched in 2015, fitness tech wasn't as popular as it was today. I think my fitness pal was probably the most successful outcome at like $500 million.
不必说“是”的，无论真假。你知道的，当我们在2015年启动时，健康技术并不像今天这样受欢迎。我认为我的健康贴友可能是最成功的结果，达到了5亿美元左右的市值。
But now look at the landscape in the last couple of years, it's gotten very popular. So we were kind of in an underdog industry at the beginning. And Alan and I internally, we recognize the downside potentially.
但是现在看看这几年的情况，这个行业变得非常受欢迎。因此，在一开始我们有些落后。艾伦和我内部也认识到了可能的不利因素。
And we basically found investors who aligned with that. So Jason has always kind of run against the grain of the grow at all costs. And our subsequent rounds, they've largely been made up of startup operators who have aligned with our model.
我们基本上找到了与我们理念相符的投资者。Jason一直以来都迎合了不以任何代价增长的潮流。在接下来的一轮融资中，我们的投资者大多是与我们的模式相符的创业运营者。
So for example, like the co-founders of Calm, the meditation app who famously beat headspace by standing lean and another investor is an operator at Notion, who I think one time like described revenue per head count as a great metric. I mean, that's I think often overlooked, especially in the frenzy of fundraising is that like alignment between your investors.
例如，像冥想应用Calm的联合创始人一样，他们赢过Headspace，拥有一位Notion的经营者作为另一位投资者。我认为这位经营者曾经将人均收入描述为一个伟大的指标。我是说，在融资狂潮中，人们经常忽视与投资者之间的协调。
And it's sometimes personality and background when you're talking about seed and angel stage. And also just like structure of what their funds are designed to do. Like who did they raise money from and the expectations they set? And do they have a thesis? And is there something about what you're doing that goes beyond just the like short term returns, right?
有时候在讨论种子期和天使期，人的性格和背景也是很重要的。此外，他们的基金结构也很重要，比如他们从哪里筹集资金，设置了什么期望？他们是否有一个投资论点？你所做的事情是否仅仅是短期回报？
And I think this is where folks, and that's all too much on the venture capital side of things. But I think this is where some folks can end up in the horror stories you hear is when you take money and there's misalignment in how that money is deployed. And there's a lack of trust and a lack of shared vision.
我认为这是许多风险投资方面的人陷入麻烦的原因。当你接受资金，如果这些资金的使用方式不匹配，缺乏信任和共同愿景时，你可能会听到一些恐怖故事。
It's worse than a bad marriage because like it's really hard to unwind of an capital deal like it takes a little bit of luck, but also just picking wisely, right? Think about who you raise money from more even than who you hire. There's some advice out there that's like money is money. And there's some truth to that. But like I do think you can go a lot further and your life will be a lot better if you choose wisely.
这比一段糟糕的婚姻还要糟糕，因为像资本交易这样的交易很难解除，需要一点运气，但也要明智选择。想想筹集资金的人，比想想你雇佣的人更重要。有一些建议是钱就是钱，这是有些真理的。但是，如果你明智地选择，你的人生会走得更远，并且会更美好。
If you're blessed with a good product and like leverage, right? And the process, which I mean, the way you guys did it was right. Don't show up to your first pitch with a slide deck of what an app could look like, right? And three test flight users, right? Like show up with like a basics of a flywheel.
如果你拥有一款好产品并喜欢杠杆效应，那是件幸事，对吗？而你们的流程，也就是你们做的方式是正确的。不要在第一次推销时出现一个展示app外形和三个测试航班用户的幻灯片，对吗？相反，出现时应当展示一个基本的飞轮。
I feel like with consumer and consumer subscription specifically, you almost need to be a stage ahead of where like a B2B company would have to be, right? Like you guys have to be proving scalability. You need to have product market fit at the seed versus like a B2B. It's at the A usually and you need to have scalability at the A, which a B2B company typically won't have until like the B or C. It's definitely harder.
我感觉在消费者及消费者订阅方面，你们几乎需要比B2B公司更提前一步，对吗？就像你们必须证明可扩展性。你们需要在种子期间就与市场适配，而B2B一般是在A轮，而且你们需要在A轮就能做到可扩展性，而B2B公司通常要等到B轮或C轮才有可能。这绝对更困难。
I'm sure we'll come back to it, but I think the concepts of community, we talk about this every time we get somebody out here with a successful app. There's some aspect of we had some magic substrate, some ether that allowed us to amplify our spend and as a venture capitalist, when you hear that, you're like, ooh, you start to be like, oh, I hear alpha, right?
我相信我们会再回头谈这个问题，但我认为社区的概念是很重要的。每当我们邀请成功的应用程序开发者来到这里时，我们都会谈论社区的一些方面。我们似乎有一些神奇的基础，一些可以帮助我们放大开支的特殊条件，作为一名风险投资人，当你听到这些时，你会开始对它们产生兴趣，就像听到 Alpha 一词一样。
Like I hear return. I hear margin. And so I think that makes the decision a lot easier. Like I think in consumer especially and just to continue your preach, but like I definitely caution founders don't fundraise until like you're, I think kind of at that stage, like you're at that post-part market fit. You got some scale and like, you know, you really want to go for it.
我听到了回报率和利润率，因此我认为这使得决策更加容易。特别是在消费者领域，我建议创始人在达到产品市场匹配后才开始筹款。当你已经有规模，想要进一步发展时再考虑筹款。
That's really cool. Yeah. And so that's where I actually wanted to go next is that because you chose and of course in hindsight in 2023, you look like, you know, rock stars with a $20 million ARR profitable, you know, it couldn't be better positioned. And as a customer, I'm thrilled to have heard that. You know, I know this will give me a product I can rely on for years to come.
真的很酷。是的，所以接下来我想说的是，因为你们做出了选择，当然现在我们回顾起来，看起来像是一群拥有2000万美元年度经营收入、盈利的摇滚明星，你们的位置再好不过了。作为客户，我很高兴听到这个消息。我知道这将给我带来一款可以信赖多年的产品。
You're going to build toward not just an exit, but toward a great customer experience. So all those things I'm excited about, but choosing not to just dump a pile of cash on the app, meant you had to go other directions. So other than the paid marketing, you have done what have those sources of traffic been for growth.
