One of my entrepreneurial superpowers is asking questions at scale.
Before I started Ancestry I went to libraries and conferences and asked questions. I learned why and how people do genealogy, best books and tools, etc.
When we had 1M monthly users I ran surveys to learn more about them.
I learned our visitors spent $528 per year on genealogy. They bought more than 20 things including family tree software and data CD ROMs.
Multiplied by 7% of adult Americans who are into genealogy I knew we had a $3B+ market before anyone else.
When MyFamily.com got millions of users we ran a daily survey where I could a question when a user logged in. I got 10,000 answers a day.
An investor once asked what % of our customers had digital cameras. I asked our users and got the data before the meeting ended!
When our FB app had 20 million active users our survey got 200k responses a day. We collected 300M responses to 600+ questions!
Asking questions at scale makes me feel I have my finger on the pulse of massive markets. It gives me deep insights into my customers hopes, wants, needs.
We’ll need this superpower again as Strengths, Inc. tries to build the world’s best coaching and human development platform.
Get ready for lots of questions!
