10x features and target customers
Hi everyone,
I was recently listening to IH podcast episode where @csallen interviewed Aleem Mawani, founder of Streak, the CRM in Gmail.
The part of the conversation that fascinated me the most was the "customer winning feature" they had right from the start: they build a CRM right into Gmail.
A lot of sales people spend all of their working hours in Gmail. Any regular CRM sales people might use requires APIs, BCCing, hopping back and forth between email and CRM.
The fact that Streak is a CRM right in Gmail meant that they immediately had found their target customer (sales people using Gmail) and their customer winning feature (a CRM right in Gmail). For those target customers, Streak was ten times better than just using plain Gmail, and way more convenient than any CRM not in Gmail that requires switching apps. That right-in-Gmail feature was so important, Streak could even be missing other "essential" CRM features and still be worth it.
That was a great trigger for me to revisit these topics for FeatureCat (a feedback and feature management Saas I'm building), and I thought it's probably also valuable for anyone in the community here :)
So a question you: what's the customer winning, 10x feature you are building, and who is your target customer? And how did you arrive there? I'd be curious to know the journey.
This is the episode I'm talking about.
https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/176-aleem-mawani-of-streak
Great questions!
I'm working on Versoly a website builder to quickly create marketing sites.
I tried all the web builders and every single one was inflexible or too complex (learning curve even for a web developer).
That is why they have high churn.
Hey Volkan, good point about the target customer! I guess I actually meant the same: the target customer is the one, who has the problem your tool fixes.
When I think "target customer" my head usually goes to demographics, instead of the job to be done.
Uclusion is project management to reduce software development meetings. Put in your 10x feature terms the winning feature is do more of your communication right inside your project management tool rather than in email, group chat or endless meetings.
On your "Streak could even be missing other "essential" CRM features and still be worth it" - that's debatable. We thought of it that way at first also but came to realize any feature that they would be willing to sacrifice wasn't essential anyway. No matter how 10x your feature is mostly having essential feature parity otherwise will go a long way.
Also we are still working on a website that will fully explain the 10x feature - with a walkthrough and better value statements. Even for Streak that will be vital because there is a blurry line of "right inside Gmail" - every CRM has an integration.