你要不仅仅为了退出而建立起来，还需要为了一个出色的客户体验而努力。所以，虽然我对你的事情感到兴奋，但选择不仅仅是把一大堆现金投入到应用上，这意味着你必须向其他方向前进。因此，除了付费营销外，你还做了什么来增长流量？
So I mentioned the word of mouth and kind of the viral growth loop. So that's kind of critical and still actually, I think a major growth driver today. And so we have a whole strategy set out to try to identify and focus on which step of that viral growth loop is the highest leverage to move a top level metric.
我提到了口碑和病毒式增长循环这个词。这是非常关键的，实际上我认为它仍然是当前的一个主要增长驱动力。因此，我们制定了整个策略来尝试确定并专注于这种病毒式增长循环中哪个步骤具有最高的杠杆作用，以推动顶层指标的增长。
And if we do take word of mouth virality, that top level metric is like the number of new subscribers that an existing subscriber will generate. Our loop kind of looks like a new user comes in, they become engaged with the product. They tell another user via word of mouth or say they can share their fitness progress or results. That'll invite another user who becomes engaged and product being kind of foundational also comes into play here where word of mouth is enabled when a product beats the expectations for a new user, right?
如果我们考虑口口相传的传播力，那么顶层指标就是一个现有用户将会产生的新用户数。我们的循环大致是这样的：一个新用户进来了，他们与产品互动，然后通过口口相传告诉其他用户，或者说他们可以分享自己的健身进展或结果。这将邀请另一个用户参与，而产品的基础作用也在这里发挥了作用——当产品超出了新用户的期望，口口相传就会被启用，对吧？
They come up with some expectations and it totally blows them out of the water. And that's what enables word of mouth.
他们想到了一些期望但结果完全超出他们的预期。这就是推动口口相传的原因。
And were there specific ways that you worked as a product leader to kind of identify those loops? And that's what it's called. It's a little burned on the growth loop term. I mean, sometimes for some apps, it really is kind of magical thinking because it's just not the sort of app that is going to get virality. But I think a lot of founders do themselves of disservice by not at least exploring ways that that could happen. So I'd love to hear how Fitbod identified and nurtured those growth loops.
你是否有采用特定的方法，作为产品负责人去发现这些循环？这就是那个被称为“成长循环”的东西。对于有些应用，有时候它确实会出现一些魔幻的想法，因为它只是不太可能获得病毒式的传播。但我认为很多创始人都没有尝试去探索可能发生的方式，这是有点不利于他们自己的。因此，我很想听听Fitbod是如何发现和培养这些增长循环的。
To your point, we're not a naturally social product. So I think the viral growth loop is important and in other words, one just can't use paid you a, right? Paid you a kind of a law of the universe that the more you spend, it's going to get less efficient. And paid you a is kind of like a funnel, right? The more you put it in the top, the more you might get out the bottom, but it's not necessarily like a compounding loop. So I think for us, virality is an important part of the growth story, but we probably need to add other growth loops as well and content being another one, for example, could be user-generated or, for example, our blog. Our blog is something we've been investing in quite a bit. And there's kind of an obviously scalable idea there. We produce content that will drive new users who will produce more revenue to invest in more content. So I see it as like several growth loops playing together.
我们的产品并不是天生的社交型产品，因此我认为病毒式增长循环非常重要。换句话说，我们不能仅依靠付费获得用户。付费购买往往存在一个规律，花费越多，效率越低。付费购买是一个类似漏斗的过程，投入越多，得到的结果可能就越多。但它并不一定会形成一个复合增长循环。因此，我认为对于我们来说，病毒式增长是增长故事的重要部分，但我们可能需要添加其他的增长循环。比如说，内容也可以是另一个增长循环方式，如用户生成内容或者我们的博客。我们一直在大力投资博客，并且有一个非常显然的可扩展的想法，即我们可以生产内容来吸引新用户，进而产生更多的收益来投资更多的内容。因此，我认为几种增长循环可以相互协作。
We're not a naturally viral product, right? So it's maybe unlikely for us to hit a viral coefficient where a new subscriber will invite more than one new subscriber unless you know. But you don't need to, right? You're not NGL or one of these social apps that lives or dies by like social virality or gas or one of the others. But the way that you were saying is like that long-term retention, especially with your long view on it, right? Which I think the retention curve of your subscribers will map the value curve derived, right? So like as long as users are continuously perceiving value, that cohort will not go to zero. And that means usage and engagement.
我们的产品不是自然传播的，对吧？除非你知道，否则我们可能不太可能达到一个新用户邀请一个以上新用户的传播系数。但是你不需要这样做，对吧？你不是NGL或这些社交应用程序之一，他们的生存依赖于社交病毒性或气体或其他因素。但是你的说法就像那种长期保留，特别是你对它的长远看法，对吧？我认为你的订户保留曲线将映射出衍生价值曲线，就像只要用户持续感知价值，那个群体就不会降至零。这意味着使用和参与。
The thing you said was really profound was about incentivizing virality or word of mouth through beating expectations. That's really fascinating. I haven't thought about it that way, but you're right. You come in and it ties into the investor argument about seeking alpha, right? Like when a user comes in and gets more than they expect, that's information that's inherently valuable to other humans looking to exploit value, right? It's like, where can I find something where the perceived value is higher than the cost? I imagine you put that into the design of the app and like the user experience like from a sign up in macro level, like where there are specific things where you're like trying to like, how do I drive this user to a viral moment within like their first month? Or like, how do you balance, I guess, maybe a different way of phrasing is like, how do you balance that?
你所说的深度见解是关于通过超越期望来激励病毒性传播或口碑传播。这真的很有意思。我从未这样思考过，但你是对的。这与投资者追求Alpha的论点息息相关。当用户得到超过他们期望的价值时，这是对其他寻求价值的人有内在价值的信息，对吧？就像，我在哪里可以找到比成本更高的感知价值？我想象你将这个思路融入了APP的设计以及用户体验，从注册到宏观层面，设计特定事项，试图让用户在他们的第一个月内实现病毒性传播。或者说，你如何平衡这一点？
And I guess maybe they're not in conflict, but those features or those things that are like purely focused on this like long-term fitness journey versus like, well, also like, I want it to be so good. You tell your friends, right? This kind of like segues into the idea of activation and the product hook. So like a product hook is this kind of discrete, repeatable action that a user will take on a product. And I think a lot of great consumer companies have this, you know, there's like Google Search and I don't know, like handling the noober and we like purposely designed our product hook or at least we took inspiration from near I.L. habit creation model in this and he had a 2012 book called Hooked and basically there's a trigger, an action, a reward and an investment part of this habit creation loop. And let's say for Fitbot, there's the trigger is some type of, you know, psychological uncertainty about what to do in the gym or how to strength train and the action is launching the app and we solve that problem for your next workout.
