My last post was highly reflective upon a decade, set out the stall for the next… and absolutely did not survive impact with Covid-19 :-p
As for all of us, it rebalanced the priorities:
- I said, “Validating the problem to solve”
This became #1, as pretty much everyone’s work-life has changed. Specifically, rapid digital transformation, remote work and trying to understand their own customers. That last point is perhaps the most surprising side effect: many executives have had to rapidly relearn the skills of entrepreneurial customer development: how to earn people’s attention to talk to them, how to listen, how to uncover people’s real needs, how to validate those assumptions. It’s almost exclusively what I did throughout March and early April, and got to talk to a lot of you. All that feedback will be going into a new product.
- I said, “Work in an entrepreneurial environment, with a bigger team”
As I live in London, and we’re under full lockdown, this has (temporarily) stopped. I had been working out of Google’s Startup offices, for all of two weeks before they closed it. I’m trying not to take it personally.
- I said, “Raise prices for ActiveInbox”
Perhaps now, more than ever, I want to reiterate this won’t effect current customers. Ever. For new customers, it’s still the plan in a month or two, but I’m waiting to see how the economy is affected.
Can I adjust ActiveInbox for you?
I’m particularly keen on the big picture (especially team work in remote, and helping you reach and listen to customers).
If possible, please email me at andym@activeinboxhq.com so we can discuss it more fully, rather than comment here (but happy to do that too!).
Of particularly importance, please give me a real example from your life of experiencing the problem. That’s catnip AND gold for me as a product maker! In return, I’ll get you into any beta before the public gets their mitts on it.
Fortunately, because I’ve already spoken to a lot of you, I can give some inspiration…
- I’d like to “Ensure customers get great experiences, from the whole team“
With the disruption of everyone working remotely, there’s a fear that emails will drop through the cracks, unnoticed. There’s almost certainly something we can do to help add a safety net.
- I’d like to “Be able to reach out to prospects/customers, and get a response“
The changing economy has made it very important to try to better understand our customer’s changing needs, but for exactly that reason, they’re very likely too busy to take your call. I’ve got a few ideas to make it easier for the recipient to respond to you.
- I’d like to “Help the team adopt new tools (in digital transformation)“
Email, being something of a religion – or at least a decades old habit – is hard to change away from. But as we go remote, it’s becoming important to add new tools to our arsenal. Our About page has long-since observed the barrier between the dynamic nature of email and staleness of our official team tools, and it’s definitely something I can ease.
- I’d like to “Increase my knowledge, looking for that career edge“
Email newsletters have a unique advantage over social media: they’re not driven by algorithms. You can develop trust with an author, and let them introduce you to diverse ideas the herd might have overlooked. But they’re deeply unfashionable, hard to find, and associated with marketing emails. I’d love a crack at tackling this (update: and just wrote a brief post on it).