We killed growth too when we had one of these generous trials.
I worked on a (once) popular Saas app :) We were losing customers when I came in. But then started growing again (slowly) when we started shipping a bunch of great things.
But then the owner wanted to get rid of the "free trial" and was adamant we offer a free version. That would boost our growth to an incredible new level he promised. I could see the reasoning. Our free trial still required you give us a credit card up front. We just wouldn't charge you for 30 days. Asking for a credit card has to be bad for growth, right? People want to kick the tires before they become our customers, and there's a lot more of those folks.
So we ditched the collection of credit cards up front and went to a totally free plan. You could upgrade to a paid plan of course.
Growth started tanking again and we never got it back.
One theory was collecting the credit card just got the really eager shoppers and now our growth was from zombie, forgetful, monthly Saas payments. And that's valid of course. But I wonder too, if just asking for a credit card gets you to be more serious too about trying a product. If you have to put in a credit card, you'll probably focus in here for a bit and not sign up for 10 other things the same day to try. And successfully collecting a credit card while someone is in the process of choosing anything, is probably always going to be easier than trying to convince them in 30 days to come back and get into a buyers mindset again. Unless you really are selling something so deeply crippling not to have it again after 30 days.
I recommend "Alchemy" by Roy Sutherland. [0] It deals with human and behavior that drive economics and highlights ideas that would fail on paper and actually work. Example, turns out you can use Disney like characters painted on the outside of a store to reduce brake-ins at night.
It goes through similar scenarios. Example, "Offering a free version and not requiring a credit card can push the idea that your solution has no value so why should I use it?"
The problem these days seems like everyone and their grandma has read about this type of phenomenon and now we live in a world where solutions that truly provide little if any value require the credit card, email, or some other exchange of information.
Back in 2006 when I was in YC I wrote down a handful of goals. I looked at those goals daily. Just envisioned getting them or something even better than them. They seemed so lofty and ridiculous at the time. But oddly, they all became some version of true. Some of them took so much longer (and brought new problems) than I even anticipated, but some version of what I wanted transpired. So any process like this that involves setting down some goals and getting you excited to keep putting down work towards them seems like a pretty good idea :)
Been out for a few years but Seth Godin's "The Practice" is a good, easy read in this spirit. tl;dr I think of that book is just get used to showing up and doing stuff. Outcomes are fickle. But developing a love of good process can be enjoyment enough and mentally more stable. And can sometimes lead to some good outcomes.
What always surprises me is how "sleep" is the ingredient I need here. Yes repetition helps. But space out the repetition with sleep and "woah! i get it!" is often uttered. Obviously there's so much written about sleep as some kind of RAM to SSD offloading step, but it never ceases to amaze me when it happens so well.
Yeah, or just leaving whatever it is you're trying to learn for your subconscious to process while you do other stuff.
I've found myself having a lot easier time to learn difficult new concepts by (somewhat counterintuitively) stop trying to learn it for a week or two, then come back to it, and suddenly it's a lot easier to grasp, even if I haven't consciously thought about it since I left it.
I've had concepts click in my head literally years after studying them. I have no idea why. I assume I was exposed to tangentially related information at some point, then an old thought bubbles up and it suddenly makes sense.
> What always surprises me is how "sleep" is the ingredient I need here. Yes repetition helps. But space out the repetition with sleep and "woah! i get it!" is often uttered.
I really relate to this. In fact, a lot of times, when working on a difficult problem, I’ll intentionally go take a nap when I feel stuck, and more often than not, I’ll wake up feeling like the problem is much easier than I thought before my nap. I can’t explain why it works so well—it just does!
OP here: that is an excellent point! Of the eight read-throughs, four were on Friday night, then I had dreams involving some kind of TRON-like vector spaces, and at brunch on Saturday things seemed to start gelling. The four extra read-throughs were to crystallise that intuition to a level that I felt I could start writing it up. I'm 100% sure the sleep was what built some kind of intuition at a pre-linguistic stage that I could build on.