我猜也许它们并没有冲突，但那些专注于长期健身旅程或者希望自己表现得很好并向朋友展示的特征或事物似乎是不同的。这也引出了激活和产品勾的概念。产品勾是指用户在使用产品时会反复执行的离散化行动。我认为很多优秀的消费类公司都具备这一点，比如 Google 搜索，或者 Uber 的处理方式。我们有意地设计了我们的产品勾，或者至少从 Nir Eyal 的“习惯创造模型”中获取了灵感。他在2012年出版的书中提到，习惯的形成包括触发器、行动、奖励和投资。以 Fitbot 为例，触发器是在健身房或如何进行强度训练方面存在的某种心理不确定性，而行动是打开应用程序，然后我们为你解决下一个训练的问题。
We make the reward visible, meaning after you log a workout, we kind of celebrate it with various achievements and signals of progress and then the investment phase, you know, a user will invest their time or money or data into the product. And so making that reward visible and shareable, which we've invested in quite a bit, I think has been important for a virality and allowing our customers to like show the value they're getting from the product. And so our customers will share their fitness progress out and a potential user will view that and understand the value or might think, hey, I could drive that value as well. There are some really fun things in the app that I've been really impressed with.
我们让奖励可见，这意味着每次您完成一次锻炼后，我们会用各种成就和进展的信号来庆祝它，然后进入投资阶段，用户将投资他们的时间、金钱或数据进入产品。因此，使奖励可见和可分享，我们已经投入了相当多的资源，我认为这对于病毒式营销和让我们的客户展示他们从产品中获得的价值非常重要。因此，我们的客户将分享他们的健身进展，潜在用户将查看并了解其价值，或者可能认为，嘿，我也可以获得那些价值。应用程序中有一些非常有趣的功能，让我印象深刻。
It's fun because when I use subscription apps now, I'm using it both as a user and delighted as user with the user experience, but then also thinking about the subscription strategy. And I love the way the sharing screens are designed and like one of the cool things y'all do in the sharing screen is show the total pounds lifted in a workout. And it's so freaking impressive. I've never seen that before. But like my last workout Monday with Fitbod, I lifted 20,000 pounds or something. And I mean, I'm not especially strong. I'm not like benching 300 or anything like that. But it was a really impressive number. And it like, I kind of wanted to share that. That's pretty cool.
这很有趣，因为现在我使用订阅应用程序时，既作为用户使用，又因为用户体验而感到高兴，同时还思考订阅策略。我喜欢共享屏幕的设计方式，其中一个酷的功能是在训练中显示举起的总重量。这真的非常令人印象深刻。我以前从未见过这样的设计。但像我上次使用Fitbod进行锻炼，我举起了大约20,000磅的重量。我的力量并不特别强大，我并没有像卧推300那样强。但这是一个非常令人印象深刻的数字。我想分享这个酷的事情。
But then something else y'all do too is that there's just almost constant banner of share six free workouts. Has that been a big driver of that referral thing where you normally get three free workouts? But if you share the link, your friend gets six free workouts. Has that driven a lot of users? It has, however, we haven't invested a ton into it. And that's kind of an immediate strategy to put more in there. Referral six free workouts link there. We actually added it to be able to understand and measure this growth loop.
然后，你们还经常不断地张贴免费分享六种锻炼的横幅广告。这是推荐计划的一个重要促进因素吗？通常情况下，你可以获得三次免费锻炼，但如果你分享链接，你的朋友就可以获得六次免费锻炼。这是否促使了很多用户加入我们的平台？的确如此，但我们还没有投入太多资源。这是一种立即能够增加用户的策略，我们会在里面加入更多的投资。推荐计划的六次免费锻炼链接已经添加进去，我们通过它来了解和衡量这个增长循环的效果。
So like the first step is to measure, right? And identify which part of that to focus on. And so we built that feature with all the steps instrumented. And we can know like what percent of subscribers view the referral feature, and then what percent will send a referral? What percent of recipients will tap on it and redeem and convert? And so the next step here is to identify which part of the conversion funnel would produce the highest outcome. So it may be the case that we just need to increase the number of times a subscriber sees the referral page.
那么，第一步是要进行测量和识别要集中关注的部分。我们已经用所有步骤进行了仪器化，从而构建了该功能。我们可以知道有多少订阅者查看了推荐功能，有多少百分比会发送推荐，还有多少接收者会点击并兑换并转化。因此，下一步是确定哪个转化漏斗部分会产生最高的成果。可能情况是，我们只需要增加订阅者查看推荐页面的次数。
Part of the best highest leverage part of the funnel is having a referred user convert, right? And we some type of incentive there. So, you know, now a lot of word of mouth happens outside of the product. And we can work on trying to incentivize more of it happening in the product. But just knowing where to invest our limited time and resources on which part of the funnel. And this is true for the entire acquisition activation retention user lifecycle.
漏斗中最有效的部分是推荐用户的转化，对吧？我们需要一些激励机制。所以，你知道的，现在很多口碑传播都是在产品之外发生的。我们可以努力尝试在产品内激励更多口碑传播。但我们需要知道在哪个阶段的漏斗上投资我们有限的时间和资源。这对于整个用户获取、激活、保留的周期都是如此。
I mean, it's interesting to know how many people do that referral motion. But yeah, more interestingly, it's probably linearly related to the amount of word of mouth period. It's very easy and obvious way to do a referral. Because word of mouth is extremely hard to track. You don't know, like you can ask people it's imperfect, you can whatever. But let's say you're trying to like increase word of mouth, I would say like you could look at the result like how many people are referring as a good proxy to your other K factor like inputs.
我的意思是，了解有多少人进行转介绍的行为是很有趣的。但是更有趣的是，这可能与口碑的数量成正比。转介绍是一种非常简单明显的方式。因为追踪口碑非常困难。你并不知道，比如你可以询问人们，但这肯定不完美。但是假设你试图增加口碑，我认为你可以将转介绍的人数作为一个好的代理，来评估你的其他输入因素。
And I think that's something that I think I suffered from this in the past when I was working on consumer apps was thinking like, I have to measure everything properly. Like if it's not instrumented, I can't trust anything. The truth is, is like getting perfect instrumentation is almost impossible. And you should be good enough with some things that you can plausibly say are going to be related, then work on obvious, not necessarily obvious stuff, but like you can work on things and look at the results of that proxy number. And that can be good enough.
