Adii Pienaar

24 hours after yesterday's V1 release of our new product, WooDojo, and we have more than 7000 users already. I wanted to share some insight into how we managed to achieve this...

Not only was this a major victory for the team, but getting 7000 users for a brand-new product - one that nobody expected us to release - represents some major traction. This is also the kind of traction which I wouldn't describe as being a fluke, but instead the culmination of truly getting to know our users and evolving both our product & marketing strategy over time.

This is how we did it:

1. Know Your Users

WooDojo wasn't the result of a popular community request, instead we conceptualized a holistic solution for a bunch of minor problems / gaps that we had identified in the last 12 months. The trick here wasn't to spot the gap, but to understand how our users would want to plug those gaps without us even talking to them about it.

A lot is made of customer development and validated product feedback these days, but in our case we skipped that step, because we felt that we had an intimate understanding of the problems our users were experiencing without them perhaps even realizing they were. We know our products & users inside-out, which meant that we could distill WooDojo - as a concept - over time and shape it into an actionable project.

2. Build on what you have

Before WooDojo was released, we had two things: 1) an audience of almost 200 000 users; and 2) our existing product line. Each of these represents a validated & viable distribution channel for new products. With WooDojo we leveraged both of these.

WooDojo compliments our existing product line perfectly by augmenting & extending on the feature sets that we have released in the past. This means that the product has an inherent appeal for each & every member of our existing audience. We could've obviously released something completely unrelated to our existing product line and audience (and thus hoped that they'd still pick it up), but I doubt we would've had the same kind of traction.

3. Go beyond what you have

We had always envisioned that our existing user base would be our main audience for the V1 release, but we also knew that WooDojo would appeal to a whole new audience: the audience that didn't want to use our existing products. WooDojo is "vendor-agnostic" in that regard and enhances **any* WordPress installation, so with this release we're targeting a market much bigger than our existing audience.

4. Free & Easy

As things stand, WooDojo is a free product, which of course means that traction & adoption will be much quicker than if it were a paid product. We've implemented the classic freemium model and have a clear monetization route, which we'll flick the switch on in the next couple of weeks.

I think what's important with freemium is firstly that the core product is & will remain free, but also that we already have the revenue model figured out (based on our experience implementing a similar model for our other products). So it's not like we've made a huge time investment releasing something that we don't know how we'll make money from it.

5. The Surprise Factor

The fact that we didn't do any customer development before the release, meant that no one expected yesterday's release. From what we've seen, this has elicited the "Wow! WooDojo looks fantastic!" reaction from our, unexpecting users. If we had announced or even teased the release beforehand, we would not have had that surprise factor and were unlikely to get so many of the "Wow!"-type reactions, which obviously means the viral appeal of the release would've been less.

Delegation isn't something that comes easy for me. But as such things go, running a team of 23 talented individuals means that you either sink or delegate (swim). So delegation has been an evolving skill for me in recent years; one that I believe I've gotten considerably better at through all the practice.

Today I'd like so celebrate a major, personal victory as the result of excellent work by a team. Woo's release of WooDojo represents one of our finest hours; not because our V1 release is the best in history (probably not even ours), but because this was a team - and not a management - effort.

As a management team, we gave the team only two things: 1) the roadmap & direction of our strategic journey; and 2) a very raw concept that barely resembles WooDojo in its V1 state today. The brilliant execution of these these two elements is testament do the fantastic work of the team to distill our concepts & strategic notions into digestible, action items.

For me - as co-founder - this is reward of the faith & trust we've put into our team to take us to greater heights. We have given them the platform & safety net; all they need to do is shine. And how they have just done that.

I'm learning to code. Again.

I used to love programming in high school and it was that love that lead me to get involved online, teach myself web designing & some intermediate PHP and eventually develop the product that became WooThemes.

And then I stopped coding to focus on running a business. Which made loads of sense at the time of course. Heck, the business started to grow at an alarming rate, there were new challenges everywhere and the team we were hiring had more time to refine their coding skills. So mine became obsolete and I justified not coding by saying / believing that my time was more profitable spent elsewhere. Big mistake.

The Future

I haven't quite bought into the "coding is the new writing" mantra with some enthusiasts even suggesting that everyone should learn to code at school. But there is merit in that argument.

The Internet is at an all-time high at the moment. More people worldwide have access to it and are spending more time, doing various different things, on the internet every day. This won't slow down in the next couple of years.

But the internet isn't the be-all & end-all either… At the moment, every one and their mother is looking for a reputable web developer of a technical cofounder and the supply is short. So it's a good thing that people are learning to code, because we need those skills in the short-term. In the long-term, we'll eventually have an over-supply of web developers.

This should however not deter you from learning to code today.

Everything will have an user interface

We've already seen the way in which user interfaces are penetrating our daily lives. Smartphones & tablets are the best example of this at present. In the future, I can totally see my (supposedly) simple toaster having an interface of sorts. Everything will eventually have some kind of user interface.

And user interfaces need to be programmed.

Beyond writing (a blog post for another day), the skill to code is probably one of the most relevant & sustainable skills that you can teach yourself. You don't need to be the best coder either; you just need to hold your own with some code.

There are multiple, easy ways to learn code in your spare time, at your own pace & convenience. Choose a language, choose a learning vehicle and get coding.

"eCommerce" is one of those pre-2000 Dot Com bubble-related words, that lost most people a lot of money. And whilst the concept of buying things online have continued to grow + evolve in recent years, it seems that eCommerce itself has never been able to shake that pre-2000 bad vibes & stigma.

In the last 8 years, search traffic is down drastically and doesn't look like it has quite recovered. News mentions are however steadily on the rise, which seems to mirror the success that eCommerce platforms have been experiencing of late:

Square is revolutionizing the way retailers accepts payments and have managed to obliterate the gap between online & off. Shopify continues to lead the way with some impressive stats from 2011. In the last couple of months we've seen some even simpler platforms launch (Gumroad, InspirePay, Goodsie) - some of pockets full of VC backing - to make the process & experience of selling stuff online even easier. Going into the WordPress vertical, I can also say that within only 6 months, WooCommerce have become a significant part of our business & overall revenue.

If I had a few eggs left, I'd put it in this basket.

Not much apparently.

Consider some of these trends:

• We're generally in agreement that the value of an idea resides in the execution of the idea.
• Pivoting within startups is so in-vogue at the moment. How many startups are still working on the same (original) idea 6 / 12 / 24 months down the line?
• Y Combinator is considering taking on founders / founding teams regardless of whether they have an idea or not. Sure they say it's an experiment, but how much truth lies in their notion?

In principle I agree that execution is ultimately keen for any idea. A shitty idea with brilliant execution > a brilliant idea with shitty execution. Always. But that perception does devalue a good idea and ultimately the effort & brilliance required to make a shitty idea work, makes for a much riskier journey.

Given how easy it is to "have an idea" and get funding for that idea these days, I fear that too little emphasis is being placed on the value of the foresight that a true visionary offers when they have a really great idea.

Good ideas will also be a viable business. If you can generate good ideas, you'll always find yourself there or thereabouts.