Note: This AMA is closed for new questions, but you can check out the existing conversations below.
In this AMA, we had Paul Joyce — founder and CEO of Geckoboard — share his thoughtful insights on pricing strategy, building a transparent org without overwhelming the team, and raising funds in 2020. Dive in!
AMA Index (Paul’s brain-pickings) 
(founding insights, opinions, and observations; deftly examined and articulated)
— An arresting, 12-point snapshot of meaningful lessons learned from a decade of pricing iterations
— On the tension between internal ambitions and the outside world
— The three core lessons Paul would hold dear, if he was to start up again; “This is a far lonelier journey than I had anticipated at first”
— Earnest notes on internal transparency
— A clear-eyed model to think about investments; “I believe the best way to handle that is to not make too much of a ‘thing’ of it.”
— Grasping PMF direction with an incredibly horizontal product
— How does one keep going in a “world of unicorns, quick flips, and side hustles”
— “One simple thing that we can all do when asked about how we’re doing by another founder”
— The signals that conveyed Geckoboard’s PMF progress
Further reading/listening/pondering from the interwebz 
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(Other insightful excerpts drawn from blog posts, interviews, and conversations)
On a central dissonance of building startups:
“I think a few years ago, I talked at a HackerNews London meetup. I talked about this tendency… for particularly very young startups to say, ‘I’m crushing it,’ ‘I’m killing it,’ ‘it’s all good,’ and whatever else. And how that can warp people’s perspective of what it is to run a business. It isn’t all sunshine and happy days and skipping over rainbows. It is brutal. It is hard. And it is taxing…You get blindsided quite a lot. And being able to speak about that is a very liberating thing. I feel that is something I like to do, because it helps me, but I also think that it gives permission for other people…When somebody asks ‘how are you doing?’ Instead of saying, ‘I’m crushing it,’ I say, ‘well, you know, I had a good month this month, the last month was really poor, I’m really struggling with this, I’ve got concerns about like somebody leaving the business that I find really key, we’re finding it difficult to recruit for this key role. And gives permission for a more substantive conversation to happen.”
Source: With Paul Joyce, CEO of Geckoboard (AKA The Brian Cox of Dashboards) - Behind the Screens EP 29
On early failures:
“I genuinely didn’t see them as failures but as lessons. That got me one step closer. That got me a better understanding of how this process would or should work. Where my blindspots were, where I needed extra help, where I could trust myself, each of those were steps. They weren’t designed to be steps. Each of them were designed to be fully formed ideas that would come to fruition and bail me out of my current situation. But when it came time to turn my back on those ideas and to leave them and to say, ‘I didn’t execute them properly, that wasn’t a good fit. There’s no demand for this.’ Each of the time, I didn’t leave with a sense of abject failure. It was more like, “how can I understand what happened here and apply those lessons in a way that will give me an advantage next time.” It’s going to be an elephant trap that I won’t fall into.”
Source: Geckoboard: Failing a Dozen Times Before Finding Product Market Fit – with Paul Joyce
On assessing customer feedback:
“Be way more stringent and diligent about segmenting customer feedback. It’s wonderful to get customer ideas and feedback, whatever else, but it can also be intoxicating and I think I got a little bit drunk on all of the feedback. ‘Oh yeah, we should try this and try that.’ I think being a bit more sober about how to evaluate feedback, particularly about segmentation.”
Source: Geckoboard: Failing a Dozen Times Before Finding Product Market Fit – with Paul Joyce
On “yin and yang” metrics:
"There’s a lot of a talk about the one metric that matters, I actually prefer having yin and yang metrics. If we are looking at conversion rate, we can do things now to materially increase our conversation rate, I know that for sure, but it might have a negative impact on churn. There’s no point in just doing that in isolation, we need to take a holistic approach.”
Source: How Focus Facilitates Faster Growth
On competition:
“I think when we launched the alpha version in July of 2010 and a paid product in 2011. It was fairly fresh. There weren’t a lot of people doing what we’re doing. And since then, some have come, some have gone. Couple of acquisitions and shutterings and what not. I think if we were to look at competitors, we’d be pulled in entirely the wrong direction. It is up to us to make sure that what we’re creating has sufficient value for customers that they’d want to pay us. That they’d gladly and happily pay us. And you don’t get that by aping other products. You get that by really critically trying to understand the problems that they’re trying to solve. And then seeing where there’s a juncture for what you can provide. So, no, I don’t really spend much time looking at competitors. In fact, our biggest competitor, we bump into each other at conferences and we chat like a couple of friendly people. But we hardly ever talk shop.”
Source: LDNSaaS Q&A
Stay in touch: 
You can follow Paul to stay updated with his discoveries and insights:
- Paul on Twitter
- Paul on LinkedIn
If you were going to start a brand new saas company today, what would be the 3 key lessons you would bring with you from your Geckoboard experience?