This becomes very obvious to one's self if you learn an instrument or another mechanical/procedural thing. For example, cramming 4 hours into guitar is less useful than 1 hour over 4 days cause of sleep. Sometimes I will struggle with something for quite a bit towards the end of a practice session, and then I will get it right on the first try in my next session on the following day. Hell, there are so many times when I go to my guitar teacher and I tell him "yeah so i practiced this part of the assignment over the past week and I could never figure it out" and then I try to show him the issue and I play it mostly correctly to my surprise.
With something like learning a language, problem solving skills, a code base, new maths, or wtv, it is less apparent because the mind can delude itself, and it is much harder to delude yourself with actual physical movements. You either do it, or you don't...
I gave up drinking 5 years ago. Just didn't want it in my life anymore. Started just feeling ick more often than not even with just a couple drinks. Just stopped feeling worth it. But I loved cocktails.
It's pricey, but they expose me to all the new non-alcohol things out there. It's great if you just want an easy way to get fun new things without thinking too hard about this category.
Also, our very own Justin Kan, is a founder of Woody's Wine (NA): https://woodys.wine
So many good NA beers now. Athletic, Guinness, Heineken, all play well here.
Still looking for a good fake bourbon. My favorite so far is Free Sprits https://drinkfreespirits.com/collections/non-alcoholic-spiri... Fair warning though. None of these fake alcohols drink well on their own. I don't think anyone has a bourbon anyone is going to like on the rocks or neat. But it does well in mocktails.
I highly recommend trying to make some homemade ginger beer. It’s super easy, takes just a few days to ferment, lots of recipes online. Much better than the stuff in the store which is filled with added sugar or artificial sweeteners. Plus you can brew with extra ginger if you like it strong. Whatever you do, don’t ferment it in glass bottles. Use 2 liter plastic soda bottles.
most of the time folks are fermenting ginger beer, it's just to carbonate it. ginger beer isn't usually fermented to produce alcohol like a normal beer.
since there is so much sugar available in ginger beer, fermenting/carbonating it in sealed glass bottles will result in bottle bombs.
skip the fermentation completely: 2 liter plastic soda bottles are great for force-carbonating with a co2 tank. if you really don't like plastic you could find a 1 gallon stainless steel keg and carbonate (and serve) from that.
Probably pointing at exploding bottles; I've made probably 40 batches of ginger beer and when I would 'burp' the bottles I never had an issue. Decided once to try out not doing so and had six hours of clean up. But otherwise you're probably fine. Just let out carbonation morning and night, it takes a minute or so.
You can definitely make ginger beer with wild yeast (fresh ginger root conveniently comes with lots of wild yeasts) and make delicious drinks. There are lots of recipes.
I also recommend, if anyone is interested, investigating “ginger beer plant” (GBP), which is a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeasts (SCOBY) such as that used to brew kombucha and kefir. It was once common in Britain, but almost went extinct. Some was saved by a German culture bank (DSMZ), and now you can buy some online! Makes a different, and I think delicious, drink compared to the “ginger bug” method!
You don't have to ferment it to get a rich flavor. You just have to use fresh ginger instead of dried or powdered. We make it with Fresh Ginger, Lemon juice, orange juice, cane sugar and molasses. Then force carb.
Perhaps you might enjoy making cocktail yourselves :D
There is /r/Mocktails, imbibe magazine has a alcohol free section with a lot of recipes, and there are books as well - I'd suggest good drinks by Julia Bainbridge and Zero by alinea group-.
My biggest pain point is that there is no high end past Zero. The Julia book is solid.
In actual cocktails, there are a handful of books that are _incredible_ and cater to high end cocktails. I have ~600 bottles at home (I know...) and I really appreciate those books. I'm willing to make cranberry tequila rosemary ice. Or clarify a punch.
Almost every mocktail resource is... quite frankly... too simple. "Add lemon to fake sparking wine to make a delicious French 75!"
