Knowing Why You Failed

And why landing pages are still an opportunity area

Author

Michael Houck
June 13, 2023

On Saturday I shared my playbook for how startups can create massive hype like I did with my last startup. This weekend I’m sharing another on when to fire someone at a startup. Upgrade now to get access to my library of 35+ deep dives, and a new one in your inbox each Saturday:

Today at a glance:

  • Opportunity → Landing page and Squeeze page builder space

  • Framework → STARS

  • Tool → dofollow.io

  • Trend → Dropservicing

  • Quote → Know why you Failed

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💡Opportunity: New Dev Tools for Landing pages

Landing pages are basically figured out, right? Everyone from Wordpress to Webflow lets users create customized pages.

Maybe not. The space is split between legacy players who lack integrations with modern tools, and upstarts who are often seen as a temporary stopgap rather than a longterm solution.

An interesting approach to tackle this space could be to build verticalized solutions for specific industries. Owning website real estate is a high leverage position and this likely gives a new entrant the best chance to still get it.

🧠 Framework: STARS

Startups have always had difficulty evaluating what new features to actually build. The team at Bucket created a useful framework they call STARS to measure user engagement and satisfaction.

  • Segment → Define the feature’s target audience

  • Tried → Measure feature awareness

  • Adopted → Measure feature activation

  • Retained → Measure feature retention

  • Satisfied → Measure satisfaction of retained accounts

This is an easy way to create groups for your users and correctly evaluate feedback based on where the users are at. I like this framework because it’s structured like a funnel and is very measurable.

🛠 Tool: dofollow.io

Second-time founders know great distribution wins against great product. For SaaS startups, boosting traffic and leads can be tricky. Trying to grow through link farming will backfire on you.

But dofollow.io can help get links on major websites like HubSpot, BigCommerce, Canva, Business Insider, and many more without putting you at risk. The best part? You only pay for results.*

📈 Trend: Dropservicing

You’re probably somewhat familiar with dropshipping, aka the process of selling products online but shipping them straight from the manufacturer to the customer so that you never need to handle or store it.

Dropservicing is the same except with services like freelancing — businesses leverage platforms like Upwork and Fiverr to outsource services at some level of scale, while inserting themselves as a quality-check layer in the middle.

TikTok videos mentioning the term have reached 16M views.

💬 Quote: Know why you Failed

If your startup failed, it likely failed for a few reasons (rather than just one).

Be honest with yourself and internalize the reasons it failed so you don’t make the same mistakes with your next company.

💡 How Can I Help?

Here are 3 ways for me to help you close your fundraise, find PMF, or accelerate growth:

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