Chameleon reposted this
I've been doing lots of interviews for roles and a candidate recently asked me: "Can you give me an example of a failed experiment that you're proud of?" 😬 My answer: Our HelpBar (CMD+K search & nav) product So it was a failure?! 😱 Kinda 🤔 The product itself is doing well -- we've seen 270% increase in usage in the 6 months since Jan 🚀 BUT it was a failed experiment... Our hypothesis was that it would increase our revenue growth rate, because new customers would resonate with this new pattern and therefore discover Chameleon We invested in making HelpBar have a differentiated brand, spend $$$ on ads (incl. a spot in Lenny's podcast purely for HelpBar) and gave it its own microsite (check out helpbar.ai) But we were miserably wrong 😑 It's didn't really affect our ToFu growth rate. Yes we had some spikes in interest, but mostly it helped improved our win rates for existing pipeline. Folks liked it as a feature and it made Chameleon more compelling overall, but it didn't help new folks discover Chameleon. My main takeaway was: CMD+K is *not a category* So it meant we have to manufacture demand, rather than tap existing demand 😪 That's a whole other ballgame. It's possible but requires a bunch of ongoing investment.. and as a small team, we couldn't dedicate those resources. 👉 So the lesson for me & other founders: If you're going to launch an additional product to help drive top-of-funnel growth, then make sure it's part of an existing category, and ideally one that's new and growing. We've already seen and felt the difference between the HelpBar launch and the Interactive Demos announcement and I'm looking forward to getting that to our early Design Partners soon, and rolling it out to more folks in Q4 👌 [Aside, I thought it was a pretty good candidate question!] [Aside 2: we're hiring for a few roles in Engineering and Customer Success, with more coming soon.. pls check out our jobs page to review and apply!]
I applied for the CS role 🤞🏾
That’s a great question! Bold too!
Loved reading about your journey with HelpBar – shows how nuanced product-market fit can be, turning 'failures' into powerful lessons.
Interesting, it's cool to get a peek into the thought process that goes into these business experiments.
That's a great question and you explained it very well Pulkit Agrawal. We should definitely e-meet Pulkit Agrawal, I have some news about the roles you are recruiting. Let us fix up a call asap :)
Director of Brand & Product Marketing // building brand, gtm, & enablement @ Vitally.io
1moFunny enough, this was the main feature that pushed me over the edge in selecting Chameleon. As someone who has straddled the line of help documentation and customer education, I felt this was the real differentiator, even when it was still just in design. Any considerations of a repositioning?