This blog had been infected to serve up Gootloader malware to Google search victims, via a common tactic known as SEO (Search Engine Optimization) poisioning. Your blog was serving up 290 malicious pages. Your blogged served up malware to 8471 visitors.

I tried my best to clean up the infection, but I would do the following:

• Upgrade WordPress to the latest version (one way the attackers might have gained access to your server)
• Upgrade all WordPress themes to the latest versions (another way the attackers might have gained access to your server)
• Upgrade all WordPress plugins (another way the attackers might have gained access to your server), and remove any unnecessary plugins.
• Verify all users are valid (in case the attackers left a backup account, to get back in)
• Change all passwords (for WordPress accounts, FTP, SSH, database, etc.) and keys. This is probably how the attackers got in, as they are known to brute force weak passwords
• Run antivirus scans on your server
• Block these IPs (5.8.18.7 and 89.238.176.151), either in your firewall, .htaccess file, or in your /etc/hosts file, as these are the attackers command and control servers, which send malicious commands for your blog to execute
• Check cronjobs (both server and WordPress), aka scheduled tasks. This is a common method that an attacker will use to get back in. If you are not sure, what this is, Google it
• Consider wiping the server completly, as you do not know how deep the infection is. If you decide not to, I recommend installing some security plugins for WordPress, to try and scan for any remaining malicious files. Integrity Checker, WordPress Core Integrity Checker, Sucuri Security,
  and Wordfence Security, all do some level of detection, but not 100% guaranteed
• Go through the process for Google to recrawl your site, to remove the malcious links (to see what malicious pages there were, Go to Google and search site:your_site.com agreement)
• Check subdomains, to see if they were infected as well
• Check file permissions

(Addtionally your site was serving up spam, via a tool called black wordpress dyndoor/light grey dyndoor sold by n1oise. I cleaned that up as well)

Gootloader (previously Gootkit) malware has been around since 2014, and is used to initally infect a system, and then sell that access off to other attackers, who then usually deploy additional malware, to include ransomware and banking trojans. By cleaning up your blog, it will make a dent in how they infect victims. PLEASE try to keep it up-to-date and secure, so this does not happen again.

Sincerly,

The Internet Janitor

Below are some links to research/further explaination on Gootloader:

https://news.sophos.com/en-us/2021/03/01/gootloader-expands-its-payload-delivery-options/

https://news.sophos.com/en-us/2021/08/12/gootloaders-mothership-controls-malicious-content/

https://www.richinfante.com/2020/04/12/reverse-engineering-dolly-wordpress-malware

https://blog.sucuri.net/2018/12/clever-seo-spam-injection.html

This message

Marketing in today’s fast moving technology landscape can be challenging and difficult to keep up with, but in my personal opinion, that’s what makes it so fun. Your customer’s needs are always evolving meaning your business and product is evolving along with it. Unlike in hardware or consumer goods, where you ship and market a product that will be fairly static for a certain period of time, software products have new versions and features on a weekly basis. Ship or get eaten is the motto in software. Unfortunately, that fast pace can send a product marketer’s life for a spin.

Successful product marketing is telling your product’s story from your customer’s perspective, but ask any author and they will tell you that writing a complete story is no easy task. What agile has done with its 1 to 2-week sprints is cause us to publish a few pages or chapters at a time. Just think about it, we can barely wait a week for the next Game of Thrones episode, yet we expect to share our product’s story in little chunks and have our customers wait to understand what the bigger picture means for them.

Wait to tell the story until you have a valuable tale to tell. You will get pressure from left and right to announce a new update, but hold strong until you feel like there is value to share. Most importantly, remember that you only get one real chance to tell your story, and in this saturated tech news world, your story needs to be impactful, not just another newswire flyby. You can get help from your SEO company to promote your story as best as possible.

Every good story has a theme

During my time as a Product Manager, I purposefully built my product roadmap around quarterly themes. This allowed me to make sure that we focused our limited time and resources around key customer needs and pain points. When feature requests came in from sales or executives, I had the ability to put the upcoming themes in front of them to make sure their request aligned.

