0:00:00Welcome to Under the Radar, a show about independent iOS app development.
0:00:04I'm Marco Arment.
0:00:05And I'm David Smith.
0:00:06Under the Radar is usually not longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started.
0:00:10You've reached quite some impressive milestones recently.
0:00:13So last episode we talked about your massive updates to Pedometer++, and then in the meantime
0:00:20you announced that WidgetSmith has had 100 million downloads?
0:00:26Yes.
0:00:27So first of all, congratulations on a massive scale,
0:00:32'cause that's awesome.
0:00:35- Thank you.
0:00:35- And you have earned every bit of your success,
0:00:39and I'm so happy for you.
0:00:41And second of all, that is a scale
0:00:46that I have never experienced, nothing even close to that.
0:00:50And so I'm wondering how that feels,
0:00:55how that affects some of the things you do,
0:00:58and one of the things we wanted to talk about this week
0:01:00is specifically how you deal with support email, feedback,
0:01:05that kind of stuff,
0:01:07like the various support and feedback channels.
0:01:10When you have a scale that big,
0:01:11I mean 100 million downloads,
0:01:14that ends up being quite some number of active users,
0:01:17quite some number of active installations,
0:01:19quite some number of even just crash reports
0:01:21that must be coming in,
0:01:22all the different weird edge case situations
0:01:25that you have to run in.
0:01:27I might have one user of Overcast
0:01:29in a particular odd combination of conditions
0:01:32that the app is running in,
0:01:33whereas you might have a thousand.
0:01:35So I'm really curious to know,
0:01:37how do all of your processes have to scale?
0:01:39Because I would imagine there are not many
0:01:43hundred million download apps that are run by one person.
0:01:47I think that's gonna be a very, very small number.
0:01:50(laughs)
0:01:52And so this is a problem that most large apps
0:01:56would have to handle differently
0:01:58because they have larger staffs
0:01:59and they might make different choices.
0:02:01And most small developers wouldn't have this problem
0:02:05necessarily at your scale.
0:02:07But the reason I wanna ask is because
0:02:10even though I think it's fairly unlikely
0:02:13that I or any given listener out there
0:02:17would ever have this problem,
0:02:19there's a lot of value that we can get
0:02:21from learning how you do things,
0:02:22because if you get 100 emails on a topic,
0:02:25and I get 10, well, I still would love to get none.
0:02:29(laughs)
0:02:31So even whatever strategies you're using
0:02:34still apply even to much smaller apps.
0:02:37And to some degree, you just have a larger testing pool,
0:02:39and so you're just getting better input,
0:02:41and better signal, and better data,
0:02:43but we can still learn a lot of those lessons,
0:02:45and apply them to our apps as well.
0:02:47So first of all, again, congratulations,
0:02:50that's awesome. And second of all, I don't know, where do you want to start here?
0:02:53Sure. I mean, I think, yeah, I think it's probably the best place to start is to think
0:02:58of—it's just like, thanks. And I think it's one of these things where it's a
0:03:01number that I feel some responsibility for, but not total responsibility for. Like, Widget
0:03:07Smith itself is a very specific situation that caught a particular moment, and while
0:03:13this is two and a half years on, that it's not just—it is still doing well, but it's—and
0:03:18feel like more responsible for the last two and a half years than I do for the first like
0:03:2225 days where it was like, oh, yeah, this whole other thing. But I think what the lesson
0:03:29that that has taught me that I think has been kind of more useful and more constructive
0:03:34is the sense that, a, I think something that I think is really cool is I think when it
0:03:38first happened when Widget Smith, you know, had its big, you know, moment when iOS 14
0:03:42launched, and it was going places, I definitely set like had this place where I was like,
0:03:47this something that an indie developer can still do? I had no reference frame for what
0:03:56this would look like, for how this would go, for if this was even possible. I had no idea.
