Comments Off on Evolving eEvidence through Lean Startup

Evolving eEvidence through Lean Startup

Posted by

Last week I was discussing with my wife about Lean Startup and how we were applying it on eEvidence, almost by accident.

When we first launched the product, Feb 2012, we made a few assumptions that soon proved to be absolutely wrong.

Error #1. We started defining premium plans based on a user scale, assuming service usage would be in proportion to the number of users. That was absolutely wrong: single users were sending ten times more emails than licenses shared by many. We now have plans for up to 1,000 emails a year, 10,000 or unlimited usage, with no user limitations.

Error #2. We thought some customers would value unlimited use, others unlimited backup and a few the combination of both offers. That was absolutely wrong. Customers wanted to use the service whenever they needed to, some very often and others just now and then, all expecting backup as a key feature. All our plans include perpetual and unlimited backup for a flat rate fee.

Error #3. We decided all premium plans to have a 20 GB storage limit for backup. If more needed, customers could buy more for 1.2 € per additional GB. Hey! this is common sense: with flat rate plans and perpetual backup, the storage cost would end up exceeding our income. Was this assumption correct? It certainly was, but then we asked ourselves how long would it actually take to get to that point. Having switched our storage system to Amazon’s S3 & Glazier, it turned out this would occur in about 240 years time, the sooner! Storage limits were history.

Error #4. We knew that sooner or latter the service would get the attention from large companies and software developers. The product couldn’t be easier to implement, it was ready to perform great on high volume projects and the pricing was extremely affordable. This expectation became real much sooner than later, with companies asking for quotes to certify millions of emails a year. We realised that our flat rate business model was not suited for such a massive use of the service: in other words, such project wouldn’t be profitable. In 24 hours we placed a limit of 100,000 registered emails to our 449 € a year top premium plan and we included a fee of 0.025 € per email for the next 900,000 emails and 0.015 € over 1 million. We also called our customers, explaining them the problem and the changes we had made on the pricing proposal. No complaints. The result cannot be simpler neither more reliable. Does a fee of 0.0229 € per email for registering 1,000,000 emails sound reasonable?

Congratulations to Eric Ries and his “validate learning” concept. We commit ourselves to never stop questioning our decisions.

If you are interested in starting to to communicate with greater guarantees and you are a professional, particular and/or small company, do not hesitate to consult the different rates available and register. If on the other hand, you are a company with high volumes of shipments and needs tailored to your project, please contact us.