So how does this work? Let’s say you work for an ecommerce company and you realized that you have a ton of traffic coming from mobile – an unoptimized channel that is resulting in high abandonment (Yes, this is just an example…most people would have mobile top of mind in today’s commerce world). As a product manager, you can highlight this key experience issue as a priority theme for an upcoming quarter, and build the roadmap around that. You can use that quarter to build out mobile wallet integrations like Google Pay and Apple Pay, or maybe you spent some time to test out the mobile product pages and noticed that there is a better way to optimize the layout. Individually, these updates are good but not that exciting of a story. Now imagine grouping all of these individual updates and features together into a larger, impactful story – “we have delivered a brand new mobile shopping experience, making it easier for consumers to search, discover and buy their favorite products.” This sounds a lot more interesting than saying you launched Apple Pay or Google Pay (not to take away from those products individually).

Jeff Whatcott, the former CMO of Brightcove, gives a good example of waiting to market a product launch until you have a larger story to tell. He shares the story of how they launched Brightcove 4 with large press coverage, but many of the features had been out much prior to the actual launch date. His suggestion is spot on. Group key features and updates around themes, and go to market with a better, more interesting pitch. You can also do yourself one better and group these features around customer-driven themes, such as customer pain points, but that is just an added bonus.

“We chose to actually bundle it up, a bunch of little bits and pieces, and make a significant launch out of it.”

Jeff Whatcott

I have used this strategy multiple times in my career. A recent example is in my current role at Paysafe, where we launched our Paysafe for Platforms solution in late 2017. This solution is made up of various different products and features, many of which were available prior to our market launch. We knew that we wanted to make more of an impact when announcing, so rather than going to market with the individual capabilities, we packaged it into a solution that met a larger overall need for our target customers. Instead of saying we launched split payments or merchant onboarding, we told our audience that we launched a new payment solution with capabilities to help their software platform scale.

In conclusion,

Your customers want to hear a story, and more importantly, a story that they can resonate with. It may be cool that you are launching new features every week but when you only have one shot to make an impactful impression, you’re better off telling a larger story around a theme rather than attempting to make a splash with each small feature. So next time someone in the business is pushing you to make an announcement around a new product or feature, ask yourself whether that feature can hold its own, or would it have more impact in a bundled launch.

Share the whole story, not just a chapter.

If you’re part of the tech world, you have heard of and know what user experience (UX) is. More importantly, you know why customer success is important to the success of your product. Poor user experience can lead to user frustration, increase in support requests, lack of engagement and higher churn rates. All in all, it can result in doom for your product. This is why product managers, developers and designers work hard to optimize the user experience. For onboarding, this means getting the user to the “aha moment” as quickly as possible, and for retention, it means making it easy to to achieve the key actions and decreasing the feature clutter. The goal is always user happiness because user happiness means increase in usage, increase in users and increase in the moolah, baby.

Unfortunately, it seems as if many non-software companies lose sight of user (customer) experience. It may not be as easy to track or capture data on overall user experience but it is just as important for any company trying to keep customers engaged and happy.

My Shitty Customer Experience

Kaiser Permanente

Flu season means it’s time to get a shot. For me, that meant finding a Kaiser location I could go to in order to get my free flu shot. I had an open Saturday morning so it was the perfect time for me to get the shot out of the way since my weekdays can get fairly busy. I took to the web to figure out which local Kaiser location was open on a Saturday and performed flu shots. It seemed as if only 1 location offered Saturday flu shots but the website displayed September 26th as the only date. September 26th was long gone so I figured I may be shit out of luck. Nonetheless, I decided that the Kaiser website was a little too confusing so it was better to just give them a call. A few transferred calls and 20+ minutes later, I found out that the location actually did offer flu shots on multiple Saturdays. I was in luck but I had been close to giving up on my flu shot adventure because I felt like my morning was just wasting away.

That being said, my shot was quick and easy, plus the receptionist and nurse were great…so that did help make up for my frustrating experience from earlier.