0:04:02In the early days, when it was millions of downloads a day and you're starting to have
0:04:08this, it just doesn't compute. I've never dealt with anything like this. And I'm just
0:04:13know, a person had a couple people, you know, like, helping me with with Help Desk at that
0:04:16point. But it was, you know, kind of this like, well, what do I even, you know, where
0:04:21does this go? And I think I think the the broader lesson that I think I'm really sort
0:04:24of pleased about is, you know, two and a half years on from that is I think it is very viable
0:04:31to do, you know, like, sort of the indie app developer concept that, you know, we talked
0:04:37about on the show that I think you and I are both very proud to kind of be like the label
0:04:41that we apply to ourselves, that we're indie app developers, and in our case that means
0:04:45we're one programmer working on an app. Can that scale to a big project in terms of user
0:04:53base? And it's like, I have at least one bit of evidence to say yes, it does. That
0:04:59this isn't the kind of thing that if you decide to go down the indie path, you're
0:05:05cutting yourself off from broader popularity. Because in order to do that, you have to be
0:05:13a big company with lots of people and lots of funding and infrastructure and a marketing
0:05:18team and a support team and a QA team and teams all around. You don't. It's easier
0:05:26in some ways maybe if you have those things, but that's not essential. That's a choice
0:05:31you could choose to make. And if at this point, I had, you know, if two and a half years ago,
0:05:35I had decided that I wanted to go down that road, I definitely could have, you know, I
0:05:38could have hired a team of engineers, I could have hired a, you know, support staff in,
0:05:43you know, operations, people, all kinds of things, marketing, like, I could have gone
0:05:46down that road. But for me, I chose not to, and I chose not to, largely because I like
0:05:54the indie lifestyle, I like that I'm in control of my time and my attention and where I want
0:05:59to work and what I want to do, I have control over that. And even if I was the boss of a
0:06:04bigger company, as soon as you're the boss of other people and you're responsible for
0:06:09them, suddenly that choice becomes kind of lessened. And you have things that are other
0:06:14constraints and other things that you have to optimize for, rather than, in some ways,
0:06:19there's a certain selfishness about the indie developer lifestyle in a positive sense. That
0:06:23it's the positive kind of selfishness that I'm responsible for myself and my family,
0:06:28then I can make choices that are best for us rather than being best for a large group
0:06:34of people. And so I think the first thing I think is just—and I struggled a little
0:06:39bit with whether I should talk about Widget Smith reaching this milestone. And for a variety
0:06:45of kind of, you know, sort of, I don't want to be boastful or kind of come across in that
0:06:49way. That's not my style. But I think that the main thing that ultimately was I think
0:06:54very grateful for it. And also, I think as a proud indie developer, I wanted to say,
0:07:00this is possible. That if you as a developer who is trying to go down this road, I want you to have
0:07:08in your mind that 100 million is kind of the outside of what this looks like, rather than it
0:07:14being a million. Having a big, broad view on what is possible, I think is a helpful, motivating,
0:07:21hopefully encouraging thing. And so that's why I wanted to put that out there. But I think it has
0:07:27definitely been a journey in then understanding, "Well, okay, so the scale is something that is
0:07:34sort of a reality, but what do I need to change about my workflow and mindset to make that viable?"
0:07:42Because yes, the way that I ran my business three years ago before this happened wouldn't have
0:07:48have really scaled to the kind of widgetsmith level that I'm working at now because the
0:07:54stakes were so much lower, the volume was so much lower. Any kind of in you, because
0:07:58I think what happens with this kind of volume is any inefficiency or kind of issue with
0:08:06your workflow or system kind of just gets magnified. Like, you know, if the good things
0:08:10get magnified, the bad things get magnified. And you kind of have to then realize, "Okay,
0:08:15this is not going to scale. I need to do something different. I can't expect to respond to every
0:08:19person who emails me and do a couple back and forth with them. That's just not going to work.
0:08:24The volume of time in a day that that would take would be astronomical.
0:08:31And I'm not even sure productive, but I think what you end up with is a lot of these situations where
0:08:38anything that was kind of a one-to-one or that kind of a scenario very quickly becomes,
0:08:44it has to be a many-to-one. It has to be kind of find ways to apply leverage into whatever
0:08:51you're doing so that it can scale, so that it isn't going to take a lot of time, so that it is,
0:08:56you can do small bits of work that can kind of multiply up. And I think I can talk through a
0:09:02variety of those, but I think at its fundamental part, it's that sense that if you are planning
0:09:07for scale in that way, everything you do has to be efficient, and you have to let go of
0:09:13some amount of control and high touch that you may be able to do in a sustainable way
0:09:21at a lower scale.
0:09:23Yeah, that's really interesting. If you think of almost every part of the process,
0:09:31you'd have to consider that. When I look at stuff, I think of, first of all, the product
0:09:37That alone, it's like, if I had that large of a user base
0:09:41and I was by myself, I would be a lot more hesitant
0:09:44to touch anything.
0:09:46I would be so scared to change any of the code,
0:09:50to do anything server-side.
