Would you open your startup?
Hey folks,
I'm a long time reader and first time poster here.
Lately, I see more and more startups opening up and sharing some metrics like the total amount of sign-ups, page visits and revenue publicly. I really like the idea behind this approach and believe it can be a nice marketing tool. After seeing a few approaches, it seems like most are uniquely crafted solutions - which I totally appreciate and assume they took a fair amount of time to build.
Do you feel like the additional amount of time and afford needed to create these metrics, might be the reason for some to not open up?
If so, would you like to try out a solution that simplifies creating those metrics with a few clicks and gets you started way faster than creating them yourself?
Hey Deniz, I've recently built and sold a project I was working on for 3 months, which is all about open startups, it's called Open Startup List and you can find there interviews with open founders.
There are great benefits to being open and transparent, it's definitely a marketing tool that allows you to engage with the curiosity of people.
I tried signing up to it but didn't ever receive a reply. Can you help?
Pretty sure my product is eligible.
First of all, huge congrats on this achievement!
While researching for open startups I actually came across this and could get some inspiration from the listed startups. Awesome to hear it started all here! :)
Inspired by Plausible, I open-sourced everything and made my company and/or products fully transparent as well - from statistics to revenue models, internal expenses, and more.
I think it also actually gives a competitive advantage, since it'll make your project move faster, and people will think twice before considering making a competitor to an open-source project.
To be honest, I didn't even have thought about open-source projects or initiatives. This could also be a really great audience to help to gain the trust of people and as you said accelerate things.
Thanks a lot for this.
I used to love the idea of being completely open and transparent, to help encourage and motivate others to do similar, but I was quickly attacked for "humble bragging" about making money and I just kind of stopped sharing information.
I think it's great if you're a media company. Less so if you're SaaS.
Here's why:
Potential competitors see potential, reach feature parity and it becomes a race to the bottom. This caused Transistor.fm and SnapShooter to stop sharing numbers.
If you want to learn more. Trends #0015 — Open Startups — Disclaimer: I wrote it.
Thanks for the insight and also the article you shared.
I would be really interested in your opinion about how much the chosen data is the reason for this to backfire?
For example, instead of showing the exact MRR, we might show how close we're to a goal which implies also a benefit for the user. Maybe hiring additional employees or enabling 24/7 support for the business?
Maybe something like Bannerbear (https://www.bannerbear.com/open/) did with the Moto Meter visualization.
My personal opinion is that sharing metrics works great as part of a blog post or launch recap, as it can make your story especially interesting and amplify its reach. You can also be targeted about what you share and don't share. That worked well for me as part of a recent launch.
When you just put up an open startup page you're sharing more info and not getting a lot of value out if it. As always, it depends on your product and you should do what you want to do.. but I've never felt the need to display a bunch of metrics on a page. Would be interested to hear if others have a different take.
Thanks for your feedback!
I would assume those metrics could in some cases help customers to decide for your solution over your competitors.
Like in cases when you see that the startup is backed up by a lot of actual customers, so the service will probably be more reliable than the other startup where you might be the first customer and won't know it upfront.
From a technical perspective when depending on a SaaS which provides an API, it can be nice to know upfront if they're able to handle a hundred thousand requests per day already.
Sure, everything above can also lead people away, especially when starting things.
Yeah that's a great point! I'd be inclined to just show some general indication of popularity like "10,000 happy customers" or a row of of testimonials, but I can see how open stats might make that point as well.
@dtmzr I always do :)
I treat this process as in writing marketing case studies, I usually share it on LinkedIn and Twitter to gather feedback. Not a surprise, this little step will bring you value.
Would be awesome to hear your opinion on my side project, which I often share metrics publicly.
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"but sharing what drove the milestone will be helpful for listeners"
I (as everything but a marketing expert) would assume this is where the biggest benefit could be?
Your last paragraph sounds like a perfect testimonial - happy to hear that you got this feedback.
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If I understood you correctly, it's about the origin of the data for the metrics?
My initial idea was to have something which can be started without any automatization since this also takes time and afford to build or the setup. Therefore the origin would be manual entering by the founders in the first step.
I think a awesome goal would be to have everything set up under 5 minutes.