Macy’s

When attending weddings and formal events, I try my best to match with my fiance…cute, I know. So in order to continue the trend, I picked up a couple of tie options from Macy’s to see which would work best with her specific outfit. After finalizing the choice, I decided to return the remaining ties since it wasn’t really a color I’d wear on a regular basis (pink). I excitingly walked into the store because I knew I was about to get some money back for my return…always a good feeling. I went up to the first customer service desk that I saw and confidently stated that I was there to make a return. Unfortunately, I was told that I would have to go upstairs to the Men’s section since I was returning ties. It wasn’t a huge deal but it did mean that I had to go find the escalator and make my way through the Men’s section to find a second customer service desk. I made the return and all was dandy. Like I said, not a big deal BUT it was somewhat of an odd situation and annoying experience. It has been a few months now and I still wonder why I had to go all the way back to the Men’s section to return my ties, especially if and when I go back to the store. I get that Macy’s may be trying to make it difficult to return items, but that seems fairly unlikely because if somebody made the trip to the store, they are not leaving until they have returned their items. Either way, it was a small annoyance but yet another example of poor user experience in a real world situation.

Apple

The tech giant that everybody loves. The company that prides itself on quality and design. Yet a company that I seem to have had multiple frustrations with. My Macbook Pro OS has randomly crashed in the past, where I lost all my data, and my battery currently needs to be replaced after just a few years. My fiance also had to replace her battery after a few years and then her Macbook Pro just stopped working for no apparent reason. Although all of those can be frustrating, that is not the user experience issues I am focusing on…technology can be a tough thing to control. The experience issues developed when we tried going to visit Apple for support. When my fiance’s laptop crashed, it was in the middle of a busy period, where she had a ton of important work to do on her computer. We rushed over to the nearest Apple store on a random Sunday afternoon. To our frustration, the store was completely booked for the whole evening and did not have an opening for the next 4 days. Our best option was to either come back the next morning at 10AM and potentially be helped or go to a 2nd location, which should have an opening according to the Apple rep. We decided to drive 20 minutes to the next store since it was key for us to figure out what was going on with the laptop. Unfortunately, we were once again shit out of luck. The 2nd location was also too busy to take any walk ins and again, didn’t have any open appointments for another few days. We had no choice but to take the Macbook in the following Thursday…and you can probably guess how frustrating that was.

It may be something that Apple had no real control over but you can understand how upsetting it is when your laptop fails you, especially when you paid top dollar for this quality brand. It’s also frustrating to see how busy the Apple store is on a daily basis. People are having so many issues with their Apple products that we had to literally wait days just to have our Macbook looked at. It has even made me contemplate whether I should go back to a Windows product for my next computer…which I may need fairly soon due to the battery issues.

Not All is Bad

I am not here to pick on any specific brands, because even the examples I mentioned are minor and sometimes uncontrollable, but I am trying to point out how user/customer experience should not just be a software topic. Time Warner Cable has a new campaign that focuses directly on customer experience. Their new reduced wait time campaign focuses on customers not having to wait on the phone for long periods of time, and we all know how frustrating that can be. Time Warner was smart to recognize how that experience was leaving a bad taste in the mouths of their customers and are making the effort to improve that. They are optimizing the user experience to inch closer to achieving customer happiness.

In Conclusion,

Those in tech understand how important a role user experience plays in their product’s success. This is great but it shouldn’t stop there. User (customer) experience should be a key focus for all brands, whether in tech or not. Many times, it can be the smallest changes that have the biggest impact on a customer. Small changes mean happier customers and happier customers mean more revenue.

Photo credit: Sydney Apple Store Genius Bar

For a Product Manager, there is always a fine line between balancing the long-term with the short-term. Many PMs question where their focus should be and how to allocate the right amount of time to each. The answer to this question can vary depending on the type of company you work for and the organizational structure. At a larger organization, there are typically more resources so that PM may not be asked to focus on such a broad scope. For a smaller organization, or a startup, the PM does not have that luxury. In this situation, something that I have experience with, you have no choice but to focus on both the short and long-term scenario of your product, be sure to check out this website.

