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name: title class: center, middle, inverse background-image: url(assets/img/title.jpg)

I released a WordPress plugin,

you won't believe what happens next.

[View on GitHub]

[Press .cyan[P] to view notes]

???

name: stream-1 class: center, middle, stream-1

Stream

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Manage expectations - No takeaways, just a story

Never stop searching for better opportunities

  • Job interview with culture kings, Brisbane
  • Call same day from Dave
  • March 2014

Trust your ability to learn

  • Deep end
  • New to a Github workflow
  • New to unit testing
  • New to code review

Core contributors are people, too

  • X-team had this thing about superheroes (it was cool in the naughties)
  • Went to WordCamp Austin, 2014
  • Launched Stream 1.4, with a pricing model: Premium Extensions
  • Working with Weston Ruter
  • WP Celebs
    • Jen Mylo
    • Andrew Nacin
    • Siobhan don't know her last name
    • Sam Sidler
  • Story about getting plugin approved by Otto
  • Don't be intimidated by people smarter than you

Validate, then go hard

  • We weren't seeing hardly any sales for our premium extensions

  • It was a model working for some people, like Woo and Gravity Forms, but we just didn't have the user base to make it worthwhile

  • We never really validated the idea properly

  • We had three options at this point:

    • Stick with Premium Extensions
    • Pivot
    • Abandon ship

  • In hindsight, I think we should have taken the first option

  • We never took the time to build up our user base

  • It was 2014, so we chose to pivot

name: stream-2 class: center, middle, stream-2

Stream 2

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Setup for success, not acquisition

  • Thoughts have creative power
  • Idea for Stream 2.0 (Jason Cohen, Sam Hotchkiss)
  • Validated, started work on it right away
  • Employed the right people to make it happen:
    • Japh, Michele and Maxim
  • Started talking about acquisition and equity
  • Forced me to consider whether I'd be putting my own money in
  • Red flag, which I ignored, didn't want to deal with
  • "Jetstream"
  • We asked ourselves "Where does Stream truly belong?" - we answered with Jetpack
  • We targeted acquisition by Automattic, which was a mistake
  • Don't invest (time, money) in what is ultimately one person's decision
  • Sometimes having an investor can be bad for the business

Start small, fail fast

  • A lot of backlash when we launched Stream 2.0
  • Privacy concerns
    • Hosting in the US
    • EU data storage laws
  • Log in with WordPress.com
  • I don't think we could have avoided this, even by asking people about it first
  • I'm not sure if we'd get the same sort of reaction if we launched Stream 2.0 a year earlier or later
  • Bad timing
  • We could have communicated better
  • We attended WordCamp SF, started acquisition talks
  • Dragged on and on, to save money, I was contracted out
  • We wouldn't have done that if we were focusing on acquisition
  • Things weren't working, we were spending more than we were making, but we kept everything running
  • If I were to do it again, I would set deadlines and stick to them
  • If I were to do it again, I would look for a way of achieving cloud storage without a huge team or large infrastructure, slowly growing it
    • Papertrail (Japh)
    • Self hosted externally

Provide value, be honest

  • Frankie resigned, the project tanked
  • I stepped in, put in some extra work, and put together a proposal
  • Was able to save the project
  • We ended up being acquired by XWP
  • The value for XWP is in recruitment
  • My plan was to make the plugin completely free
  • I needed to communicate a message about our future
  • I wanted to avoid a backlash like 2.0
  • Goals were:
    • Explain why the change was happening
    • Do the right thing by our existing users and paying customers
    • Make it clear that Stream wouldn't become abandonware
  • I wrote and rewrote our announcement, getting lots of feedback along the way
  • It contained all the right things, but it really just felt like fake, marketing hype
  • In the end the announcement I came up with received really great feedback, lots of people said it sounded genuine and that they were pleased with the announcement
  • All in all, it was a win

name: japh class: center, middle

“To write something honest but also positive, pretend as though you're writing to a close friend, that you're wanting to come and work with you on it, and be excited about it.”

— Japh Thomson

name: jonathan class: center, middle

“It's amazing how much of our attitude while writing comes through to the reader. How does the text make you feel? What inner thoughts and feelings did the writer have which may have contributed to this?”

— Jonathan Wold

name: stream-3 class: center, middle, stream-3

Stream 3

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  • Notifications
    • IFTTT and Zapier
  • Redesigned table, get better at the basics
  • Encourage community collaboration
  • Grow our user base