Note: This AMA is closed for new questions, but you can check out the existing conversations below.
In this AMA, we had Hiten Shah — the co-founder and CEO of FYI, a serial founder, an investor/advisor, and the brain behind the Product Habits newsletter — share his thoughtful insights on experimenting for results, picking the right marketing channel as an early-stage B2B startup, the power of consistency, and more. Dive in!
AMA Index (Hiten’s brain-pickings) 
(founding insights, opinions, and observations; deftly examined and articulated)
— An overlooked freemium call: “I’m a huge proponent of having a free plan, I would just sequence it in at the right time”
— The three things that matter during any crisis; your team, your customers, your cash flow
— Recalibrating marketing spend during uncertain times
— Deciding on the self-funded track, Hiten’s key takeaway from 17 years of working remotely, and the three things necessary for good remote management
— Hiten’s quick tips on hiring remotely
— Countering the idea-hopping trap in marketing
— How Hiten and his co-founder (Marie) brainstorm remotely; “we like to keep things basic”
— Is it realistic to bootstrap a B2B business to a $1m in revenue?
— On content: “We don’t have goals for our content. We have goals for our brand.”
— A problem-solving ethos must inform internal changes as much as it does customer challenges
Further reading/listening/pondering from the interwebz 
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(Other insightful excerpts drawn from blog posts, interviews, and conversations)
On being honest with your team:
“I shouldn’t be necessarily interested in being a nice person and looking to be nice to everyone that works on the team. And I don’t mean that I would be mean, because you would think that’s the opposite. But I want to be objective. I want to be accurate. I want to be honest. And I think a lot of times, and especially this applies to founders I’ve met, they’re nice people, and that prevents them from being honest. That’s the aspect I’m constantly putting myself in check. Am I just being nice? Or am I actually being honest?”
Source: Interview with Hiten Shah, Founder of KISSmetrics, CrazyEgg, FYI and Product Habits
On hiring your first pack of team members:
“If I am interviewing an early-stage startup team member, let’s say, first 7 team members, I like to think of these people as the type of people that can deal with uncertainty and figure out things on the fly, sometimes minute by minute. The most insightful thing I can ask candidates is: What’s your earliest, most traumatic memory?"
Source: My favorite interview question for early stage startup candidates
On lessons from a billion dollar mistake:
“It’s too easy to build from the hip or rely on consensus when creating a product. I’ve learned that the key to driving growth on product is to create product processes that produce repeatable wins. Not one win, not two wins. But wins that can take you through months, years, even decades.”
Source: My Billion Dollar Mistake
On conducting successful user research interviews:
“I use the mute button on whatever tool I’m using to do the interview. I’ll ask a question and then be as silent as I possibly can. My goal is to listen patiently and only talk about 10 or 20% of the time when I’m doing an interview. Silence is your best friend in these customer interviews. When the customer is silent, they’re thinking about the question, and you shouldn’t answer it for them.”
Source: Co-founder Hiten Shah on how PMs can become better at customer research
On remote work:
“My hypothesis has been that what folks don’t understand about remote work is that humans, as I mentioned earlier, want freedom and flexibility and that’s what they get with remote work, that’s a number one thing that they get. And the report kind of proves that out in some interesting ways, so what we learned is that 91% of remote workers said working remotely is a good fit for them.”
Source: Hiten Shah, Co-Founder of Crazy Egg, Kissmetrics, Product Habits and FYI
Stay in touch: 
You can follow Hiten to stay updated with his discoveries and insights:
- Hiten on Twitter
- HIten on LinkedIn
These are unprecedented times.
because we not only help you find documents but also see what’s happening at work. Outside of that, especially for remote work, good management involves these three things being in-sync. Visibility, Communication and Alignment. What most folks who are new to working from home are missing is visibility and communication which leads to a lack of alignment. When people are working remotely, you have to make sure you have systems for visibility, communication and alignment. My best piece of advice for a manager is to evaluate how you and the team are getting work done along these three things, even score yourselves and then find ways to improve visibility and communication so you can all be aligned.