The Macro View

The macro view, aka the long-term, is what many Product Managers are typically used to. Whether it’s managing a plumbing company or software company, it all comes down to the aim or the changing goal a company has. They are the ones who dictate and monitor the roadmap, so they need to know what the plan is for the next 6-months, as well as the next 3-years. They must own the vision and the strategy. More importantly, they need to make sure the whole team is onboard with the overlying vision because unless everybody is aiming for the same goal, your product will end up in no man’s land. This is the tricky but fun part of the role. You must advocate and be the voice of your users but you also have to balance the needs and wants of the other stakeholders (executives, marketing, sales, etc.). All in all, you are responsible for where the product is heading and therefore it is important to invest a large chunk of your time to analyzing competitive and market trends, talking to your users and understand their growing problems, and connecting with others within your company who are close to the product and the target users. As the foundation begins to get solidified, you could start dedicating 60-70% of your time to building and understanding the long-term path.

The Micro View

Although the broad view is key, the devil is in the details. In my current role, for a small organization, I am essentially both the Project Manager and the Product Manager. So this automatically means I have to look at both the right now and the tomorrow. When I first started my job, I was strictly focused on the right now. Learning how things operate, working to create better process flows, getting to know the team and how they are, understanding the technology as best as I could, and digging into the market and competitive landscape. As the Project Manager on the product, I have to monitor how we are progressing, analyze where we are at, understand how we are building and test our new builds. The details are extremely important when you are playing a dual role. It is also on me to be as detailed as possible when writing the specs so that the engineering team understands what problem we’re trying to solve and why.

In Conclusion,

At a larger organization, the PM may not need to worry about the details. They are strictly setting the vision while others manage the implementation. At a smaller organization, you may be required to run both the product and project management aspects of a business. Nonetheless, it is important for the PM to balance both the short-term and long-term elements of a product. I try to spend 30-40% of my day on the micro – communicating with our engineering team, testing our product and writing the specs and details. I need the engineer team, or at least the engineering lead, to also be on the same page of what we are currently building and where we plan to go next. Why? Because what we build today should account for where we want it to be tomorrow. So although it is fun to be the visionary, you can’t get to tomorrow without understanding what is going on today.

Earlier this week, I attended a Product Manager event here in Orange County. It was my first time going to one of these events but it was great to be around other PMs that had many of same frustrations and objectives. The speaker was Jim Semick of ProductPlan and the topic was roadmap prioritization…an interesting subject for all PMs. As always, the discussion around prioritization techniques and internal requests was a heavy one, but the core takeaway I left with was to always build for a market, not a user. It can be extremely easy to get suckered into a user request, especially that of an important user, but in all stages of your startup and product, you need to keep your focus on the market.

Pre-Product: Sucker Bet

For many aspiring entrepreneurs, it is exciting to hear about a new problem or idea. You may come across this idea from a personal issue, a work frustration or a random conversation with a friend, and all of a sudden, you think you may have the next big thing. It is easy to get carried away based on one person’s need but that is a slippery slope that can lead you to tons of wasted hours and money. Even if that one person confirms that they would use your new product and pay for it, you are basically betting on that one person’s view being universal. In all reality, you’re probably also betting on that person’s word being honest. Most people would say they’d pay for something…until they actually have to pay for something.

You want to try and avoid this situation at all costs. Unfortunately, there is no guaranteed way to have complete control of your destiny, but you can reduce the risk. All you have to do is talk to more than one person. The more people you talk to, the more confidence you can build. This early stage customer development can help you better understand the target market that you may go after. Use this time to learn what a typical day looks like for your ideal user, what frustrations they have and what problems they have work arounds for. If the problem you’re trying to solve comes up organically during the conversation, you have a clear opening to dig a little deeper. If it doesn’t, take the time to understand the person’s professional (B2B) or personal (B2C) lifestyle and then smoothly attempt to transition the discussion towards the problem that you are trying to solve. You never know, it could be a problem that they never knew they had!

Product-Market Fit: Squirrel Syndrome

So now that you have built a minimal sellable product based on your initial customer insights, your goal shifts to finding a product-market fit. All of your early stage customer interviews helped you build some initial traction, but you know you truly have something when users are onboarded and retained successfully.