0:09:52And fortunately, so your setup is,
0:09:56I think parameter plus plus is also pretty big,
0:10:01and of course, WidgetSmith is the biggest,
0:10:02and neither of these really have meaningful
0:10:06server-side components, right?
0:10:08- Yes, and I think that is definitely helpful
0:10:10in that regard, that like, at this kind of scale,
0:10:14I intentionally don't do any feature that would require
0:10:18a meaningful server component, because scaling that,
0:10:23I'm benefiting from the fact that any new user
0:10:27brings with them the hardware necessary
0:10:30to support their use.
0:10:31- Yeah.
0:10:33- It scales linearly with the number of users,
0:10:36because, "Oh, new user, well I have a new iPhone."
0:10:39And it's almost like I had this data center
0:10:41that every time someone logs in,
0:10:42a new computer gets plugged in.
0:10:43And so I don't have to worry about that kind of scaling
0:10:47and dealing with that in a way
0:10:49that as soon as you start to centralize anything,
0:10:52it suddenly becomes a giant problem.
0:10:55And the only server-side component that I have
0:10:57is some very basic analytics stuff that I keep,
0:11:00just to have a sense of what's going on inside the apps.
0:11:02even with those, I even just made the decision early on that I only have the app report analytics
0:11:10to the app or to the server. I have a little random number generator and it only reports
0:11:16the analytics at 1% of the time because 1% of a large number is just as representative
0:11:21as long as it's a random sample. Even there, I'm running it on this tiny little server
0:11:28that doesn't even matter because I just scaled that. If that became too much for that
0:11:32server, I would just change it to like 1,000th of the users or whatever. Because in all these
0:11:39ways, I can just scale things down. But yeah, it's like the number one rule if you want
0:11:42an app that is going to scale from a kind of a broad perspective. It's like, don't
0:11:46anything that touches a server is a bad idea because it's just going to sort of be—that
0:11:52doesn't scale cheaply. It is possible to scale.
0:11:55- Sure doesn't.
0:11:56- It's like Amazon Web Services would love
0:11:58to take all your money, but as soon as you have
0:12:02this per user cost, then that scales literally.
0:12:06That's something that I avoid wherever I possibly can,
0:12:11and intentionally, anytime I have a feature
0:12:13that could have a server component,
0:12:16it's like, you know, maybe not.
0:12:18Maybe I'll just skip that feature
0:12:19and do everything I can to do it locally on the device.
0:12:22And if I can do it locally on the device, great.
0:12:24If not, I just move on and leave it as an opportunity for someone else.
0:12:29That is so, so wise.
0:12:31Painfully, painfully wise.
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0:14:04- So I think too, the reality of this kind of approach
0:14:08is then to start to think of other areas
0:14:11where you could introduce efficiency
0:14:13or you could kind of create these sort of multiplying
0:14:16leverage effects. And I think one that I found very helpful with the last pedometer update,
0:14:24kind of like changing from Widgetsmith into that, which is a lesson I learned from Widgetsmith,
0:14:30but it's something that I've been in this pedometer++ version 5 update, I've sort of
0:14:34applied and sort of reaped the benefits of it. And I think that's kind of the broader
0:14:38lesson why this potentially is hopefully a helpful topic for a broader audience, is like
0:14:42don't have to be at WidgetSmith scale for that to be something that's useful is I
0:14:47change the way that I do support to have this funnel shape to it. And this is something
0:14:54I learned from WidgetSmith was that I want to reduce the number of people who email me
0:15:01as much as I can because that's the highest cost, that's the least scalable part of
0:15:06what I do. And so instead, I want to find ways to answer people's questions or deal
0:15:10with their problems before they get to sending me an email, especially because if you've
0:15:14done any amount of customer support via email, it's very often very repetitive and very
0:15:20like there's only a few actual things that people run into that are just the realities
0:15:25of your app. And so if you can answer those questions, you can hopefully avoid them getting
0:15:31an email, which is both good for me in terms of it's not an email that I have to respond
0:15:34to. But I think it's also better for the user because they get an instantaneous answer
0:15:39to their problem. And so the first thing I did was I started doing dynamic frequently
0:15:47asked questions inside the apps. And this is just as simple as you can imagine. For
0:15:52me, I just do it as a website that's just a simple basic HTML page that I put on a web
0:15:58server and anytime a question is asked more than two or three times, I'll put the answer