我曾经在开发消费型应用时遇到了这个问题，认为必须完美地测量一切才能保证可信度，但实际上，做到完美的测量几乎是不可能的。你应该尽可能让某些跟结果有关联的事物达到足够的精度，然后再去研究和这些代理数字相关的明显但并不一定显而易见的事情，这样可能会足够好。
So I understand this from that referral programs are tricky, right? They're like hard to balance and hard to track and they're tricky to set up. But even if that isn't a silver bullet, like in terms of that giving you a two X K factor, it's like if nothing else, it gives you data on what the people call it the K factor, like the 1.1 users per user or whatever. It's interesting.
我理解这个推荐计划很棘手，对吧？它们很难平衡和跟踪，搭建也很棘手。但即使这不是银弹，比如不能给你2倍的K因子，但即使没有，它仍能给你有关人们所说的K因子的数据，比如每个用户1.1个用户，或者其他什么这样的数据。这很有趣。
One of the things you've mentioned several times now is how important retention is to fit by. So I'd love to explore how you think about retention and how you measure retention. You know, then we can talk more about how you drive that retention. Going back to Jacob, your comment, instrumenting is hard and retention is one of the most challenging things for a few reasons.
你多次提到的一个重要问题是Fitbit公司的留存率。我很想了解你是如何思考留存率的，以及你如何衡量留存率。我们可以探讨一下如何提高留存率。回到你所说的Jacob的评论，仪器化是一项困难的任务，留存率也是最具挑战性的方面之一。
And so we break it down into different levels of fidelity. So like at the highest level, we have subscription retention, did a subscriber auto renew into the next period or not. And with an annual plan, it takes a year to know that I think with consumer SaaS, we see this, there's likely a cohort of inactive renewers, subscribers who are disengaged with a product, but will renew anyway. So say we want to increase subscription retention, if we reactivate those inactive renewers, it won't move the metric at all, right? Because they're already paying for it. So under these subscription retention, we look at cancellation retention.
因此，我们将其分解为不同的保真度级别。例如，在最高级别上，我们有订阅保留率，即订阅者是否自动续约到下一个周期。对于年度计划，我们需要一年的时间才能知道此情况。我认为，在消费者SaaS领域，我们看到了这种情况，可能有一批不活跃的续订者，他们与产品脱节，但仍会继续续订。因此，如果我们想增加订阅保留率，如果我们重新激活这些不活跃的续订者，那么这个指标就不会有任何变化，对吧？因为他们已经为此付费了。因此，在这些订阅保留率下，我们看的是取消保留率。
Did the subscriber hit the cancel button in the period or not? And that can be measured on a monthly basis, because a subscriber can cancel before their subscription period runs out. So when do they hit in the cancel button? And the last level before that kind of the most important, we have a workout retention metric, which is synonymous with engagement.
订阅者是否在订阅期间点击了取消按钮？这可以每月进行测量，因为订阅者可能会在订阅期满之前取消订阅。那么他们什么时候会点击取消按钮？在那之前的最后一级是最重要的，我们有一个锻炼保持指标，它与参与度同义。
But like a subscriber must log three plus workouts per month to survive to the following month. That's like the true retention we try to move and operate on to kind of move the top level.
但是像订阅者必须每个月记录三个或更多的锻炼才能继续下一个月一样。这就像我们努力保持并操作的真正留存率，以达到最高水平。
You just said like most people do this as a level. So you just say like you pick a number say like, Hey, folks doing three or more, we think that's like a good healthy minimum level of engagement. And you focus on that, you just pick that using your gut and informed decision or what was the reason for that cut off?
你刚刚说，大多数人都把这个作为一个水平。你是不是说，你选择一个数字，比如说，“嘿，大家都有三个或更多的交流，我们认为这是一个很好的最低健康参与水平。” 你专注于这个数字，是凭直觉和明智的决策，还是有其它原因？
Practically in the dashboard, you can change that number. I can look at one plus two plus three plus four plus. But you know, if we look at like our ideal customer profile, the people who show the best conversion and retention in the app, it's something like two point something workouts a week actually. Wow.
在仪表板中，你可以改变那个数字。我可以看到1加2加3加4加的结果。但你知道，如果我们看看我们理想的客户画像，那些在应用中表现最好的转化和保留率的人，实际上是每周进行两个多运动。哇。
Yeah. But again, it goes back to this like concept of sort of low resolution metrics, right? Like you just pick some things that you think are somewhat sensitive to what matters. And then building a model of understanding exactly how those three workouts translate into paid subscription and then paid subscription retention is incredibly complicated. But you can imagine it probably helps. Right.
是的。但是，这又涉及到低分辨率度量的概念，对吧？你只是选择一些你认为与重要事项有所关联的事物。然后建立一个模型，了解这三个训练如何转化为付费订阅和付费订阅保留，这是非常复杂的。但你可以想象这可能会有所帮助。
So it's like drive that. And you can plausibly drive the next metric or drive down the cancellation metric or drive up the retention metric, which is interesting.
这就像是推动某件事情一样。你可以合理地推动下一个衡量指标，降低取消指标或提高留存指标，这是非常有趣的。
I mean, the discussion around inactive subscribers is very interesting. I think as an industry for us, you know, I think we've, I mean, it's sort of not our problem, but it is like something we benefit from. And it's an interesting thing.
我觉得关于活跃订阅者的讨论非常有趣。作为我们这个行业来说，这并不是我们的问题，但我们从中受益。这是一件有趣的事情。
I think Apple's gotten more and they've lifted a lot of this for us. But like, you know, it would be interesting for Apple to create even more incentive for us to like notify user, like create a level like if they went started tracking activity in the apps and recommended people unsubscribe, that might be really interesting.
我认为苹果公司已经做得更好了，他们为我们做了很多事。但是，你知道，如果苹果公司能够创造更多的鼓励措施，让我们去通知用户，比如，如果他们开始跟踪应用程序中的活动并建议人们取消订阅，那将是非常有趣的。
I think the emails, the monthly emails are pretty good. They say, Hey, you were subscribed to this. It's like a good start. But it does create, I think sometimes interesting incentive structures for us or people running apps in terms of like, if I send an email to this whole list, I might actually damage my subscription, which is, I think probably morally what you want to do, but also like we're trying to run a business here, right? And like, I don't know, it's a tricky thing.
