In this interview series by Website Planet, I talk to executives from the best digital companies, who share their stories, tips and perspectives on what it really takes to create a successful website and online business.
A deep dive into decades of hands-on experience and technical expertise to learn untold truths and practical advice that will immediately help you build and grow your website.
Kamban S is the founder of Elephas, an AI writing assistant for Mac, iPhone, and iPad helping users write blogs, emails, and social media posts more efficiently. Elephas users are so far saving up to 50% of their writing time and 75% of their content costs
Before Elephas, Kamban also developed FlatGA, a tool for unifying website metrics, but his work as a product development specialist has spanned multiple projects over the years.
What pain point(s) do you solve for your customers? What was the “aha Moment” that led to the idea? Can you share that story with us?
When GPT-3 was new, I was playing with it, it was not easy to access the features easily, only through API.
I realized there was a much more useful workflow – it needs to be part of all the apps. I built a simple wrapper and posted a sample of it on the discussion forum HackerNews. It kind of exploded, and Elephas was even trending on the homepage of HackerNews for some time. I have to admit that the UI at that time was a basic one.
“The killer feature is the close integration with my OS. I have AI superpowers every time I need them.” Luca Sartoni, Head Instructor @ Remote Leadership Works
What do you think makes your company stand out? What are you most proud of?
Our pivotal axis is Freedom. We want to build a small company that values individual freedom and takes care of the people. We don’t want to have more than 10 people. We follow a permissionless approach, where people don’t have to ask for permission, they only have to notify us when needed. This starts with taking leaves. We don’t have a leave policy. Similarly, we have seen our team taking the initiative in coming up with new ideas and improvements. This is what I am most proud of.
From your experience, what are the most important things to build a highly successful website and online business? Please explain each in detail.
Understand the friction users are facing. Creators tend to get carried away by the features and technology, but most of the end users don’t care about those things. They want a solution to their problem.
Once you know their problems, you can look at the closest solutions they are using to understand the process and then incorporate a better one in your new solution. But to do this you need to work closely with some initial set of users who share that problem.
Even the best product can fail, if there is too much work to change the existing process.
What’s the one key lesson you’ve learned about building a website and business that you wish you knew when you started? What’s the story behind this realization?
You don’t have to target every user. No product can satisfy every kind of user. It is important to follow a niche and just focus on it.
When I launched Elephas, there was so much hate on Reddit, that I would get disappointed with hate comments. However, the product user base was still growing. My target users were silently subscribing. This was the moment I realized that it is okay if some users don’t like your product. We don’t need to sell everyone on the planet.
Customer support is crucial as well. Many of my early users supported me by spreading the word. Mostly because I used to respond to all their queries. I still respond to all support requests.
What strategy has been particularly effective in growing your website audience this year?
SEO, we spent a lot of effort in the last 12 months, and it has started to bring good traffic. SEO takes time and requires constant adjustments. But once you get it going, it is a great inbound medium.
Bethenny eats, sleeps, and breathes digital marketing. She helps clients take charge of brand awareness and create lead generation strategies via a number of marketing channels, including email, social media, SEO, and content. When not a marketing superwoman, you can find her playing with her three dogs on her five-acre property, or planting yummy treats in her vegetable garden. (She is also a bit of a Real Housewives junky, #guiltypleasure!)
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