0:16:03to it in the FAQs and I sort it from most frequently asked to least frequently asked
0:16:08on there in the hopes that when people open this page, that's where they'll see the answer,
0:16:15they'll get their answer, and they'll be able to move on. And I don't hide the "email
0:16:20me" link necessarily, but I would say I often put it at the bottom of that list. And
0:16:24so you have to have looked through the list, at least sort of notionally, in order for
0:16:31you to get to the place that you could email me, the place that I will expose the email
0:16:35address. Because I think previously I would have the frequently asked questions link,
0:16:38right below it in the settings area would be the "email me" link. And people just click the "email
0:16:42me" link because, sure, why not? That was just not the reality. So putting it behind the frequently
0:16:48asked questions made a big difference in terms of scale, too, because it meant that way more people
0:16:55would actually read it or actually find their answer in that. And I think I collected the data
0:17:01for my pedometer version 5 update. And it was like in the first six days of the launch,
0:17:07I received 259 emails, but I have some very basic analytics in the frequently asked questions,
0:17:13and 4,214 people got an answer from the FAQs. I don't know necessarily if it solved their problem,
0:17:20but that's the kind of order of magnitude we're talking about, which is almost like a 20 times
0:17:26multiplier there. So 20 times the number of people that got an answer from the FAQs then had to email
0:17:34me. So that was a huge win and definitely a great place to start in terms of whatever
0:17:39your current support load is, if you put it behind a frequently asked questions, maybe
0:17:42you could reduce your load by 20x, which is amazing.
0:17:46Yeah, that would be game-changing for almost anybody. I mean, even my support load is,
0:17:55I'm not getting hundreds of emails a day, or even necessarily tens of emails a day,
0:18:02but to have 20 times fewer of them would be significant.
0:18:07(laughs)
0:18:08I might actually respond to more of them
0:18:10if there were fewer of them, you know?
0:18:13And this is something like,
0:18:14and I have a little bit of this in Overcast.
0:18:17I have the feedback page,
0:18:19and that is a dynamically loaded HTML thing
0:18:21shown on a web view, so I can change that server side.
0:18:24But in practice, I don't put much there,
0:18:27and I almost never change it after a version's release.
0:18:30I basically just say, you know, what's new in this version?
0:18:32And that's it, and I almost never touch them after that.
0:18:35So I think maybe you are inspiring me to do more
0:18:39with that kind of thing in the app.
0:18:40Maybe do some rearrangements too,
0:18:42of like what I show there and when,
0:18:45and how I phrase certain things.
0:18:48'Cause I would love to, you know,
0:18:49'cause it isn't just about minimizing email to you,
0:18:54it's also about serving your customers better.
0:18:56You know, 'cause like your customers
0:18:57don't like having to email you.
0:18:59I mean some do, some of them get pleasure out of that,
0:19:01but some of them just want to vent.
0:19:03But for the most part, if you can solve somebody's problem
0:19:06in eight seconds via looking at an FAQ page,
0:19:09instead of having them have to take a couple of minutes
0:19:11out of their day to try to email you
0:19:13and then hope for a response and then get all mad
0:19:15when you don't respond, I have some experience in this area.
0:19:17You're serving them better if they could just solve
0:19:22their own problem without emailing you at all.
0:19:24It's better for everyone, it's better for them,
0:19:25and it's better for you.
0:19:26So ideally, step one is ideally the app doesn't need support.
0:19:30Ideally you build and design things in such a way that people don't have questions,
0:19:35they can just figure it out.
0:19:37Next best from that is they can figure it out somehow else in the app like a help or
0:19:42a FAQ thing without having to email you.
0:19:46And then the worst step of this is they have to email you.
0:19:50That's because for all the people who email you, there are multiples of more of them that
0:19:56that said, "Ah, forget it," and just never solved the problem
0:19:59because they didn't want to email you,
0:20:01so they just dropped it on the floor and walked away,
0:20:04and that makes your numbers worse of your retention metrics.
0:20:07So ideally, you make ways for people to solve this themselves
0:20:11in the app because emailing you is a step
0:20:15that most of your customers don't want to take
0:20:17and you don't want them taking it.
0:20:19- Yeah, I think, too, it's that sense of,
0:20:21I think there was definitely something helpful
0:20:23in my mindset when I was thinking this through,
0:20:25it's like, rather than—my goal becomes, how can I help most people in the best way?
