I’ve written about Y Combinator‘s mantra before: Talk to your users! Here is what I have done recently: I’ve written a short email to 100 of the most active Exsila users and asked them if they would like to do a short phone call with me. I asked them to send me their phone number and their availability….
Tag: Exsila
Talk to users
Y Combinator — a successful start-up incubator — has a mantra: Talk to your users! Here is Y Combinator’s advice from the How to Start a Startup Lecture Series at Stanford (which I highly recommend!): “At YC, we tell founders to work on their product, talk to users, exercise, eat and sleep, and very little else. All the other…
Falling in love with Android
Last week, my 72 year-old aunt who is living abroad visited me in Switzerland. Thanks to her I am finally starting to understand the power of Android. It all started with her friend who saw a deal for a “free” Android tablet. He immediately jumped on it, not fully understanding that he just entered a…
Focusing on key metrics
I often suffer from statistics paralysis. Too many metrics, too many moving parts, too much stuff to optimize. Over the years, I’ve learned that it’s helpful to pick just one or two key metrics to focus on. When I joined Exsila, my initial key metric was number of trades. But somehow it just didn’t feel…
Whatever scares you, go do it
I keep returning to Derek Sivers’s life motto: Whatever scares you, go do it. I’m now ending each shower with a cold shower for several years, but the fear of the cold never goes away. The first 10 seconds are always scary. Sometimes I shower cold-only. It’s incredible how fast the body is able to adjust. Within just 2…
The going international trap
Back in 2007, when Alain and I were building Trigami, we almost made a terrible mistake. Actually we were in the middle of doing it. To give you some background: Trigami was a B2B advertising network, specialized on blogs and social media, heavily relying on B2B sales (phone calls, proposals, meetings). We were young and…
Congrats to Doodle and Exsila!
Doodle was finally able to buy doodle.com which is now the default domain. Congrats to Paul and Mike! Exsila.ch just reached 50’000 members and 300’000 items!
Exsila goes Germany!
Exsila has just launched their German version. Congrats to Rouven & Reto to this move! I think it’s very smart and I’m looking forward to the battle with Hitflip ;-).
Exsila: Migros-Magazine Coverage Crashes Servers
GREAT news for Exsila: 1. Coverage in Migros-Magazine (reach: 2.3 mio readers) crashes servers. Thats the bad news. The good news is: A couple of thousand of new members in one week (now 28’000 and counting). 2. Exsila merges with Tradefarm and gains another 1000 users. 3. Coverage in CASHdaily Podcast. Rouven said in the…
Congrats to Exsila: 20’000 members in one year!
Congrats to the 20’000 members! I am one of them (since September 2006) and a very happy one, too. My experiences: # I’ve swapped 54 items so far. # I’ve eliminated all my teenager CDs and invested the money in cool DVDs (mainly 24, Lost, Sopranos, O.C. California). # I didn’t swap any books. I’m…