The initial instinct of a company that hasn’t found that fit may be to build new shiny features based on the demands of “potential” users. You have to, HAVE TO, be extremely strategic if you decide to go this route. Before taking on any demands, make sure you have pinned down exactly what your product’s vision is. Now go back to those user, or potential user, requests and see if they fit in with your product vision. If it is something that makes sense for your roadmap, start questioning and surveying the market to make sure it is not only a one-user need. Remember, you are catering to a market, not a single user.

If you are able to avoid these custom builds, your focus should be to understand your data and talk to as many active users, especially the highly-engaged ones, and churned users as possible. From the active users, you can discover your ideal value proposition and your product’s aha moments, while from your churned users, you will learn why people left and what improvements could be made to retain future users. Use this insight to shape your roadmap and drive your product towards finding a product-market fit.

Growth: Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems

The final stage that I am going to discuss is growth. You have found your product-market fit and your focus is to solely add some fuel to the fire and begin a rapid growth phase. It seems like this phase may be all fine and dandy, but there are some scary holes that you could potentially fall into. The biggest concern is if a handful of users have a tight grip over your product because they essentially represent the majority of your revenue. Nobody wants to rock the boat and therefore there will be high pressure to cater to those users’ every need. Once again, remember that you are building a product for a defined market, not a particular user. Overloading your team and product with these one-off custom builds can lead to large maintenance costs, feature overload and higher churn rates. These increasing churn rates could then potentially lead your product to lose it’s product-market fit and die.

In Conclusion,

You may be heading down a dangerous path if your product roadmap is driven by individual user requests, rather than market insight. Also be careful to not let internal ideas take you away from what truly matters…your actual users. As a Product Manager or startup CEO, all that matters is what your market is telling you and your market is your users…all of your users. Have a vision, stick to your vision, and build for a market, not a user.

Branding can play an important role in the success and/or failure of a product and company. It’s what defines who and what a company is and is essential to help set the company’s tone and vision, and that’s why branding is important, and Aquaholic offers a wide range of customised canvas bag printing for events. That being said, branding may not be as important in the early stages of a product. At that point in time, all that matters are users, validation and growth. But as you do begin to grow, branding will help you become a recognized name and will take users from liking your product to loving your product.

Lyft’s branding is what made me love them, but now it’s dead…and Uber killed it.

Lyft vs Uber

Each company has a completely different style and brand and it is important for us to understand what those are before moving forward.

Lyft is Fun

Lyft has had this young and fun energy about it, all rooted in their weird and goofy pink mustache. When a driver picked you up, they would give you a friendly fist bump and have the car stocked up with yummy candy and gum. I even had a Lyft car pull up with fluorescent lights all around the outside and inside of the car, plus the driver was handing out glow sticks…super cool because my buddies and I were heading to a party. But all in all, Lyft had fun and energetic drivers who made you feel welcomed and comfortable.

Uber is Buttoned Up

Uber started off with the famous black car service, with clean and suited up drivers. Yeah, they may have had some gum and water bottles in the car, but it gave off a very professional vibe. Just like professional limo drivers, Uber drivers were reliable.

Even just by looking at both the Lyft and Uber websites, you can see how their brand personalities vary quite a lot – Lyft is bright and fun while Uber is clean and professional.

How Uber Killed Lyft’s Brand

I am like a broken record and complain to my fiance about the same thing, almost every single time that we get a Lyft. I have even lectured certain Lyft drivers about this..albeit when I was buzzed and chattery.

Lyft’s fun and energetic brand has died because drivers are now doing both Uber and Lyft. (Click to Tweet)

Simple as that.

Every time I get a Lyft, I will ask the driver if they do just Lyft or if they do both. Around 65-75% of them say that they do both Lyft and Uber. So why has this killed Lyft’s brand identity?

Well as I mentioned above, Lyft is fun and Uber is buttoned up. How can one driver be both buttoned up and professional, as well as fun and energetic? It’s not entirely impossible but it sure is difficult to embody two differently personalities. So now when I get a Lyft driver, the chances of them being fun and energetic are fairly slim. I’ve probably had 1 fist bumping driver in the past 20 or so Lyfts, and none that really carry candy anymore. I’m trying to stay away from sweets, so it’s not a huge deal, but my point is that Lyft’s brand has changed.

