Question 1

What are the key takeaways from Laura Schaffer's episode on Lenny's Podcast?

Accepted Answer

1. Good friction is good - adding onboarding questions at Twilio increased conversion 5% by making users feel comfortable and in the right place, challenging the assumption all friction hurts. 2. 80% of product hypotheses fail - embrace iterative shipping and be embarrassed by your first iteration, because failure is a compass that points you to what works. 3. The psyche of your user matters as much as the product - understand what feels scary or unfamiliar and embed the 'pill in the hot dog' to get users past psychological barriers. 4. Lower your statistical confidence thresholds to double experiment velocity - in product growth, the risk of not shipping enough experiments is greater than the risk of a false positive. 5. Carve your own career path by staying close to customers and sharing insights upward - executives lose touch with users and will champion people who bring those insights to life.

Question 2

What does Laura Schaffer say about experimentation and onboarding?

Accepted Answer

"Your executive team and executive teams at companies are often very sharp, but the nature of their day-to-day just does not link them with customers. And that means that over time, especially as a company grows, they often lose access to some of the best insights and in the heartbeat of the people who they're providing value to." - Laura Schaffer "We just asked for forgiveness and put these questions into the signup flow and ran as Navy test with a small group. And I'm fully expecting, 'Okay, this is going to hurt our numbers.' We start to get the data for this thing. I'm not kidding, an improved conversion. There's no personalization, nothing past it, just the questions. An improved conversion by like 5%, just improved signups." - Laura Schaffer "When users are signing up for your product for the very first time, it's new. This is new, that means it's scary. They're expecting it to be difficult. They're anticipating that there's going to be friction and challenges and that they're not going to figure it out. Almost like looking for the bogeyman." - Laura Schaffer

Question 3

What are Laura Schaffer's views on experimentation, onboarding, user-psychology?

Accepted Answer

Laura Schaffer: "We just asked for forgiveness and put these questions into the signup flow and ran as Navy test with a small group. And I'm fully expecting, 'Okay, this is going to hurt our numbers.' We start to get the data for this thing. I'm not kidding, an improved conversion. There's no personalization, nothing past it, just the questions. An improved conversion by like 5%, just improved signups." Laura Schaffer: "When users are signing up for your product for the very first time, it's new. This is new, that means it's scary. They're expecting it to be difficult. They're anticipating that there's going to be friction and challenges and that they're not going to figure it out. Almost like looking for the bogeyman."

Laura Schaffer

Career frameworks, A/B testing, onboarding tips, selling to engineers | Laura Schaffer (Amplitude)

TRANSCRIPT

Laura Schaffer

Career frameworks, A/B testing, onboarding tips, selling to engineers | Laura Schaffer (Amplitude)

Laura Schaffer

Career frameworks, A/B testing, onboarding tips, selling to engineers | Laura Schaffer (Amplitude)

TRANSCRIPT

Laura Schaffer

Career frameworks, A/B testing, onboarding tips, selling to engineers | Laura Schaffer (Amplitude)