我认为这些每月的电子邮件很不错。它们会说：“嘿，你已经订阅了这个。”这是一个很好的开始。但是，我认为有时候这会创造一些有趣的激励结构，对于我们或者运营应用程序的人来说，比如，如果我给整个列表发送电子邮件，我可能会真正损害我的订阅，这大概是道德上你想做的，但是我们也在尝试经营业务，对吧？这是一个棘手的问题。
But again, I think it's like focus on those usage, right? Like drive up usage. Like if you can drive up usage and retention, the score will take care of itself. A lot of this stuff.
但是我认为重点应该放在使用率上，对吧？就像提高使用率一样。如果你能提高使用率和保留率，得分就会自然而然地提高。很多事情都是这样。
But optionality is a job to be done. I have the option to work out. I have a great workout up for that next workout I'm going to do. It's tough because you're not directly providing value in those situations, but in some ways you are.
"选择性是一项工作。我有选择锻炼的选项。我已经为下一次锻炼安排了出色的锻炼计划。尽管在这些情况下你并没有直接提供价值，但在某种程度上，你仍然是在提供价值。"
简单来说，这句话的意思是，选择性其实也是需要努力去做的一项工作。例如，我可以选择锻炼身体，而我已经准备好了下一次锻炼的计划。虽然锻炼身体并不会直接为他人提供价值，但在某种程度上，锻炼身体会让自己更加健康、精力充沛，进而对他人提供更多积极的影响。
But what are some of the ways that Fitbot works to increase those numbers? Do you have specific in app or push or email campaigns around driving those workouts?
但是，Fitbot是如何通过哪些方式增加这些数字的呢？您是否有关于提升运动量的特定应用程序、推送或电子邮件活动？
The retention strategy is to focus on users who are becoming at risk or becoming dormant before they cancel. Typically, I think there's like lower leverage in trying to revive churned users. The longer a user goes from using the product, it's probably harder to get them back. So we're trying to like pinpoint higher up in that funnel when a user is at risk of going dormant and trying to use engagement tactics and interventions there.
保留策略的重点是关注那些正在接近取消或者变得不活跃的用户。通常来说，我觉得努力挽留已经离开的用户的影响力较小。用户离开产品所需的时间越长，要挽回他们就越难。因此，我们试图在用户即将变得不活跃的阶段，准确定位风险范围并尝试使用互动策略和干预措施。
We have a model that predicts user engagement and going back to the other Jacob T. Your comment, I think logging workouts, we discovered is the best predictor of engagement. So yeah, we want to focus there on that area. And what else could we potentially focus on?
我们有一个可以预测用户参与度的模型，回到Jacob T.的另一个评论上，我认为记录锻炼是参与度最好的预测指标。因此，是的，我们想在那个领域集中注意力。我们还能够潜在地关注哪些方面呢？
Well, we could look at our super active engage users and build the features they're looking for. However, I think the bigger point of leverage that move that metric is to try to understand why people are going dormant and try to solve that problem. And it goes back to the areas of focus.
好的，我们可以关注我们超级活跃的用户，并开发他们正在寻找的功能。但是，我认为更重要的点是要理解为什么人们会变得不活跃，然后尝试解决这个问题。这与关注的重点有关。
It's probably a wider cohort too, right? Like, you probably have like a lot of folks that maybe don't attach or maybe only retain for a little while, right? There's just probably more surface area in terms of like users in that cohort to attack than like your super hyper engaged users. You keep using the word leverage, which I think sometimes gets overused. But I think actually in this case, alpha is also the word, right?
这可能也是一个更广泛的群体，对吗？就是说，你可能有很多人可能不会留下来，或者只会留下一小段时间，对吗？与你的超级投入的用户相比，这个群体在用户方面的表现可能更容易被攻击。你一直在使用“利用”这个词，我认为有时候它被过度使用了。但实际上，在这种情况下，"alpha"这个词也可以使用，对吗？
It's like, where in your app's individual model is like going to be the most ROI. And like talking about those different user bases is really fascinating. Because like sometimes I think the advice on product can be talked to your most like deeply engaged users, right? And like build what they want.
这就像是，在你的应用程序中个别模型中，哪个会得到最高的投资回报。而讨论这些不同的用户群体是非常有趣的。因为有时候我认为关于产品的建议可以针对你最深度参与的用户进行讨论，对他们想要的进行建造。
And that's true to an extent, but maybe in consumer land where everybody's revenue is like cap, right? Like you're going to retain it for a long time in B2B. You know, if I can take a 10K account, make it a 100K account, make it a 500K account, like there's real leverage to use the word again and talk and like really building, building building for that user base. But in consumer's assets, different, like, you know, you're going to get $100 a year or whatever your number is from that user. If they're way engaged, so unfortunately, this tragedy, the commons where you do kind of have to make sure you build features that are going to drive mass adoption, not just deeply engaged user adoption.
这个说法在某种程度上是正确的，但也许只适用于消费市场，因为每个人的收入都像上限一样，对吧？在B2B领域中，你知道你可以长期保留客户。如果我可以把一个价值10,000美元的账户变成100,000美元，甚至是500,000美元，那么使用对的杠杆，就可以真正地建设、塑造、扩展用户群。不过在消费市场中，情况就不同了，你可能只会从这个用户那里获取100美元或者其他数字的年收益。即使他们非常参与，也会很遗憾地陷入公地悲剧中，因此你需要确保你构建的功能能够推动大众采用，而不仅仅是深度参与的用户采用。
What's an example of something, one of these tactics? Like you just say like, Hey, come back or do you offer anything free or like, what maybe have you tried that's worked or not?
你能举一个这些策略的例子吗？比如你会说：“嘿，回来看看”，或者提供一些免费的东西，或者你尝试过哪些有用的或者不起作用的方法？
When I say leverage, what I really mean is about focus. Because I think it's just the critical driver for startup success is where we focus our limited time and resources. To answer that question, I'll actually point to what we're focused on right now and where the leverage is, so to speak.
当我说“杠杆作用”时，我真正想表达的是关注点。因为我认为，对于初创公司的成功而言，关注有限的时间和资源非常关键。为了回答这个问题，我会指出我们现在所关注的内容以及所谓的杠杆点。
So, you know, I mentioned our retention is pretty solid. We're actually more focused on conversion and activation as a way to move short term immediate business metrics. And there's more leverage there in a sense that there's more users actually in the activation funnel that we could potentially convert. So out of like say 10,000 subscribers, there's about 15 or 20,000 that make it pretty far in the trial funnel and don't convert. And if we were able to convert that group, we could potentially like double subscribers, so to speak. So we're not as focused on retention right now, right? We're more focused there. And I can tell you a bit about how we go about trying to convert that group.
