Product Wins, Growth Tools, and an Invite to Parliament

Disrupt & Conquer #3

Oct 19, 2024

Hi, everyone! 👋

I’ll be honest—I missed last month’s newsletter, and I’m a little disappointed in myself for it. But the last two months have been a whirlwind in the best way. After five months at Doshi, I’ve stepped into the role of Head of Product. No flashy LinkedIn post here—just a quiet commitment to keep learning, building, and growing.

In this issue, I’ll dive into some exciting updates: how we’re using the North Star Framework to sharpen our focus, the tools that have been game-changers for our product and customer success teams, and a sneak peek at my side project, Fantasy Politics. Plus, I’ve got a few thoughts on tackling information overload in today’s content-saturated world.

Welcome to the third edition of “Disrupt and Conquer.” Let’s dive in!

Benji

Building Our Customer Success Toolkit

For years, I used to feel intimidated by intelligence. Last month, I faced that head-on at an event where a bioengineer’s snarky comments could have knocked me off course. But instead, I’ve learned to use these moments as fuel to keep pushing forward and learning more.

In the last newsletter, I shared my ambition to become more technical and customer-driven. We developed our client dashboard on Retool during a 24-hour hackathon, which we believe will reduce our client onboarding time by 30%. It’s perfect for quickly building simple, effective dashboards for large enterprises like Santander and Lloyds for someone with intermediate coding skills like me.

I’ve been diving deep into Mixpanel this month, using it to cohort users based on the features they’ve interacted with and track how those interactions impact key metrics like retention and app engagement. I’ve also been exploring new ways to connect with our users. We’ve had Intercom embedded in our tool for a while but hadn’t fully utilized it. Last week, it hit me that we could kill two birds with one stone: drive users back to our app while collecting valuable feedback. We’ve essentially turned gathering feedback into another way to boost app stickiness.

What I’ve learned about being more data-driven is that honesty and patience are key. Not every decision will be a game-changer, but even if we move the needle 20% of the time, that’s a huge win compared to the usual 1 in 100 random guess.

The data that’s really moved the needle for Doshi? App usage time, increases in debt repayment rates, and click-through conversions to other banking products. Seeing this progress is super encouraging.

Let me know if you want to chat about any of these tools.

From Parliament to TSB: Big Steps Forward

Last week, we made our way to Parliament for the launch of Yorkshire Building Society’s policy paper, "Home Improvements – Building an Integrated Strategy for UK Housing." The big focus? How to tackle the growing challenges of homeownership. Mike Reader MP (Northampton South) and Kate Faulkner OBE (Chair of the Home Buying and Selling Council) sparked some great conversation around working together to find solutions.

No alternative text description for this image — At YBS’s parliamentary launch

We’ve just launched an in-school financial education program with TSB, and it’s already making a big impact for Doshi. It’s giving us a new way to connect with young users, and so far, the conversion rates are looking great.

Next up? We’re zeroing in on one key metric. If you haven’t heard of the North Star Framework, it’s a super helpful way to align your team’s focus on what really matters—check it out here. For us, that means boosting stickiness by the end of the year. Right now, we’re deciding between tracking DAU/MAU ratio or weekly retention rate.

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Fantasy Politics: My Side Project

Doshi’s been keeping me busy, but I’ve still found time to teach myself to code. I’m close to finishing my first-ever product—a fun twist on Fantasy Football, but for politics.

It’s called Just Debate, and it pulls data from the UK Parliament’s API to track politicians’ contributions each week, turning it into a game of Fantasy Politics. The name’s a little nod to the first company I built. I’m hoping to have it ready to share in the next newsletter, but if you’re curious, you can drop your name in this survey and I’ll keep you posted!

As a longtime fan of Fantasy Football, I’ve often wondered why the same kind of strategy and engagement didn’t exist for politics. So, I decided to build it. It’s a fascinating space that’s starting to gain traction. With the US election season in full swing, and a recent federal judge ruling paving the way, betting and prediction markets are now generating billions in revenue. If you're curious about the impact, Morning Brew recently highlighted the growth of this industry.

The Event Season is Heating Up

It’s been an exciting few weeks with events ramping up across the board. We’ve had the chance to connect at InnovateX hosted by Pixis.ai & Realtime Agency, Launch2024 hosted by Lloyds Bank, the CogX Leadership Summit & Embarc’s Meetup.

Looking ahead, I’ll be at Slush in Helsinki this November, and if you’re going, I’d love to meet up. I’ll also be in Milwaukee and Chicago over the holidays—let me know if you’re around.

Fantasy Fund Spotlight: Snipd

Name: Snipd
Description: An app that helps users discover, save, and share highlights from podcasts.
Raised: $700K
Assumed Valuation: $7M (Based on an oversubscribed pre-seed, assuming 10% dilution)
How Much I’d Invest: $200K

Key Considerations:

Market Competition: A competitor in this space is Overlap, backed by Y Combinator, uses AI to curate podcasts and videos. While Overlap is making waves, I prefer Snipd’s approach, letting users curate their own content—a crucial step before fully relying on LLMs.
Market Potential: Overlap's Y Combinator backing signals strong market potential. With endless media options today, Snipd’s user-focused model could be the answer to quite a bit of content overload.
Geographic Advantage: Snipd’s European base offers a potentially lower valuation, making it a more attractive investment with room for growth & US expansion.

Every month, I'll update this table so you can track my investments, and each year, we'll reassess to see if my stakes have changed.
This is a fantasy fund and does not account for liquidation preferences, voting rights, dilution clauses, or whether I'd even be accepted on the cap table. It's just for fun to see if any of my fantasy investments would pay off!

Disrupt & Conquer