This is part of an ongoing series of writing to our team at Stagetime.
Our product has loops. Let me explain…
There are two loops our product I call them black loops and copper loops. This framework describe our product ecosystem and how it works and gives us insight into how our product spreads.
The black loop
This is how a product is naturally shared. This happens can happen inside Circles and Collections. Someone comes in they make a Circle they share it with a group of people some subset of those people turn around and make another Circle. This process repeats itself over and over and over again. This is really similar to how documents like those in Google naturally spread. It’s a viral action of a document platform. Share, create, share, create.
This loop needs to happen very, very quickly and we should find ways to encourage this loop with new users. There is a few things to consider here. Often times we won’t be able to explain our products position. In reality we’re relying on each person that invites someone to a Circle to help explain what Stagetime does. So, there is a few things to consider. First, what is the perception of the product to folks that share it? Second, what is the onboarding experience for someone that comes in via a Circle compared to those that come in another way? At scale we need to figure out how to evangelize each and everyone that invites someone to Stagetime.
The copper loop
This loop is the emotional loop on why products are shared. Someone comes in, makes a profile—instead of sharing it with a team or with a collaborator they publish it to the world. In that process it becomes a broad promotion of Stagetime but really it’s about that person and what they are trying to get from the product.
Interestingly, with this loop a vast majority of our new users aren’t actually exposed to Stagetime—they are exposed to the artist in the profile. The profile leads with that’s artists brand and their work and capture interest off of their brand.
This loop really starts with singular problem for an individual user. The loop happens when they are excited about how the profile makes them look and promote it to the world. The better they look, the more they share, the more people see the profile, the more they share, and so on. Our job is to capture the views and tell them about Stagetime. It would be easy to think our main job is conversion from those profile views, however, we actually need to be concerned with making the artist look great so they start this loop.
So why should we think in loops? Simply, if we’re doing our jobs Stagetime’s product journey isn’t linear—it’s a series of loops that happen over and over again. The great thing is we can improve these loops. We can take a linear mindset (you go though onboarding and create a profile that gets to 100% and you’re done) and turn that into a series of loops that help to increase our product growth.
