I’ve missed the monthly update on The CEO Library. I have a good reason, though :) I’ve been in the US for several weeks giving a helping hand to FreeBusy, one of the companies I invested in. As an offtopic, go and test their product if you’re frustrated with the back and forth of emails when it comes to setting up a meeting. FreeBusy really solves the issue, giving you a suitable time for every participant in as fast as 60 seconds (if everyone is connected to the service).
Now, back to The CEO Library. Last time I wrote something about it we had just three weeks since we started.
2 months later, the enthusiasm of the initial start has calmed down. The traffic in the last 2 months is almost equal to the traffic in the first 3 weeks. Not so much of an up and to the right line, right?
Once we started the project, we saw the biggest issue with it: it’s difficult to gather the recommendations. Once we went past the first flurry of “Top books about…” articles, it became really clear that it will take a lot longer than we thought initially. Listening to a podcast just to find out what someone says about one book is not an efficient way to do it.
We refocused the site on interviewing the people that recommend the books. It’s now quite obvious in the design of the site (we are focusing more on the people we talked to than on the books), but the heart of it is still what books they recommend. Just so you know!
The above is one more reason for people to read “The Lean Startup” and understand why you should launch a product/company as soon as you can so that you can get real feedback. Both from users and the realities of the market. “Done is better than perfect”, right?
And we started a podcast, as well.
What are the numbers?
Traffic: 4261 unique users (Oct+Nov)
Email total subscribers: 229 emails
Facebook total likes: 667
Twitter total followers: 185
Instagram total followers: 186
Shares through SUMO widget (Oct+Nov): 73
Interviews: 40
Collections: 4
Books total added: 1260
As you can see, the biggest jump is in interviews, which was our focus in November, as well as the number of books recommended by people. The lower numbers are a consequence of our lack of focus on social media or getting more newsletter subscribers. Once the process to get interviews is in place, we will start focusing on those as well.
The most important thing that happened in the last 2 months was the addition of two more team members to help with the technical side of things (Vlad) and database building – adding books and recommendations (Theo). This allowed Cristina to focus more on outreach for interviews and adding those to the site.
This is it for this month. I’ll keep you updated as new things happen.
P.S.: The last 2 months were driven by the quote in the image on the top: “Done is better than perfect”. We’re testing things and we just launch them to see how they work. This is why I chose this illustration for the article. It was made by Miruna, The CEO Library official illustrator :) She’s gonna illustrate more and more quotes and phrases specific to the business environment. If you are interested in her work, check her store here.
