Building for growth 📈
Amsterdam Product Club #15
My most important lesson at VEED
When I joined VEED in early 2022 we had a nice dinner with part of the team in Amsterdam. During this dinner, Sabba sat me down and taught me an important lesson. He said: “Willem, you know what? Don’t go all fancy with product frameworks here: We just build what people search for”.
So when deciding what to build next, we looked at search traffic. This makes sense since our main distribution channel at VEED is SEO. This means we grow via appearing on top in search engines. With tools such as AHREFS it’s very easy to find what people are searching for. You can then use this info as an input when deciding what to build next.
It’s a great strategy for two reasons:
It validates demand
Looking at what people already do is a super easy way to find out that there’s demand for something.It unlocks new growth
When you build the new functionality, and there’s search traffic for it, you will start capturing some of that traffic (if the rest of your SEO game is strong). This means more users will flock to your product.
Distribution should be part of product design
There’s a wider theme here: Product builders should think about distribution when designing their product, not after it’s done.
Famous VC and founder Peter Thiel put it this way:
“It's better to think of distribution as something essential to the design of your product.
If you've invented something new but you haven't invented an effective way to sell it, you have a bad business —no matter how good the product.
Superior sales and distribution by itself can create a monopoly, even with no product differentiation.
The converse is not true.
No matter how strong your product- even if it easily fits into already established habits and anybody who tries it likes it immediately- you must still support it with a strong distribution plan."
How to design with distribution in mind
I tried to impart this lesson to students at my alma mater, the Technical University of Delft.
This workshop dived into how you can define and test your growth model and explored the growth loops of companies like Figma.
You can find the full presentation here
What’s happening in Dutch tech?
Fresh cash for Framer
After pivoting to become a (pretty damn cool) website design tool, Framer raised a series C to take on Webflow et al. Read more here. Good luck guys! 💪
Rise Calendar out of Beta
My favorite calendar app is now in general availability. It aims to help you work smarter: More focus time, and fewer interruptions, I like it!
Check out their launch and product here
Smooth Odido launch
T-Mobile NL and Tele2 rebranded as Odido. The launch went pretty smoothly, which is amazing since it seems like every digital agency in Amsterdam worked on it 😅
Internet stuff I enjoyed
Marginal user
Why software tends to get worse over time.
Design patterns
Beautiful little TED talk on patterns and mathematics.
Documentary and 100yr olds
The Blue Zones documentary is all the hype, but a bit too American for my taste. With a presenter who’s screaming at you constantly, and a lot of open doors being kicked in. A while back I watched a similar, but much more enjoyable documentary. You can find it here: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13154112/
Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed it!
❤️ Willem