36 - October 2023 Update

Episode 36 November 17, 2023 00:06:19
36 - October 2023 Update
XO Capital's Fund Stuff
36 - October 2023 Update

Nov 17 2023 | 00:06:19

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Show Notes

In our latest episode, Danny steps in for the October 2023 update (a bit overdue, but packed with insights). We discuss hitting our 5% month-over-month growth goal for the first time and review the performance of various companies in our portfolio, with most seeing growth except for Analytics. Danny delves into our plans for November and December, including a Udemy course launch, partnerships with prominent figures in the SEO space, and a growth experiment tracker to monitor our new initiatives. We also discuss our recent Google Search Console integration, product launches across our portfolio, and an increase in new subscribers and accounts for Analytics despite mixed reviews about data quality. The episode also highlights successful growth strategies for Cool DM and a slight uptick in MRR for Sheetbest. Tune in for an in-depth analysis of October’s results, future plans, and interactive content to explore.

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Episode Transcript

0:00 Alrighty, a little bit overdue it's the tenth already but wanted to do a recap of October for us. Again, this is, this is reported from Stripes. 0:16 So take it with a grain of salt, but it looks like for the first time we hit our 5% month-over-month goal from September to October, we had a goal of 39,174, it looks like we exceeded it by a couple of months. 0:35 Every company, MRROIs, besides Analytics grew a little bit. So, that, that was positive. I'll share a little bit of the breakdowns and what we saw. 0:53 You guys can go through and take a look at some of the granular numbers, but yeah, it was a bit of an odd month to say grew a little bit. With BAR, I think, realistically, it's one of those where I think we're going to just have to continue investing a lot of resources and energy to continue growing. 1:19 November and December will be in. Interesting to see what we can do and whether or not these experiments work. There's a lot of stuff that we're doing. 1:30 We have a Udemy course launch that'll happen at the end of November, the beginning of December. We have a Jeremy Mosher newsletter. 1:41 He's a very large person in the SEO space, runs an agency has several software companies who are doing a partnership where for a thousand bucks he's posting. 1:53 On LinkedIn, sharing with his newsletter twice. And so we're giving away a discount and we'll see how that goes. We're doing something similar with a very, another large kind of SEO marketing group called marketing examined. 2:06 We're going to do a couple smaller ones, roughly about $10,000. To see what sort of thing we're doing. If you want to track sort of how this stuff is going, I built a growth experiment tracker. 2:23 So we can come in here, look at growth. You can see that nothing's gone out yet except we started the end of year discount. 2:31 And again, we'll sort of monitor how that looks. But you can see that there's a lot of stuff here that will be that we'll be doing here in the coming coming weeks. 2:40 So I. Included that link so you can take a look at that. But yeah, I mean, with GrowthBar, it's just a matter of continuing to invest. 2:54 We launched the Google Search Console integration. We'll do a product hunt launch for it. So we'll see how that turns out, but just gonna keep chugging along with that one. 3:06 Analytics, I put together a video of this V3. It was an interesting month in October because, yes, churn was, is the same. 3:14 It was high, it was not very good, but saw upticks and new subscribers, saw an increase in net volume collected. 3:23 We've been steady in new accounts created. So so yeah, I mean, I know we've given this one a fair shake. 3:29 It's been very friendly. But it's been a sort of a Jekyll and Hyde in terms of depending on who you talk to, they either love the product or hate the product and it ultimately comes down to the data quality which doesn't seem to be consistent for every user that signs up and so. 3:46 Just something to keep monitoring and we're gonna continue to invest. We have a new product launch going out so pretty much every week from November to November where we have a product launch happening for one of the portfolio companies, which I think is good because. 4:02 For PLG, like it's a good way to get some eyeballs, which I'll talk about how we did that with cool DM screenshot, best cash collections, almost 9000 worth. 4:13 Nothing here. We'll probably run an end of year discount. We did see some really high overages, which was cool. You know, and got them converted into a higher MRR plan. 4:24 Some of them we've even, we sold them on some dedicated servers, which just cool that we didn't see a ton of signup volume. 4:32 We actually saw a dip in that, but. Usage of the product is, has been really strong. Yeah. Cool DM was a good one. 4:44 We ran a growth play for the first time in six months. We saw a hundred percent increase in new signups in October as a result of that. 4:52 We saw almost triple the number of subscribers, although some of them, they got like a first month free. So we'll see sort of what turns them turns up at the end. 5:02 But for me, it's validating. There is a market for it. The product is very straightforward. It works now so we can continue building on sort of this like free play or free tools, giveaways, stuff like that. 5:14 There is a path for this thing just to sit at, you know, 1000 MRR and we just milk it, you know, forever. 5:20 So it's an interesting one. And then with sheetbest saw a slight uptick we were kind of back to what we were at where like we were having just a huge volume of new leads. 5:34 We were at like 12 or 2000 but very low conversion. So, so far the little uptick in MRR, the ads seem to be working, but something we'll be monitoring. 5:47 November will be, you know, mainly focused on Journey and the new business there. The productized service is still a priority of mine. 5:55 You can actually have, potentially a new customer, the first customer that I think we'll be able to get. I talked to them on Monday about next steps but, yeah, October was just a pretty interesting month, so let me know if you have any questions there's some, like, videos and interactive stuff in here 6:12 that you guys can take a look at, like, this video of the V3 for the lyrics and stuff like that, so, hope it helps.

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