0:20:33I want to get you this answer. And some of these things are—no matter how well you
0:20:38design an app, there are going to be things that come up because your app has a certain
0:20:43amount of opinion to it. You're making assumptions or making defaults or structuring things in
0:20:49a particular way. As soon as you have a user base of any kind of size, you're going to
0:20:54people with different needs or different preferences or different backgrounds, other apps that
0:20:59they—what was the last app they used before yours that did something similar? And they're
0:21:03going to have a mental model that is based on those choices and how that was structured.
0:21:09That's just the reality. And so it's like the other thing that I think I found recently
0:21:13is I've been amazed by how many more people are able to get that answer, like to be communicated
0:21:21to them from video compared to text. For me, I think I come from a—the way my mind works,
0:21:30I very often prefer to be told rather than shown. I would rather read the manual than
0:21:37watch a video about how to do something. But the reality—and this is just proved in the same way
0:21:43in my data—is I see that so many more people are willing to click on a video that's a 60-second
0:21:50how to do something to answer a question, then would go through the FAQs and try and
0:21:57read it and find it in there. This is something I started doing in Widgetsmith and now did
0:22:02in Podometer where I have a bunch of these videos that are just very basic. These aren't
0:22:07high production. I think initially when I think of video, I think of, "Oh, that's
0:22:11going to take a long time and be something that's really intense and going to take
0:22:15this whole process." And it's like, "It really doesn't have to. It could. I could
0:22:18make these super glossy and fancy, but I have a bunch of videos that are basically, I do
0:22:23a screen recording in the simulator, and then I do a quick voiceover and kind of some very
0:22:28basic editing to just kind of tighten up or sometimes I'll make sure that things are aligned
0:22:34correctly and editing mistakes or issues I have in the demo. But maybe I can do one of
0:22:40these videos that's a two minute video that it takes me four or five hours to make. It's
0:22:45not something where there's this massive investment in time necessarily. And these
0:22:50are kind of almost another 20 times multiplier in terms of people's engagement with them
0:22:57and interest in viewing them. So in the same numbers that I was saying for Perometer, where
0:23:03I had 4,000 people read the FAQs, I had 80,000 people watch a video. And now I'm set this
0:23:13place where it's like 20 times 20, now I'm 400 times multiplier from my email volume
0:23:18in terms of people I'm able to reach to help to be able to work with. And it was
0:23:24something that I didn't really think about this—video didn't cross my mind until
0:23:28it became an issue in Widgetsmith where I just needed ways to communicate better. And
0:23:33it turns out video is amazing for this, that I can do these quick videos. And it's like
0:23:36in the same way that I have for doing a dynamically updating FAQ page, I have it set up that I
0:23:43dynamically add videos to Widgetsmith or Pedometer. It's a little bit more complicated than
0:23:48just a basic HTML page. It could be a basic HTML page, but I wrap it up a little bit nicer
0:23:53inside the app just because video playback, I want to give them a nice experience, but
0:23:59it's just a JSON file that I am hosting on a web server that happens to be driving
0:24:03the video player. That's been so well received and has such a—the benefit I get from that
0:24:12is so dramatic that I would highly recommend, you know, it's like, add a basic web page
0:24:17with FAQs in it. I think it's a great idea. Do a couple of videos for kind of just basic
0:24:21high-level walkthrough of your apps, and you'd be amazed at how many people will, you know,
0:24:26go through it, will watch it, and then be happier as a result, you know. So even, like,
0:24:31I think some of my most popular videos are things that are just like, you know, like
0:24:34WidgetSmith overview or Pedometer++ overview, and it's just like, in two minutes, let me
0:24:39just show you at a high level how it works. And it seems to clear up a lot of misconceptions,
0:24:46exposes people to different features that may be hard for them to discover or know what
0:24:50to do with otherwise, and it's just been super helpful. And these are super easy to
0:24:54host now. It's not like it's this big expensive thing that I'm dealing with, even
0:24:57at scale. There's lots of easy ways to host video that aren't crushingly expensive
0:25:04in a way that maybe ten years ago hosting video would have been a very complicated,
0:25:09expensive process. So that's the other thing I would say, highly recommend. It's another
0:25:1220 times scaling that you can do for your reducing your support and providing immediate
0:25:17education to your users.
0:25:19That's a really great, like I never, I have such like an old school mindset with app development.
0:25:24Like, yeah, you know, you have built in help, and it's all text. And, you know, maybe,
0:25:28maybe you have an FAQ, and I think that's it. I would never even thought to do video.
0:25:32But that like, you know, it's the kind of thing like, you don't think of but then
0:25:36when somebody like you does it, you're like, "Oh, oh, why didn't I think of that?"
