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This post is in continuation of the last post. For more context on MailChamp story and the ideas discussed in the last post, please check here . Continuing more ideas from this absorbing case. 4. Pricing shouldn't be a barrier to adoption Mailchimp’s customers pay nothing for the first 2,000 subscribers or 12,000 emails sent, and then $10 a month after that. [From Forbes article ] Product monetization is not an easy beast to tame. In the past, many companies have struggled to hit that sweet spot with the users. Not so long ago, I recall that Evernote overhauled it's strategy as it was seeing weak conversion from free users to the paid ones. What MailChimp followed is Freemium model for it's monetization. The key purpose of the freemium model is to attract new users. The freemium model enables a company to build a user base, which in turn provides a constant source of feedback. This helps organizations innovate faster, which is critical to the success of a freemium offerin...

For years we have heard some version of the now almost clichéd phrase "Email is dead." On the contrary and in the midst of all the innovations happening in social networking, the need for having an email account has barely diminished. There is a thing I found fascinating about the MailChimp story that inspired me to write this and the following post. Here it is: Mailchimp is a marketing automation platform and an email marketing service. In a day and age when futurists don't leave any opportunity to write obituaries about the future of email as a preferred means of communication, Mailchimp has built a multi-billion dollar business around email marketing and are still going strong. MailChimp's success simply amazes me given the context of today's world where anything low-tech is considered unsexy. I happen to read their story about MailChimp's success that appeared in Forbes.com , not so long ago. In this 2 part series, let me share some of the ideas I learn...

This one's really a blast from the past. I had attended a Leadership Summit back in 2010, which had a positive impact on me. I remember this conference for a couple of reasons. First reason was obvious- various sessions at this conference were chaired was industry leaders including a few luminaries. In addition to the learnings i gathered , it was a sort of fan boy moment to hear them live. A more inconspicuous  reason was related to my note taking skills. I remember that I managed to note most of the stories and key points I gathered in this conference. It may sound like a routine thing to many and you may wonder why I feel proud about it. I have a perspective on this and I wish to share it here. I feel note-taking is one of the most underrated yet most effective skills. The fact that almost 9 years later I am reproducing my learnings via this blog is a reason enough to consider note taking as a serious skill. Without these notes, I may have had these learnings hidden at some corn...

We all read and consume contents from various sources. In our reading pursuit, we often come across words that we find effortless to construe  and feel an eternal connect that's sometimes hard to explain and assign adjectives to. I recently had such experience when reading Austin Kleon's book- ' Steal like an artist '. I went through the book like a breeze and resonated sublimely with the core of who I am. Now, I don't claim to be anything like the publically renowned creative folks and cases referred to in the book but I can claim to have mind of own in this regard with my way of dealing with all things creative. And that's very much like in the spirit of creativity. I don't like writing book reviews and that's for a reason. If my years of working in management/leadership roles have taught me something, it is this- To be effective as a leader, one must learn to suspend judgement and inculcate the habit of looking at things as they are. Mastering this ...

Not so long ago, I was speaking with one of the talented engineers (lets call him John) who was involved in a high visibility project as a part of Innovation Program that i was leading. His team had done extremely well to be selected among 5 ideas out of 100+ submissions that came in from diverse set of employees. His had made impeccable, convincing pitch presentations about his idea during the evaluation rounds. The way this innovation program worked was that the selected employees usually get certain percentage of their time to work on the project. What i have experienced is, even with a strong management support, the selected teams has to spend far more time than what is allocated to realize the potential of their idea. While not really an ideal situation but that's how most corporate innovation programs function. One could call it a stretch for the participating employees but what good has ever been achieved by staying within the confines of one's comfort zone. So what John...

As few days back, i wrote about a 16 year old India shooter Saurabh Chaudhary's achievement at winning the world cup gold. Saurabh overcame daunting constraints to emerge victorious at the world stage. In every walk of life, we face constraints that seemingly come in the way of our success. How we think about these constraints eventually becomes a difference between success or half-success or failure. Recently reading the book- ' Disrupt Yourself ' , I came across this riveting story recently on how the product Intuit Fasal came to life. Intuit's VP of Product Development was given a mandate to change the life of 1.2 billion Indians. Unlike many other initiatives of such magnitude, this project didn't get laden with resources. Despite the open ended nature of the project driven by a grand vision, it had to start somewhere. Intuit got three engineers of the job and gave them the directive to 'figure something out'. As they started chatting with farmers, they...

I am currently reading the book- 'Disrupt Yourself' by Whitney Johnson. The book is based on the application of Clay Christensen's world renowned theory of disruptive innovation for managing individual careers. One specific aspect of disruption it talks about is playing to one's distinctive strengths. Marcus Buckingham's books and body of knowledge covers the notion of strength based thinking in-depth. Too be honest, earlier in my career, i didn't quite believe in the concept of playing to one's strengths, or not to overly focus on eliminating weaknesses. The main reason i argued with myself was that human beings are among the most malleable species around and they have infinite capacity to mold themselves. I see multiple examples of this playing around me. Recently, i was reading a book on Ripley's Believe it or not and some stories of the participants really amazed me. It was not just the act that was described. The common thread in many stories was th...