所以，你知道的，我提到我们的留存非常稳固。我们更加关注转化和激活作为推进短期业务指标的方式。在这方面有更多的杠杆作用，因为实际上还有更多的用户在激活漏斗中，我们有可能转化这些用户。比如说，在10,000个订阅者中，有大约15,000到20,000个在试用漏斗中走得很远但未能转化。如果我们能够转化这个群体，我们可能可以将订阅者翻倍。所以我们现在不是那么关注留存，而是更关注这方面。我可以告诉你一些我们如何尝试转化这个群体的方法。
Yeah, I wanted to actually throw a hypothetical your way because I think this kind of product thinking gets lost too often. I'm a Fitbod life at this point. Like I'm going to keep paying you. I mean, maybe I'd find a different workout app at some point or whatever, but you were just paid for an app because you like it so much. I do that a lot. Yeah. If I'm not using it, I'll just be like, uh, I want this to still be around the optionality thing, right?
嗯，我想向你提出一个假设性问题，因为我认为这种产品思维经常被忽视。我目前是Fitbod的忠实用户。我会继续使用并付费。也许将来我会尝试其他健身应用，但是我付费只是因为我非常喜欢它。我经常这样做。如果我不再使用它，我仍然希望它能保持存在，保持可选择性，对吧？
So, but as a user, there's specific features I want. And I think this is a trap a lot of especially consumer founders get into. But even, I mean, we face this at revenue cat, you know, when a customer says, Oh, I really need this chart and then it's like, Oh, will we drop everything and build that chart or what's the broader strategy? So let me throw a couple of features I personally want in Fitbod. You tell me how you contextualize that into, you know, what's going to activate new users, what's going to keep existing users subscribed. And I know you have this kind of offense versus defense framework that you think through.
作为一个用户，我希望有特定的功能。我认为这是许多特别是消费者创始人陷入的陷阱。但是，即使在Revenue Cat，当客户说：“哦，我真的需要这个图表”，接下来就是“我们会放下一切来建立这张图表，还是采取更广泛的策略？” 我想提出我个人希望在Fitbod中看到的一些特点。请告诉我如何将它们置于背景之中，什么会吸引新用户，什么会让现有用户继续订阅。我知道您有一种攻守战略的框架。
So feature pitch in my little home garage. I've got a TV that I'll like ride my airbike and watch TV while I work out. I would love an Apple TV app. Jesse, build that for me. It's the next great Fitbod feature. It's amazing. Now, where do you go from there as a product leader to contextualize that feature request and decide whether or not it's something worth focusing on? There's a few different levels of context. I'll try to be concise.
在我的小车库里，我有一个电视，我喜欢在骑空中自行车的同时看电视锻炼。我想要一个苹果电视应用程序。杰西，请为我建立这个。这是下一个伟大的Fitbod功能。它是惊人的。现在，作为产品负责人，你需要从哪里开始来解释这个功能请求，决定是否值得关注？有几个不同的上下文层面。我会尽量简要地表达。
I mean, at the highest level, we're going to prioritize based on our vision and the steps we need to get there. So we're aiming to enable 90% of adults to like realize the value of physical fitness and in particular strength training. And so like step one there is to establish product market fit in this core segment. And I'm going to call it the ideal customer profile or ICP. These are people who exhibit strong conversion and retention today.
我的意思是，在最高层面上，我们将根据我们的愿景和达成目标所需的步骤进行优先考虑。因此，我们的目标是让90％的成年人认识到体育锻炼的价值，尤其是力量训练。因此，第一步是在这个核心群体中建立产品市场适应性。我将其称为理想客户画像或ICP。这些人今天表现出很强的转化率和保留率。
Now, step two, which I think we're in now is to try to scale and own the market for the ICP. And step three is to, you know, basically build for the non ICP. So at this point, we're taking the lens of we want to increase ICP acquisition, activation and retention. And so moving into offense versus differences, like the next piece of context. This is a great framework developed by Eli Lerner at Reefarge.
现在，第二步，我认为我们正在尝试扩大和占领ICP市场。第三步是基本上为非ICP建设。因此，我们现在的重点是增加ICP的获取、激活和保留。因此，我们将进入进攻模式，而非关注差异，这是由Reefarge的Eli Lerner开发的一个很好的框架。
You can Google offense versus defense to find a great blog post. I won't describe as much today. So defense is about maintaining product market fit and preventing downside risk competition. I don't know, tech debt and kind of the steps to achieve the vision and offense is about the immediate short term business metrics in our offense right now.
你可以谷歌一下进攻与防守，找到一篇很棒的博客文章。我今天就不过多描述了。因此，防守是关于保持产品市场适配性并防止下行风险竞争。我不知道，技术债务和实现愿景的步骤，而进攻则是关于我们现在攻势下的即期短期业务指标。
Our focus is not preventing churn. It's not filling the top of the funnel. It's about driving conversion. And so what we're researching or we have been the last year is to understand why the ICP is not converting via user research, deploying some tests, right?
我们的重点不在于预防流失。也不是填充销售漏斗的顶部。而是促进转化。因此，我们正在进行研究，去了解为什么目标客户群体没有转化，通过用户研究和部署一些测试来探究原因。
What is the most constraining problem for why the ICP is not converting? Is that because of the lack of an Apple TV app or whatever the problem that solution solves? Well, when you say it that way, or even, um, yeah, this is so key. Yeah, key, right? I think there's a trap of thinking that let's listen to like our super successful engaged customers as kind of a clue for what the unsuccessful customers are missing.
为什么ICP没有转化成功的最大障碍是什么？是因为缺少Apple TV应用程序或其他解决方案可以解决这个问题吗？好的，当你这么说的时候，甚至，嗯，这非常关键。是的，关键，对吧？我认为有一个陷阱，认为让我们听取我们非常成功的忠实客户的意见，作为不成功的客户所缺失的线索。
That's not the case. It's the airplanes with the bullet holes picture that you see all the time, right? It's like if you talk to all the ones where they examine the airplanes coming back from France and they were like, Oh, well, look at where they get shot. But actually it's the inverse. You're talking to people who made it. Don't talk to them. They made it. And David's already engaged. You're going to be happy with your app, David.