0:25:40And it makes so much sense, and it's really good to hear that it's that effective, you
0:25:45know, like I am – and that it's now pretty cheap to host yourself. You don't have to
0:25:49like embed a YouTube thing or anything. You could put it behind, you know, Cloudflare
0:25:52or something, or you could just host the file yourself and it's not going to be that expensive,
0:25:55you know. But, you know, it's like a long time ago on core intuition, Daniel Jockett
0:26:01said something along the lines of that he does his own support in part because when
0:26:07all the email and stuff comes to him for his apps over at Red Sweater Software, he sees
0:26:12that as like a metric to be optimized. And so he feels the pain of answering all those
0:26:17emails rather than like, you know, shuttling it off to some support answering service.
0:26:21He feels that pain himself, so that encourages him to design the app in such a way to need
0:26:27need less support.
0:26:29And that stuck with me.
0:26:31He probably said that like eight or 10 years ago.
0:26:34But it stuck with me, and that's kinda how I've been
0:26:35doing Overcast this whole time.
0:26:38You know, 'cause I tried different things with Instapaper.
0:26:40I had some support services, I didn't really have
0:26:42great experiences with any of them, frankly.
0:26:45And so now I'm just like, I just want this app
0:26:48to not need support.
0:26:50And I've designed the app as much as I can to do that.
0:26:52And it sounds like, you know, these strategies you're using
0:26:54are really taking that into the next level.
0:26:57Like, you know, just really very well designing an app
0:27:01to not need support and doing a better and better job
0:27:05over time because this isn't something that you can
0:27:08just shuttle off to some answering service
0:27:10and have good outcomes because again,
0:27:12like if you shut a little off to some answering service,
0:27:14then, you know, every one of those support things that,
0:27:17first of all, you aren't even seeing it anymore,
0:27:19so you lose some degree of knowledge of what the problems
0:27:22than your app are, and then all those people
0:27:25who are not emailing support, they're just having
0:27:27failures of usage and they're dropping off and everything.
0:27:30And so it's better for everyone, as I said earlier,
0:27:33it's better for them and better for you
0:27:36if your app is designed in such a way
0:27:38to let people help themselves.
0:27:40And so I love that you've plowed forward in this area
0:27:44and broken new ground that a lot of indies like me
0:27:47who are a little old school in our thinking process
0:27:49would not have thought of.
0:27:51And so that's really cool.
0:27:53And I like, especially I think it's worth calling out
0:27:56what you said about the video not having to be
0:27:57really perfect or very high production value
0:27:59because video is such an endless pit of possible
0:28:04production value that you could do to make it nicer
0:28:07and it just gets so complicated and time consuming
0:28:10and expensive and it's diminishing returns.
0:28:13And so it helps to know, you know what,
0:28:15that really doesn't matter that much.
0:28:16If you just make a screen recording with a quick voiceover,
0:28:18that's enough and people are being helped
0:28:21and you're keeping them in your app
0:28:22and they're doing what they wanna do
0:28:25and they're not emailing you and they're not falling off.
0:28:26So that's a success.
0:28:29- Yeah, and I think the other thing too
0:28:31probably worth a place to close is the understanding
0:28:33that I think there is some value
0:28:35in what Daniel was saying there
0:28:36about kind of support-driven development
0:28:39that in terms of optimizing that as a value.
0:28:41But I think the danger in that,
0:28:42and this is the thing that I fell into myself often,
0:28:45is the proportion of people who will email you
0:28:48is relatively low compared to your actual user base. In my case, I do the math for Perimeter++,
0:28:55and it's like the number of people who email me is 0.5% of active users. That is not representative
0:29:02necessarily of the broader use case. Typically, it's going to either end of the spectrum. It's
0:29:07the people who are very happy or the people who are very unhappy are going to email.
0:29:12instead of optimizing for that 0.05%,
0:29:17focus on optimizing for the 99.95%
0:29:20in the main middle part of the app.
0:29:23It's like finding places and ways
0:29:25that we can make their life better
0:29:28with things like help videos, FAQs,
0:29:30being thoughtful in our design.
0:29:32That's where we get the real impact
0:29:34and the broader thing.
0:29:35It's like, optimize for that,
0:29:37and I think you're in a much, much better
0:29:38and more sustainable place at any scale.
0:29:39Thanks for listening everybody, and we'll talk to you in two weeks.
0:29:41Bye.
0:29:42[ Silence ]