Remember when you would call a Lyft and a car would pull around the corner with a funny, pink mustache pinned to the front? Those days are long gone. Now you may see a little pink fluorescent light shaped as mustache on the dashboard, but in most cases, you will only see a Lyft sticker in the bottom left side of the windshield. As a driver of both Lyft and Uber, it does not make sense to stick this giant, furry pink mustache to the front of your car. How are you going to act as a professional Uber driver when you have a pink mustache on the front of you car?

In Conclusion,

In order to swap between the two identities, Lyft drivers have had to sacrifice their fun and goofy persona in order to find a middle ground to take on more Uber (or Uber X) passengers. As a result, Uber has officially killed the Lyft persona that we once knew and loved…or at least I knew and loved.

Your turn: Which companies brand do you prefer, Uber or Lyft?

Photo courtesy of Steve Rhodes

If you’ve had a taste of the startup world, you’ve heard the term Minimal Viable Product (MVP). You may not even be anywhere around the startup life and still have heard the term. That’s how often it is used. It is used by almost all tech/software companies but it seems like many have a different view and definition of the term. Through my experience, a MVP could end up being a simple consumer insight survey, an informative landing page, a basic prototype or even a pretty build out software solution. Let’s get this straight, if you need to spend a nice chunk of change on it…it’s not a MVP.

I’ve worked at companies that also had no concept of a MVP. They would have an idea, put resources on it to have it developed and start selling before it was even complete. We had no idea what the market needed and I was a poor, young soul that somehow ended up in Product Management without any idea of what I was doing. As my career progressed, I found myself in situations where we also built out basic prototypes and I even walked into a situation where an existing MVP had quite a lot of money and sweat put into it.

Through my experience, I have decided that it makes more sense to break this process out into 2 groups: the Minimal Viable Product (MVP) and the Minimal Sellable Product (MSP).

MVP vs MSP

The MVP, in these terms, still has much of the same characteristics as previously but I am hoping it will now have the same universal definition for all. The middle word of this buzz phrase is ‘viable’ and so that is exactly what we should be testing when we are in this stage. Viability to me comes in two different forms: 1) the viability of the idea and 2) the viability of the technology.

The MVP

The viability of the idea is all about the potential customer, the end-user and the market. You may never know for sure, but there are many ways to test your idea without putting any real development time into it. This is where the concepts of surveys and landing pages play a role. It is not too difficult to put together a quick survey using Google Forms and get it out to 10-100 people that you think may have a need for your product idea. The key here is to make sure that you are not asking leading questions, so if you are building a milk delivery app, do not ask whether they would use a mobile app to purchase milk. You may get tons of people saying yes but that’s only because of the way you served up the question…who would really say no to that question? And if you really want to get some great insights, actually go out and talk to potential users of your idea. Once again, without using leading questions, find out what their issues are and where the chink in their process may be.

If you have somebody with any design skills at all, which luckily I do have, it is much easier to create mockups of how you think your product could look rather than building the whole thing out. Throw these onto a quick landing page with some value proposition copy (why will this product change the user’s world) and maybe even add some ‘sign up’ or ‘buy now’ actions. The sign up option is good because you can start collecting emails, which are like little pieces of gold in the software world, while an option for the visitor to see pricing or subscribe at $X.XX/month shows that people may be willing to actually pay for the product. You obviously cannot start collecting money when you have no product but you can always let these visitors know that the development is in progress so please leave their email address. A great example of this is Buffer, which started as a 2-page MVP in order to get validation.

You know what else you can do with these collected emails? Actually contact these people and get some insights…how about that!

The other important thing is to test the viability of the technology. What this essentially means is, can you actually create this idea? Technology is amazing but there are still many things that are not achievable in this day and age. Maybe your milk app idea plans to get the milk to the buyer’s doorstep within 5 minutes. Well, unless you have fulfillment centers on every corner or a teleportation device, this is probably not a viable concept. So my advice is to start running some quick tests to see whether what you want to achieve is actually achievable.

