I wrote this in my Substack, sharing here in case someone might be interested:
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I've been looking back into my daily stand-up updates and turning things into monthly or quarterly reflections under the #journal tag here. This note is from my first quarter at Canopy after doing some parsing and summarization over the last 7 years.
The company was bootstrapped and didn't have a technical co-founder yet. My partner had done a great job so far with the resources she had, but now there was some foundational work to do if we wanted to see some growth.
In my first week, I set up Segment to integrate our marketing and sales tools like CRM and Drip Campaigns, and to lay the groundwork for a more robust analytics system.
Our in-app analytics was slow and crashing. So it had been turned off and we had no reports for things like engagement or revenue per account. Sales had somewhat long cycles driven by contracts with a high upfront cost; we had a pay once per email address pricing at the time that was likely masking the real MRR/ARR.
During the first month, my goal was to improve admin performance and get our reports running again. I did this without setting up a new BI tool, although connecting Segment to a warehouse using BI tools like Hex or Mode would have been smarter.
I also streamlined our sales process by integrating Freshsales, added an Intercom chat for user feedback, and upgraded to Rails 5.
My main focuses in the first 30 days were:
We launched a Knowledge Center feature within the product—a collection of eBooks that users can read directly in the app. This required building a simple CMS with markdown support and PDF download functionality. Interestingly, this was the initial feature that would validate the interest in content as a service, which we fully embraced in 2023.
I also began building our Slack integration. At the time, our system relied heavily on email, and most customers had migrated to Slack. Investing in Slack integration proved to be a good decision for engagement.
Additionally, I helped with sales enablement initiatives, like deploying a read-only demo environment. I also supported some marketing efforts like a hosting platform for an email-based mini-course.
We shipped our Slack integration and improved our billing system to enable future recurring pricing tests. We also fixed several billing issues.
It became clear that engagement was strong in the first months but tapered off (it made sense for the feature we had). I surveyed customers and analyzed user session recordings to understand this better.
We realized our product wasn't ready for a dedicated sales role yet. It was time for founding sales. To achieve better product-market fit, we unfortunately had to let go of our sales person, and my co-founder took over sales responsibilities to enable founder-led sales.
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In my opinion, product-market fit (PMF) works in levels. What we had was more than sufficient for a great small business of 2 making up to $200k each, but it wasn't enough for our SaaS compound growth ambitions. We didn't have PMF for the next level. And trying to find PMF, you don’t need things like sales quotas or bonuses interfering with the process.
Also, get visibility as soon as you start getting some volume. When you are on low hundreds of users, you may not need full-fledged BI yet. Tools like Smartlook or a basic activity feed per account might be enough. However, nowadays, I would add BI much sooner using Hex because it's so easy to set up and maintain.
Original post: https://journal.daniellopes.dev/p/first-120-days-as-technical-co-founder
––
I've been looking back into my daily stand-up updates and turning things into monthly or quarterly reflections under the #journal tag here. This note is from my first quarter at Canopy after doing some parsing and summarization over the last 7 years.
The company was bootstrapped and didn't have a technical co-founder yet. My partner had done a great job so far with the resources she had, but now there was some foundational work to do if we wanted to see some growth.
Month 1
In my first week, I set up Segment to integrate our marketing and sales tools like CRM and Drip Campaigns, and to lay the groundwork for a more robust analytics system.
Our in-app analytics was slow and crashing. So it had been turned off and we had no reports for things like engagement or revenue per account. Sales had somewhat long cycles driven by contracts with a high upfront cost; we had a pay once per email address pricing at the time that was likely masking the real MRR/ARR.
During the first month, my goal was to improve admin performance and get our reports running again. I did this without setting up a new BI tool, although connecting Segment to a warehouse using BI tools like Hex or Mode would have been smarter.
I also streamlined our sales process by integrating Freshsales, added an Intercom chat for user feedback, and upgraded to Rails 5.
My main focuses in the first 30 days were:
- Lowering the error rate.
- Updating our tech stack.
- Implementing key marketing, sales, and support tools.
- Getting visibility on key metrics like retention, engagement, and LTV.
Month 2
We launched a Knowledge Center feature within the product—a collection of eBooks that users can read directly in the app. This required building a simple CMS with markdown support and PDF download functionality. Interestingly, this was the initial feature that would validate the interest in content as a service, which we fully embraced in 2023.
I also began building our Slack integration. At the time, our system relied heavily on email, and most customers had migrated to Slack. Investing in Slack integration proved to be a good decision for engagement.
Additionally, I helped with sales enablement initiatives, like deploying a read-only demo environment. I also supported some marketing efforts like a hosting platform for an email-based mini-course.
Month 3 and 4
We shipped our Slack integration and improved our billing system to enable future recurring pricing tests. We also fixed several billing issues.
It became clear that engagement was strong in the first months but tapered off (it made sense for the feature we had). I surveyed customers and analyzed user session recordings to understand this better.
We realized our product wasn't ready for a dedicated sales role yet. It was time for founding sales. To achieve better product-market fit, we unfortunately had to let go of our sales person, and my co-founder took over sales responsibilities to enable founder-led sales.
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Reflection
In my opinion, product-market fit (PMF) works in levels. What we had was more than sufficient for a great small business of 2 making up to $200k each, but it wasn't enough for our SaaS compound growth ambitions. We didn't have PMF for the next level. And trying to find PMF, you don’t need things like sales quotas or bonuses interfering with the process.
Also, get visibility as soon as you start getting some volume. When you are on low hundreds of users, you may not need full-fledged BI yet. Tools like Smartlook or a basic activity feed per account might be enough. However, nowadays, I would add BI much sooner using Hex because it's so easy to set up and maintain.
Original post: https://journal.daniellopes.dev/p/first-120-days-as-technical-co-founder