[altdataseller]

I think even if you have all the data, it’s not always a science too because what works for one audience will not work in another.

HN is a good example of this. Headlines that are too outrageous or catchy do not get upvoted that much here but something simple like “I created a rust debugging toolkit” will likely get upvoted like crazy, while something like “I got laid off a day after I got pregnant. Here’s what happened” probably will get buzz on TikTok.

[apsurd]

The danger is it's all local optima. A/b test shows lift on "i created a rust copilot" vs "rust debugging toolkit". Ultimately.. it's one big "so what" outcome. These are distractions. A product either has market fit or it doesn't.

The big companies are especially susceptible to these distractions because they have the budget to blow chasing micro funnel optimizations. It sounds reasonable, but in my experience i agree it's a waste of resources.

It's too hard to prove causality. Entire orgs are set up to run rigid experimentation analysis, and prove incrementality so we can trust the data. But that should be warning of just how complicated it is. and we can't 100% trust it. There's external factors. hence a button color and a line of text shouldn't make the cut list of priorities. it's not that significant.

[altdataseller]

Yes but just because you have product market fit doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to optimize copy so that it reaches as big an audience as possible

[nehagetschoice]

Yeah - two themes here -

1) Is copy even important? I think it is. If this post was titled, "Auto-tune experimentation for short-form content optimization", it might make half the audience confused about the product. In fact, the 1-liner we use for HN is very different from when we talk to VCs, because the audience is different with different goals & backgrounds. I guess the point I am making is that messaging has to be contextualized, depending on users, platform, and goals.

2) PMF vs copy - I agree that the two are orthogonal. Copy is not going to solve for the lack of a PMF (and it shouldn't). Exactly the point above - the goal is to help more and more users comprehend what you do, hopefully in a way that's more personalized to them.

[apsurd]

PMF isn't orthogonal to copy if you're experimenting with copy to drive an outcome. what is the outcome then? how do you measure it? isn't the state of the art conversion?

That's the challenge: conversion funnel is complex with many factors. and largest one of them, in simple terms, is PMF.

if we measure downstream like clicks or inbound leads etc, that's more aligned with "discovery of PMF" and that's good. But it should be stacked ranked as so, it's not driving the needle. it's exploratory.

[apsurd]

More companies think they have PMF than really do. So the risk is they get funding, without fit, and can afford to set up data science orgs to prove out experiments and use non trivial resources running copy tests.

if justwords can make this trivial then at least it's minimizing the distraction. that's a win, and fwiw i think b2b wants this product, so the company can do well. i just don't think micro content optimization, after doing it for unicorn for 8 years, really moves the needle like people believe the data shows. People use PMF products in spite of their UX! (for example)

[lowercased]

> I think even if you have all the data, it’s not always a science too because what works for one audience will not work in another.

Wouldn't 'all the data' by definition have the data for various audiences at least calculable?