You have now created your first feedback loop and tested the viability of not only your idea, but also the technology needed to create it.

The MSP

This concept was introduced to me by my current supervisor at Total-Apps. She wanted the team to stop overthinking things and come up with only what is needed to initially sell the product. The concept of a Minimum Loveable Product (MLP) has been thrown around and this is somewhat similar. The goal of the MSP is to develop the least amount that you can in order for potential users to actually start buying your product. This relates to the MLP because a potential user will only purchase your product if they see something that they like or love. If it is something that they think they can actually get value out of, then they will be willing to put money towards it. Since I have been throwing out all of these MxP terms…here is another one that came to my mind while writing this post: Minimal Valueable Product. Although it may sound like you are trying to provide the least amount of value as you can, it is actually supposed to represent the minimal work that needs to go in to create value for your user.

Anyway, I am getting off track with all these buzz-like words. The point is that the MSP should be a developed product that has the core features needed to actually sell. Hopefully the steps you take during the MVP phase allow you to pinpoint what the core features would be for success.

You now have a product that you can start selling. This is not a prototype that could potentially break after you onboard 5 users, but an actual product that people would invest money in on a continual basis.

In Conclusion,

The concept of the MVP is one that has changed the way that startups function but it has started to become more of a buzz phrase as of late. People have different ideas of what the MVP is and should be, so you end up having people that are investing too much or too little. Although I am not really asking for the death of the MVP, breaking out this concept into a MVP stage and a MSP stage allows you to first test the viability of the idea and technology, and then create a great product that you can start selling…testing and experimenting along the way.

Your turn: In your experience, what have you seen companies and people do for their MVP?

There are tons of factors that determine whether or not a startup will succeed. There’s the founders, the team around the founders, the user experience, the investors you bring on, and the list goes on and on. I have yet to be involved with a successful startup but I have observed one thing in this crazy startup world, and that is that relevancy matters.

There are new consumer-focused startups popping up every day, many that make me wonder why in the world anyone would even use them. And as I mentioned, there are plenty of reasons why some startups succeed and some fail, but I want to give 2 examples of both and relate them back to relevancy.

The Good

Facebook. Way to point out the obvious, I know. Well, when Facebook first started, it was a way for college students to connect with each other and have their own little network. And as we all know, college is about sex and partying…right? If you have seen The Social Network, there is a scene where Mark Zuckerberg has an epiphany. He realized that Facebook (or The Facebook at the time) can be a tool for students to see each other’s relationship statuses, since that was and is a big driver of social interaction. That, coupled with the ability to communicate with friends and fellow students, created relevancy.

Uber/Lyft. What’s more relevant than transportation? People have places to be and therefore need a way to get there. If you have plans to go out and drink, you obviously want to avoid drinking and driving. So you may pre-party a little, call a cab and then you wait 10-15 minutes for it to get there. Uber and Lyft allow you to call for a “cab” through their app and now you know exactly how much time you have to chug down your last drink. Even better, you no longer have to roam the streets trying to flag down a cab on the way home. You can just ping either an Uber or Lyft driver. Simple and relevant.

The Bad

Zaarly. If you are not as familiar with Zaarly, it was a random requests marketplace that created quite the buzz in early 2011. They began at a Startup Weekend in LA and the buzz took off during their time at SXSW. It all moved so fast. The concept allowed individuals to ask for anything they needed, for example doing their laundry or picking them up some lunch, and then someone else on the other side can offer to take care of those tasks for a fee. It was a pretty simple and interesting concept but how is Zaarly doing now? Well they are now a home services platform. So what happened exactly? I obviously do not have the behind the scenes information, but it all comes down to relevancy. Although this marketplace idea was interesting and compelling, there really wasn’t a huge need. It seemed cool to pay someone to do your laundry for you or pick up your lunch, but in a shitty economy, every dollar counts. That and it encouraged major laziness. What it seems like Zaarly discovered was that there was a high supply and demand for people offering and needing some sort of home service. Their irrelevant minor tasks marketplace allowed them to discover a relevant niche, and for that reason they made the pivot to focus on home services.