那不是事实。你经常看到的是有子弹洞的飞机图片，对吧？就像如果你去跟那些检查从法国回来的飞机的人谈论，他们会说，“哦，看看它们哪里被击中了。”但实际上是相反的。你正在跟那些成功回来的人谈话。不要跟他们谈。他们成功了。而且David已经参与了。你会对你的应用感到高兴的，David。
I don't care anymore. That's not true, obviously. But yeah, I think the tragedies, those are so much harder conversations to have because that user is inherently gone. So like capturing them on the way out, I think is a real challenge. So how do you have those conversations? So you take the Apple TV and that one maybe is too easy to just say, well, that's obviously a pretty niche thing for somebody to be in a home gym. And you know, you probably have some data to just write that off off the top of your head. But what does it look like to actually dig into that focus area of activation and not let your super users like me distract you from the things that are going to matter for activation?
我不再在意了。显然，这不是真的。但是，我认为，那些悲剧事件更难谈论，因为用户已经离开了。所以，如何在用户离开之前捕捉他们的心声是一个真正的挑战。那么，你如何进行这些谈话呢？以Apple TV为例，可能太容易说，这显然是对于家庭健身房里的人们来说相当独特的东西，你可能有一些数据可以轻而易举地解决它。但是，怎样才能真正深入到激活的焦点领域，不让像我这样的超级用户分散你的注意力，专注于对于激活至关重要的事情呢？
User research is critical. So there's a quantitative approach where we'll try to compare this nonconvert cohort against our successful subscribers and note any differences in their profile characteristics or like the actions in the trial experience. But then there's the qualitative side where we can employ like surveys in app email, A, B testing user interviews.
用户研究非常重要。因此，我们采用了量化方法，试图将这个非转化用户群与我们成功的订阅用户进行比较，并注意他们的特征和试用体验中的行为之间的差异。但同时还有一些定性的方法，如应用内邮件调查、A/B测试和用户访谈。
Now with users who don't convert or those that churn, it's actually much harder to get ahold of them than the engaged users. The outreach safe to invite to a user interview needs to be very vanilla and like authentic as possible. And typically higher volume. Our process will identify a cohort and mix panel and say these are people that logged work out two or three of their trial period. We export that CSV, go over to userinterviews.com who handles all the logistical steps of scheduling and payment.
现在，对于那些不转化或者流失的用户，与那些高度参与的用户相比，联系他们实际上要困难得多。邀请参加用户访谈的接触点需要非常平淡和尽可能真实，并且通常会增加数量。我们的流程将在 Mixpanel 中确定一组用户，并表示这些人在试用期内登录了两次或三次。我们将导出 CSV 文件，转到 userinterviews.com，该网站负责处理所有的日程安排和付款步骤。
It's actually free if you provide your own users. Then we'll do these 30 minute interviews that are targeted on what we want to know. And so with these nonconverters, I want to know what is the problem a user is trying to solve by downloading to bot or trying that. And then what is like the actual or perceived gap between the problem a user is trying to solve and our product solution? And I mentioned perceived gap because many times our product solution is a match for the user's problem, but they didn't discover it or don't realize it.
如果您提供自己的用户，那么我们实际上是免费的。然后我们将进行30分钟的访谈，重点是我们想知道的内容。因此，在处理这些未转化的用户时，我希望知道用户试图通过下载机器人或尝试它解决的是什么问题。然后是用户试图解决的问题与我们的产品解决方案之间的实际或感知差距是什么。我提到感知差距是因为很多时候我们的产品解决方案确实适合用户的问题，但他们没有发现或没有意识到。
And that's a great problem to have. That's like a framing product feature. Right. It's like telling the people what they need, right? Yeah. But getting to like the real problem that a user is downloading our app for takes some investigation. So a participant may describe several problems. And I'm trying to like get to the most constraining one, you know, typically like asking the five whys will help there.
这是一个非常好的问题。就像是展示我们产品的特点。没错，就像是告诉用户他们需要什么。但是要找到用户下载我们应用的真正问题需要一些调查。参与者可能会描述几个问题，我试图找到最限制性的问题，通常通过追问五个为什么可以帮助找到答案。
And here's just one last tactic. So if a user describes a problem, I may pitch a feature solution or even have like a mockup ready to go for their problem. And basically ask the fundamental question is, hey, nonconverter, if this feature existed today, would you buy the app for $79.99? If they say no, it's a great clue that I haven't like found the problem yet.
这里有一个最后的策略。如果用户描述了一个问题，我可能会提出一个功能解决方案，甚至准备一个蓝图来帮助他们解决问题。然后，我会问这个根本问题：嘿，如果今天就有这个功能，你会花79.99美元购买这个应用吗？如果他们说不会，那么就是一个很好的提示，我还没有找到问题。
And there's just one last trap in some of these concept tests where you're showing mockups to participants. But a participant may describe the feature very well or understand what the problem solves and why it would work for other people. But it doesn't necessarily mean that that's a solution to their problem. So I think it's a good tactic. I always try to fundamentally ask if this feature existed today, would you buy Fitbod for $79.99? It's like the fundamental thing I'm trying to get to, right?
在一些概念测试中，有最后一个陷阱，即向参与者展示模型时。尽管参与者可能很好地描述某个功能，或者理解该问题解决方案及其为其他人工作的原因，但这并不一定意味着这是他们问题的解决方案。因此，我认为这是一个好策略。我总是尝试基本上询问，如果今天有这个功能，你会花$79.99购买Fitbod吗？这就像我试图理解的基本问题一样，对吧？
I've seen useranabuses.com, but I hadn't thought about it in the consumer context. I think that's like a terrific investment for folks. Like that's one of my favorite things about B2B since I made the jump is it's much easier to get a hold of customers, right? Because I have thousands, not tens or hundreds of thousands. And one thing would be to see if it was always hard to get folks either to come, obviously come in the office was hard. But just to get on a phone call or whatever, like with a random app, I think that's a weird experience for the like random consumer, right? So I think definitely something worth investing in and you don't need, I mean, it sounds like having a product co-founders.
我看过useranabuses.com，但我没有想到它可以应用到消费者的领域。我认为这对人们来说是一笔很好的投资。自从我跳槽到B2B之后，我最喜欢的一件事是更容易接触到客户了，因为我有数千个客户，而不是成千上万个。有一件事情就是看看是否总是很难让人们过来，显然很难请他们到办公室来。但只要让他们在一个随意的应用上打个电话啥的，我认为这对像随意消费者来说是一种奇怪的体验。所以我认为这是绝对值得投资的事情，而且你不需要什么产品联合创始人。
That's a superpower that your company has. I would say even if you're like a technical co-founding team or whatever, like user interviews are something everybody can do. Like you should be doing, especially for the negative set like that. Like that's really fascinating. I'm going to do that. Is there a threshold of hearing this specific problem a certain number of times before you go attack it? David's going to hire a botnet to ask for Apple TV apps. Yeah. So what's what you're thinking about the depth of the need and the kind of number of people who have that need before you actually go build a feature?
