This is a guest post by Evan Schoepke (@gaiapunk) – BizDev at Typeform
First of all, a little about my position. I’m a business developer which means I establish partnerships, relationships and integrations that will build long-term value for our company. But, like at many other startups I wear multiple hats so this means I also straddle the marketing and growth team which has a focus on projects that will increase immediate user growth. In order to work well I use a set of tools that I’ve customized to my diverse needs.
The screen shot above is a close approximation from my own work dashboard which includes Trello, Todoist, Tweetdeck and ChartMogul. As you can tell, I’ve customized how the CSS displays in some of the Chrome windows using UserStyles to put them in “dark mode” which is much easier on the eyes when working on larger monitors. I use Todoist for individual tasks, Trello for overall project management tracking, Tweetdeck for real-time awareness and ChartMogul to see our critical company health metrics.
ChartMogul is especially valuable to Typeform as a whole for assessing if actions that we are taking as a company are having an impact. We want a crystal clear vision regarding expanding or contracting user growth or churn. It is typically where I like to end my day because I like to have an overall picture of our key indicator metrics in my mind at all times. David Apple our head of customer success also frequents the ChartMogul dash daily for his own unique needs.
“ChartMogul is a very flexible tool which gives me great insights on our revenue and churn. I love that I can easily breakdown the metrics by plan and that I can see a clear breakdown of activity including number of new customers, number of customers who upgraded or downgraded their PRO plan, number of users who reactivated, and number of users who churned. We also used to spend about a day every quarter to build a cohort analysis with Excel… but in one click I can view cohorts at any time with ChartMogul. Now it’s practically effortless to report on the KPI’s I need.”
One key workflow insight that is super powerful, yet simple, is that it’s best to chain similar activities together. In order to do this, I’ve created mental “after I” statements for myself that help me flow seamlessly between tasks. So in the morning after I reply to emails I set reminders with Todoist’s regarding follow-ups. By the way, if you’re not already using MixMax with gmail and OneTab with Chrome then I strongly recommend grabbing those two plugins after this read as they will absolutely save your time and sanity.
Simple and uncluttered interfaces that I can easily navigate and grab the info I need quickly have always attracted me. But, in the end it how it all about how you use the tools and not just the tools themselves that bring real value to your workflow. If you find a problem that someone hasn’t solved, a poorly functioning product, a terrible user experience, well then don’t be afraid to be your own swiss army knife or as they say, “scratch your own itch”, because lots of amazing companies have been started that way.