This makes sense from sheer numbers. Way less folks making mocktails. I love that Alinea book. Just wish there were good websites out there.
I've started doing spirit free cocktails recently, but I definitely get that there are way less resources than regular cocktails. However, zero has a section on making backbar alcohols such that you might be able to use them on regular cocktails, by substituting the alcohol with their spirit free version. The taste won't be the same of course, and you might have to alter the dosage, but it's better than nothing. Perhaps you won't be able to clarify an alcohol free wine, but I'm sure there are recipes that aren't ruined by replacing alcohol with its non alcoholic version
I feel like if someone could figure out an "alcohol" that doesn't metabolize like alcohol or kill you will be a somethingillionarire. Or at least a beverage/food company another mountain of money.
Lots of drinks come close but the problem is that, despite some claims, alcohol does have a flavour.
There are some fully-fermented NA beers that use special strains of yeast that produce less alcohol that come quite close to the real thing and are very tasty, but they're just a lil off...
You mean the same inebriation effects but without the same health risks?
I believe there are drugs that act on similar receptors, and are not as toxic or at least don't need to be taken in such high doses for the same effect.
My understanding is that the drug GHB has very similar effects to alcohol, in lower doses, but unfortunately in higher doses is used as a date rape drug.
Alcohol has the benefit of being somewhat naturally occurring. I don't see many other recreational drugs being legalized or so widely used.
"Kava" is supposed to mimic a drunk, in the way that Kratom mimics opiates and kanna mimics MDMA.
I only know that if you're not careful with kratom it will hurt you thru the exact same mechanisms that opiates do. No idea about dosing or anything on kava or kanna. I tried kanna but only low micro doses. It is like a slight mood elevator at low dosages, like I imagine "a beer with dinner" elevates mood slightly.
2.5 grams of kratom feels exactly like an oxy, down to wanting to tell everyone you really love them and is that shirt felt well it is now
Kratom is definitely something to be wary of. Physical withdrawals similar to opiates with prolonged use and made up of alkaloids we don't know the full safety profile of yet (or at least didn't when it was taking off in popularity.) I would not be surprised to find out morphine is "healthier" for the body. Plus there was that scare around some of the big kratom distributers having batches of the leaves contaminated with heavy metals like lead in products they continued to sell.
Would highly advise people to steer clear of it if not using it for harm reduction though the wisdom of replacing one physically addictive drug with another doesn't seem to bode well either. Not a doctor just my two cents.
Tea is made from the leaves of trees which leech fluoride into the leaf from the groundwater where it is grown. Cessation of tea ingestion can lead to withdrawals and severe mood changes. Tea has been the proximate cause of at least one major war, but since it was about tea, it was a very civil war.
Kind of a silly comparison. Much of kratom's popularity came about because the alternative is illegal not because of how safe it is or isn't. You can't compare fluoride to unsafe levels of lead. And "cessation of tea ingestion" won't give you literal opiate withdrawals.
Calling it a safe way to do opiates is just irresponsible. It's really not that different from how manufacturers more than a century ago invented opioids and called them non addictive alternatives to morphine.
can you show me where i recommended anyone take it or called it "a safe way to do opiates"?
also can you show me a comparison between the lead levels in kratom and the fluoride (and lead) in tea?
also, don't bother. Imagine shilling for poppy seeds and one specific leaf, but lambasting a leaf from a different tree (coffee, is it because it's coffee and you're a tea drinker?)
I possibly misunderstood you. The way you talked about it initially comparing it to oxy sounded like you were endorsing it as a safe (or legal) alternative. I've seen people endorsing it on HN of all places before and just don't like the way it's often misrepresented as something safe.
I'm still not really sure what your point with the tea is. You don't have to look very hard to see that unregulated kratom being imported from god knows where had a lot of incidents of heavy metal contamination. If this was a well known issue with tea you could buy in stores in the US I'm not aware of it.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S24681...