Foursquare. Let’s be honest, Foursquare is far from a failure…at least in terms of awareness. Most people have used or at least heard of the app. At first, Foursquare was a location-based gamified app that allowed users to check-in to locations and earn badges. The cool thing was that some places had special offers and discounts if you checked-in. That was the main reason I used it…for the discounts. I didn’t really want people to see where I was at all times. But as soon as those specials and discounts began disappearing, so did my check-ins. It no longer was relevant to me. Foursquare has since made a few pivots, moving away from the gamified check-in app to a social recommendation and discovery tool.

In Conclusion,

There are many factors that will determine the success of a startup but you have to first start with relevance. If you product or idea is not relevant to a specific target audience, it will not matter how great your team or user experience is. This is why the Lean Startup Method encourages young startups to get a quick, simplified product in front of users as soon as possible. Testing the MVP will allow you to see whether or not your concept is relevant because relevancy matters.

Your turn: Do you have any other examples of successful startups that hit the mark for relevancy?

It has been 2 years since I last wrote a blog post or attended to my blog at all, but I am finally back. I was MIA because I was focused on getting my MBA, although I do wish I had made more time to blog during those 2 years. Either way, I am ready to get back to work and create awesome content for everyone.

But there will be a difference…

I went into my MBA experience with a strong background in social media and online personal branding but I came out knowing that my true passion lies in customer experience and product growth. With this new focus and path, I have decided to convert my blog to follow my journey and thoughts through this tech, startup world.

Hopefully I can keep your informed and entertained along the way!

If you want to start a blog, one of the most recommended software to use is WordPress. WordPress, by far, is the most popular and the most preferred blog platform of choice in the worldwide web because it is quite easy to set-up and very user friendly. You should also choose wordpress hosting service depending on your needs. To get started with your blog, simply follow the steps below and enjoy blogging everyday.

1. First thing’s first – Download the WordPress installation pack.

You can get the file from WordPress’ site itself. Follow the instructions below provided that you already have a domain name and hosting up. If they’re ready, you should be ready to install WordPress on your server. If not, you have to contact a domain name registration and website hosting company to guide you through the whole process.

2. Install WordPress

With the information you got from your hosting provider, get the file you downloaded from WordPress’ site and install it from there. The installation process is going to be rather straightforward. You simply have to double click the file you uploaded and various screens will show up, walking you through the entire installation process. In case you are asked for information that you don’t know or don’t have, such as database username and password, your web hosting company should be able to help you with it.

3. Get ready to design your site.

After installing, the next thing you should do is to choose a theme. There are several WordPress themes to choose from. Simply pick the one you prefer and off you go. It is also possible for you to download themes from other sites or have a programmer customize one for you. Simply log-in to the dashboard and tweak your blog settings from there. Go to where it says Themes to check your options.

4. Add Plug-ins

Just like the theme, there are many plug-ins that you can download and install in your WordPress blog to make it more interesting to your viewers. Pick the ones from the WordPress library and install them accordingly. This step is done from the dashboard section as well. Simply look for the Plug-ins tab.

5. Get ready to blog.

Once you’ve achieved the look that you like for your blog, you should be ready to use it right away. Go back on the dashboard and click on the Add New Post link. In the next screen that will appear, type your very first blog post from there.

Once you have the hang of the dashboard’s interface, maintaining your blog is going to be a very easy feat. You can add pictures by simply clicking on the necessary icons found at the Add New Post section. You can also put in videos, texts, and almost any other things that you want to share with the rest of the world.

If you have any questions or problems with your blog, you can easily find the solution for it at WordPress’ site itself. Just search for the answers and you’ll surely find it. WordPress is a very easy platform to manage. Even webmasters with little knowledge with setting up a website will find it simple enough to learn.

Celine Benjamin, a certified bookworm, is an expert in promotional products used for both marketing and personal reasons. This desserts fan enjoys her spare time reading books, watching movies, and honing her blogging craft.