part0007

The ‘mobile first’ approach to building a startup is fairly common. It was famously the approach used by Mark Zuckerberg in the early stages of building Facebook when he recognised that mobiles would one day be the primary way users would interact with his product.

Unfortunately taking a mobile first approach won’t usually mean a quicker-to-market MVP. That’s because designing and building a native mobile app, or even a progressive web app, can take a lot of time.

When Walter Chen and Rodrigo Guzman decided to build iDoneThis, they decided to build an ‘email first’ product after considering ‘web first’ and ‘mobile first’ options. The ‘email first’ approach meant they were able to finish their MVP in less than two weeks, drastically cutting down time to market their product.

Walter Chen actually started his career as a lawyer but, frustrated with his job, he caught the startup bug and moved to San Francisco where he conceived the idea for iDoneThis. The concept combined Jerry Seinfeld’s ‘don’t break the chain’ productivity technique with peer accountability for consistently doing tasks each day. The product was very simple – once signed up, customers would receive one email per day, and they could simply hit reply and start typing their updates for that day. Without requiring users to log into a website, the iDoneThis server would receive the email reply, transcode it, and collate it into a digest so that productivity and accomplishments were tracked.

Initially, the product was given away for free. Users would enter their email address, similar to signing up to an email newsletter, and the next day they would receive a first email asking them what they had accomplished that day.

Due to the speed of MVP build, iDoneThis was able to launch right at the beginning of January when people were making New Year’s resolutions. The startup managed to get 200 signups in the first week by casually promoting its website on various Internet forums.

Users would sign up for a variety of reasons: from tracking their work accomplishments to building a productivity habit, or even to quit smoking.

Signups gradually increased, but it wasn’t until April 2011 – when the product was picked up and showcased on Lifehacker – that its user base increased from hundreds to thousands.

After the Lifehacker article, Chen and Guzman decided there was enough traction to double down on the business. They joined the startup incubator AngelPad and shifted the positioning of the product to focus on funded startups and corporates, while no longer offering free accounts.

Managers were able to sign up and add all the members of their team as users. After the daily email was sent asking users to list their accomplishments that day, responses were collated and sent out to the entire team so that everyone could see what others had contributed.

Without too many significant changes to their initial MVP, Chen and Guzman were able to find their product/market fit. From there, marketing and promotion became easier because they could focus their efforts on more lucrative customers (as opposed to the more general habit or self-improvement crowds). Revenue per customer increased, user churn decreased, and converting users to a paid account was an easier sell as the cost was a comparatively low business expense for most customers.

Ever since its launch, iDoneThis attracted lots of criticism, particularly from other tech startups and software engineers who couldn’t believe people would pay money each month to use a tool they could “write themselves in a weekend”. Whether those naysayers went on to actually build their own tool or not, the product continued to grow. Despite its simplicity (or maybe because of it), iDoneThis solved a problem that business owners and managers need solving – keeping track of a growing team and making sure everyone is staying productive.

This simple “email first” startup went on to raise $900,000 in seed funding. By sticking with a narrow product focus and heavily investing in content marketing, the founders continued to grow the business which currently has 160,000 users and a customer base which includes well known companies such as Zappos, Shopify, Mozilla and Tripadvisor.