And I'm not shilling for anything. I don't think people should be taking morphine recreationally either. Kratom blew up the way it did in popularity because people realized it's an opiate you can order legally over the internet. Your response about the tea to my disclaimer that it's not like the other plants you listed makes it sound like you think it's on the same level of safety as tea which it really isn't and people should be aware of that.
There are plenty of drugs that are way better than alcohol if you are looking for a specific effect. Maybe a little too good actually, the toxicity of alcohol acts as a deterrent, no one enjoys hangovers. Most of them are illegal, but alcohol would be too if it wasn't so easy to make and part of our culture. And by the way, alcohol is the most common date rape drug by far.
But most of these drugs are not enjoyable to taste, in fact, many are downright disgusting.
Ah. no. sorry. i meant really just tastes like alcohol. but no inebriation or health effects. I really like the taste of alcohol in a drink, but don't want any of the effects.
Ah OK, I often thought the opposite, that people mainly drink for the sugar in beer etc, as well as the alcohol.
But I always felt like the kick of the alcohol was just something people came to like as it preceeds the effect.
Otherwise more people might drink vodka and water.
> You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action. Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty.
Tangent maybe. But when I used Dark Sky, I and everyone who asked me about the weather and I'd give them data from Dark Sky were always impressed by my accuracy for knowing when it would rain and stop raining. Now I use Carrot with the AccuWeather(sp) api, and it'll be pouring right on top of me, and Carrot tells me "no rain for the hour". Is this just weather getting harder and harder to predict, or is AccuWeather trash, or anyone else find something that seems as accurate as Dark Sky was?
I find the same issues with Apple's weather app. And even Windy's notifications. The only helpful thing is an actual heatmap visualization of rain. That always gives you a lot more context and a better understanding of what's happening and for how long. I actually really love Apple's rain heatmap
One of the many reasons I pay for Carrot is to get the other, more expensive, data sources. If you do stump up, you get access to the Apple Weather API--what once was Dark Sky--as well as Foreca. I've found both of them to be very accurate based on what Carrot reports.
(For what it's worth, I never used the Dark Sky app directly. I've always consumed it via Carrot or a free API key that Dark Sky used to give out for individual developers.)
Many times it would say something like Rain stopping in 10 minutes. Then 8 minutes later… Rain stopping in 15 minutes. On and on as it steadily rained.
My former coworker was insufferable about Dark Sky being accurate but I never found that to be the case. Same with his insistence I use Waze to go through random parking lots, only to find our cowokers beat us back from lunch using a sane route but I am digressing.
Where I am big thunderstorms are very common and it can be dry a quarter mile away. It’s a good indicator but I never found Dark Sky, Accuwhatever, or Apple Weather to be accurate with the rain forecast.
There's some thought provoking bits on app growth and users in that feed. Just wish more of this was in a centrally, easily digestible place. And I'm surprised there isn't more of it somewhere.
I worked on a (once) popular Saas app :) We were losing customers when I came in. But then started growing again (slowly) when we started shipping a bunch of great things.
But then the owner wanted to get rid of the "free trial" and was adamant we offer a free version. That would boost our growth to an incredible new level he promised. I could see the reasoning. Our free trial still required you give us a credit card up front. We just wouldn't charge you for 30 days. Asking for a credit card has to be bad for growth, right? People want to kick the tires before they become our customers, and there's a lot more of those folks.
So we ditched the collection of credit cards up front and went to a totally free plan. You could upgrade to a paid plan of course.
Growth started tanking again and we never got it back.
One theory was collecting the credit card just got the really eager shoppers and now our growth was from zombie, forgetful, monthly Saas payments. And that's valid of course. But I wonder too, if just asking for a credit card gets you to be more serious too about trying a product. If you have to put in a credit card, you'll probably focus in here for a bit and not sign up for 10 other things the same day to try. And successfully collecting a credit card while someone is in the process of choosing anything, is probably always going to be easier than trying to convince them in 30 days to come back and get into a buyers mindset again. Unless you really are selling something so deeply crippling not to have it again after 30 days.
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