How to design a product that can grow itself 10x in year:
The first version of @unsplash was made in 3 hours with $38, @dropbox, & @tumblr.
Launch day, 30k people subscribed from a @newsycombinator post that went #1. That was lucky. But hitting 300,000 subscribers in the months after with no product changes was not.
A few lessons:
Launch day, 30k people subscribed from a @newsycombinator post that went #1. That was lucky. But hitting 300,000 subscribers in the months after with no product changes was not.
A few lessons:
Remove all barriers. Most existing services are overcomplicated. You will stand out by removing things that get in the way of what your customers want. We removed logins, photo sizes, licensing options. Anything that got in the way of the image download.
Don't offer more, offer better. We started with 10 of the best images we could find. Meanwhile, most stock photo sites had 50 million images. Instead, of offering tons of images, sizes, and licenses, we offered one size, one price, one license.
Show don’t tell. Let people play before they have to give you anything. We showed images big and bold on our homepage. No search, navigation, login, or paywalls.
Pick a short, no-jargon tagline:
Free, “do whatever you want” hi-resolution photos. 10 new photos every 10 days.
Could fit in a tweet.
Free, “do whatever you want” hi-resolution photos. 10 new photos every 10 days.
Could fit in a tweet.
Choose a simple name and domain. Aim for an actual word around five characters. We found 'splash' and added two characters so pronounced together it still sounded like a word. And was easy to spell. Bought unsplash.com for $9.99.
Reinforce your difference with design. We looked the opposite of our competition. Stock photo sites had many cheesy images. Unsplash had less but high quality. Instead of an image grid which speaks to volume, we showed one big image at a time to speak to quality.
Create a reason to come back. 10 images every 10 days.
Create scarcity. 10 images every 10 days made each image feel more special. People subscribed so they didn't miss out on the next 10 images.
Guarantee people have the experience you want them to have. We chose to offer only 10 images every 10 days because it's more likely we could find 10 high quality images than 100 every 10 days.
Be your own supply. Another reason we offered only 10 images every 10 days was we might have to submit the images ourselves. We submitted the first 10 images on @unsplash from a photoshoot. We could handle submitting 10 images every 10 days if we had to.
Focus on your unique difference. Outsource the rest. The @unsplash first version tech stack: @Google form, @Mailchimp newsletter, @tumblr Tumblr, Public @Dropbox folder.
