Thanks for this. To get it straight, you decided to go for marketing niche has it was an industry that obsessed you.
From their, feedback allowed to focus on one thing and do it well. This makes sense as you probably stretched yourself too thin. But the thing I don't get is, what was the trigger/pivot that made you go for 'A/B/ testing and not another segment of marketing niche?
At that time, weren't there other players in A/B segment who were far more established? What competitive edge did you see that made you go all in in A/B and which eventually took off?
I picked A/B testing because I discovered the most used product (Google Website Optimizer, now defunkt) was pretty crappy.
As an engineer, I couldn't figure out how to use it and it was meant for marketers.
So I sensed an opportunity within the A/B testing niche. In fact, the name Visual Website Optimizer comes from the fact that it did with Google Website Optimizer did, but visually (in an editor, instead of HTML code).
Optimizely started at the same time as us. They went to YC and raised a bunch of money. We remained bootstrapped.
From their, feedback allowed to focus on one thing and do it well. This makes sense as you probably stretched yourself too thin. But the thing I don't get is, what was the trigger/pivot that made you go for 'A/B/ testing and not another segment of marketing niche?
At that time, weren't there other players in A/B segment who were far more established? What competitive edge did you see that made you go all in in A/B and which eventually took off?