你们公司拥有的能力就是一种超级能力。即使你们是一个技术合作团队或任何其他的团队，用户访谈都是每个人都可以做的。你应该去做用户访谈，特别是像那样的负面评论。这真的很有趣，我会这样做的。听到这个具体的问题一定次数后，你会去攻击它吗？David要雇佣一个机器人网络来询问Apple TV应用程序。那么，在你实际构建一个功能之前，你考虑的是需求的深度和有这种需求的人数吗？
Right. So I'm trying to identify a pattern in participants. And I'll usually try to get to medium confidence. I have a medium confidence signal that there's a pattern here and then, you know, develop a hypothesis and then try to validate or invalidate that hypothesis like the cheapest way possible.
好的。我尝试找出参与者的模式，通常会尽力达到中等的置信度。我有一个中等置信度的信号表明这里有一个模式，然后就会开发一个假设，尽可能以最便宜的方式验证或证伪这一假设。
Now, you know, this is in the context of offense, right? And trying to move metrics immediately. The defense and building core values, a different approach. Let's say I discover a pattern non converters who say like, well, there is a specific workout format or exercise that I couldn't find. Right. I think, okay, I'm medium confidence pattern there. Maybe I would create an automated survey where the very first question is like, how do your three workouts go? Was there a exercise or format you couldn't find? I don't know. Try to optimize for answering that question.
现在，你知道这是在攻击的情境下，是吧？而且试图立即移动指标。防御和建立核心价值，是一种不同的方法。假设我发现了一个模式，即不转换者会说，嗯，有一种特定的锻炼格式或者练习我找不到。对啊，我认为这是一个中等信心的模式。也许我会创建一份自动化调查，其中第一个问题是：你的三次锻炼如何？你找不到的是哪个练习或者格式？我不知道。试着优化回答那个问题。
But even better is to try to build a cheap intervention and solution. So how about for this example, where would a user go in the app to try to address that problem, try to find a workout format and exercise they couldn't find? Let's say I have some ideas about maybe two surfaces a user might go to try to solve that problem. Maybe there's some signal of maybe they couldn't find it, right? Then I try to intervene and ask, hey, like, is there a problem? Could you not find this? Yes or no? And that'll help me size the problem, right? Sizing is the important part here. So give me some signal there to take kind of the next step.
但更好的做法是尝试建立一个便宜的干预和解决方案。那么，对于这个例子，用户要在应用程序中去哪里尝试解决问题，找到他们找不到的锻炼格式和运动呢？假设我有一些想法，也许有两个地方用户可能会去尝试解决这个问题。也许有一些信号表明他们找不到，对吧？然后我尝试干预并询问：“嘿，有问题吗？你找不到吗？是或否？”这将帮助我评估问题的规模，评估规模是这里的重点。因此，请给我一些信号，以便我能够采取下一步。
That's a really great approach. And like I said, I mean, I think in consumer subscriptions, it's just too easy to get overly focused on your super users and try and pattern match against them. And so that kind of product thinking, and you actually have a really great presentation. We'll link in the show notes for anybody who's interested to kind of go deeper in this about kind of your product thinking and how you approach these things at Fitbod.
这是个非常棒的方法。正如我所说的那样，我认为在消费订阅方面，过于关注超级用户和试图针对他们进行模式匹配太容易了。所以这种产品思维，你确实有一个非常棒的演示文稿。我们将在节目注释中放置一个链接，供任何对此感兴趣的人更深入了解您在Fitbod中如何处理这些问题的方式。
We do need to wrap up. So Jesse, it was fantastic having you on the podcast. I know you're hiring. Are there any specific roles you wanted to call out before we wrap up? Yeah, hiring two product managers. And I think this is a really kind of exciting time to join, especially on the product team, in that we have our core strategies and focus, you know, ready to roll.
我们需要结束了。所以Jesse，非常感谢你参加我们的播客。我知道你正在招聘。在我们结束之前，你有没有想特别宣传的招聘岗位？是的，我们需要招聘两名产品经理。特别是在产品团队，加入我们是一个非常令人兴奋的时机，我们已经准备好了核心战略和重点。
So I'm looking for a lead PM for core experience. And now I talked a lot about offense and activation today. And just to reiterate, defense core experience retention is fundamental and that needs to be a big focus of ours. Right. So looking for a core experience PM. And then I'm also looking for a growth PM to actually work on the virality problem we talked about today. This is like really fun role. I actually have somebody in mind. I will make you an intro, Jesse.
所以我正在寻找一个核心体验的领先项目经理。今天我谈了很多进攻和激活的问题。只是想重申，防御核心体验的保留是基础，这需要成为我们的重点。因此，我正在寻找一个核心体验项目经理。此外，我还需要一个增长项目经理来解决我们今天谈到的传播问题。这真是个有趣的角色，我已经有人选了。我会给你介绍的，杰西。
Nice. Thanks. Yeah. And make sure you plant the Apple TV with my friend. Yeah, there's ways to make this happen, David. He's going to bounce. Jesse, if you don't get on that, I know the frustration. I know the frustration.
好的，谢谢。请确保和我的朋友种植Apple TV。你可以通过不同的方法来实现这个目标，David。他马上就要离开了。Jesse，如果你不马上处理好这件事，我理解你的沮丧感。
That's fantastic. It sounds like a really great product to work for. So I think anybody should check it out if they're interested in. And it sounds like a really cool. You've obviously created a product that's made at least one person extremely happy. And that's evident here. And it's clear to me now through the way you're describing your process, why that is right. So that's really fantastic. It sounds like a great opportunity.
那太棒了。听起来这是一个非常棒的产品，适合任何有兴趣的人去看看。它听起来很酷。你显然创造了一款让至少一个人非常开心的产品，这在这里非常明显。通过你描述的过程，现在我明白了为什么会这样。所以这真是太棒了。听起来是个很好的机会。
Jesse, thank you so much. It was great talking to you today. All right. See you next time. Thanks so much for listening.
杰西，非常感谢你。今天和你交谈很愉快。好的，下次再见。非常感谢你倾听。
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