Building products that stick

50 points by tariqrauf 9 years ago | 9 comments

uladzislau 9 years ago |

Let's talk about the most challenging issue TransferWise is facing - churn. Basically the customers don't stick. They make 1-2 transactions and either move to other platforms or stop sending money. It's not a recurring business model per se.

APCarr 9 years ago | |

I tried using Transferwise but it was demanding I prove myself a registered company, so I can't see me using it for a few more decades/never.

Heck I'm commenting before reading the article, I should go read it first...OK, slideshow..

Yeah, they seem to pitch it as a Paypal type thing that anyone can use, but I hit a brick wall when it came to accepting payments. Perhaps I should try again or something but I do recall last time it was asking for business registration numbers etc.

If I can use it then I'd happily do so, as Paypal rob me blind accepting money (fee) and then transferring to Malaysian ringgit (fee).

morgante 9 years ago | |

Do you have numbers to back that up?

While I'm sure that there are certain customers who churn regularly, there's another whole group who very regularly send payments and love TransferWise (ex. freelancers).

lucaspiller 9 years ago | |

Are any of their competitors better? They seem pretty cheap (at least compared to banks) and they can't get much faster - once I sent money from the UK in the morning and it arrived in my Euro account on the other side of the continent the same afternoon.

zzalpha 9 years ago |

Not sure of the insight, here. "Optimize experiences and be an order of magnitude better" doesn't seem to be especially actionable.

The most useful bit seemed to be about building KPIs around core user journeys, but that feels a bit obvious...

rodionos 9 years ago |

Not knowing the extent to which their fees are subsidized in the short-term makes it difficult to ascertain if this payment's company viral growth is sustainable. The slide deck needs to have more details to be convincing.

adamwi 9 years ago |

Important topic but not much details or examples in the linked material. Any tips on other sources of content on the topic of building mindshare? Working in the Saas B2B space but any examples are interesting.

MrCoolSwing 9 years ago |

Maybe with the funding TransferWise received that's all possible. But what about bootstrapped product startups?

stevenkovar 9 years ago | |

It just takes more time and a more intense focus; a startup's ability to focus vs. larger organizations is powerful.