The document provides advice from Roman Sterly to the Langevo startup on improving their "Farmville meets vocabulary learning" language learning game. It emphasizes focusing on customer discovery to validate the problem and solution fit, optimizing the product based on user testing and analytics, and prioritizing acquisition channels and metrics to improve activation, retention, and monetization. Key recommendations include surveying users on game vs learning balance, simplifying onboarding, testing features to increase daily active users, and stopping non-scalable marketing.

1. Langevo startup consultation
Roman Sterly, 2014-04-14

2. Roman Sterly
• CEO / Founder – SportCentral
– http://www.sportcentral.com
• Blogger /mentor / founder – StartupHelp
– http://www.startuphelp.cz
• Previously
– Socialbakers (one of the best social
media analytics company)
– IT / marketing companies
– Several startup / business
awards

3. Langevo
• „Farmville meets vocabulary learning“
• Startup based in the Czech Republic, 8 people
in the team
• Web & mobile game similar to populare
Farmville game that helps you learn foreign
language (vocabulary)

5. Why we do this
• A lot of ideas X team doesn´t know what to
do, how to prioritaze
• Team don´t know how users use their product
X what does not work
• High investments + time X poor results

6. Startup process
1. Customer discovery - Problem / solution fit
2. Customer validation - Product / market fit
3. Customer creation - Drive demand
4. Company building - Scale company

7. Startup process
1. Customer discovery - Problem / solution fit
2. Customer validation - Product / market fit
– Find repeatable and scalable sales model
3. Customer creation - Drive demand
4. Company building - Scale company

8. Startup process
1. Make a good product
2. Market the product
3. Make money

9. Startup process & metrics
1. Make a good product – activation + retention
2. Market the product – acquisition + referral
3. Make money – revenue

10. Startup process & metrics
Acquisition
Activation
Retention
Revenue
Referral

11. Langevo & startup process & metrics
• Get to Product / Market fit
• Find repeatable and scalable sales model
• Focus on activation + retention (+ acquisition channels of
the right users)
Customer
discovery
Customer
validation
Customer
creation
Company
building
Langevo

12. What is the problem?

13. Who is the customer?

14. Is it the solution right?
• Vocabulary learning methods – OK
• Game as a motivator – OK
• Langevo game theme – ?

15. Is it the right game theme?
Why isn´t it like PixWords
(1M downloads)
Why isn´t it like Word Search
(100M downloads)

16. Learn Japanese
Vocabulary trainer

17. How much game X language learning?
Game
Language
learning
Where you are / want to be?

18. How much game X language learning?
Game
Language
learning
Langevo DuolingoFarmVille School

19. Discover if the solution is right
• What % of people want to learn languages + play
a game
• How much effort they want to spend on game X
on learning
• Is the FarmVille concept compelling?
• Are there other concepts that would work
better? What can you apply from them?
• What are the key (future) features?
• What would customers happily pay for?
-> Survey language school students

20. If the solution is right, is
the product right?

21. Discover what works and what does not
in the current product
Find out how people use Langevo now
• User testing
• Survey existing users
• Customer analytics (e.g. KISSmetrics,
Mixpanel)

22. User Acquisition
Your goal
• High volume
• Low cost
• High conversion
-> Find the best channels through metrics
-> Measure CAC for every channel
-> Don´t need to drive much traffic to the
product yet

23. User Acquisition – channels for Langevo
Game
• Gaming sites – game reviews
• Youtube channels – game reviews
• Additional platforms (Android, iOS, …)
• Social networks (Twitter for hardcore gamers +
journalists)
• Press releases
• Blogs (guest posts, give them content to write
about)
• Own blog (news about features)
• Referral

24. User Acquisition – channels for Langevo
Language learning
• Partners (e.g. language schools, elementary / high schools,
books, language organizations, …) -> how to get them
participate?
– Paid version for their customers for free
• Language content for search engines
– Landing pages for every language combination
– SEO
• Own blog (how-tos, tips, guest posts)
– Newsletter signup
– SEO
• Other blogs (guest posts, give them content)
• Social networks (Facebook)
• Referral

25. User Acquisition – channels for Langevo
• Stop / cut the crap
– Contests?
– Czech market / content?
– Paid advertising?
• Test
– Quora-like sites
– Language forums
– Slideshare
– Viral tools (test your X)
– -> Good for SEO too
• How much would 1M registered users cost?

26. User Activation
Your goal
• Sign up
• Start using a be happy about it
-> What acquisition channels work best?
-> Get rid of everything that doesn´t lead
directly to a signup – optimize for conversion

27. User Activation – Sign up
• Homepage efficiency
– Benefits instead of features
– Social proof
– Design sells
– Intro video (make it great!)
• Onboarding / checklist / NUX
• Lead them to sign up from other landing pages
• Bonus if they sign up NOW
• Language during sign up / onboarding

28. User Activation – Key activity
• Game is complicated
• Nice tutorial
• Key activities
– Learn new words (complicated):
• 1) go to Buy –> 2) choose from plants / animals / magical ->
3) choose from tomatoes / herbs / … field paramaters -> 4)
choose category -> 5) choose words -> 6) hit Buy -> 7) go to
Learn -> 8) browse words
– Pass the test
• Too much text for a game
• Too many things screaming for attention

29. User Retention
Your goal
• Get users back to the app
-> What is the right period - daily?

30. User Retention
• Game
– Fun
– Event emails
– Lifecycle emails
– Facebook notifications?
– Time based features
• Learning
– Value
• Blog
– Newsletter

31. Metrics
• Acquisition
– Visitors (10+ sec, 1+ clicks -> don´t leave
immediately)
– CAC per channel
• Activation
– Sign up funnel, tutorial funnel
– Used key feature – learned 10 words,
passed test
• Retention
– Come back at least 3x/week
– MAU, DAU
• Value
– Value – how much they learn
– Net Promoter Score
Ratios
Conversion rates
improvements

32. Metrics – macro funnel
Visitors Signed up Used key
feature
Come back Invited
friends
Bought
game items

33. Metrics – micro funnel
Visited
homepage
Sign up
step 1
Sign up
step 2
Sign up
step 3
Invited
friends
Bought
game items

34. Metrics – funnel
Find bottlenecks
100% 75% 8% 7% 5% 4%

35. Product development
• Build only what leads to your goals, don´t build
nice-to-have features!
– Ask this for every feature you want to build
– Your goal is activation & retention, nothing else
– If you can, test the idea before developing it
• A/B test variations
• When coming up with features ask What can we
do to increase X? first
– Come up with the right feature
– Test the change!

36. Plan
• Solution survey
• User testing
• Product survey
• Implement customer analytics
• Measure key metrics, set up funnels
• Start testing acquisition channels
• Build features / optimize to increase activation
• Build features / optimize to increase retention
• Stop creating features you don´t need and
marketing that doesn´t scale

37. What to read
• http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MichaelRose/20091212/
3798/The_Idiots_Guide_to_Marketing_Your_Indie_Game.p
hp
• http://joostdevblog.blogspot.nl/2012/11/the-indie-
marketing-plan.html
• http://www.pixelprospector.com/the-big-list-of-indie-
game-marketing/
• http://www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats/startup-metrics-
for-pirates-kaust-nov-2013?qid=5c03a816-8580-42b3-ac8d-
f6dab4bac612&v=qf1&b=&from_search=1
• http://tech.co/healthy-startups-net-promoter-score-2012-
01
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmKwF_Si734