Microsoft 365 · office apps suite
Buy attribution and messaging tools before the mobile apps had product fit
Didn't work: privacy problems and big bills for tools barely used; redone years later
Failedanalytics-attributionnotifications
What they did
In 2015-2018 the team added an MMP and an engagement platform while the mobile apps were still finding product-market fit. Implementations could not cope with fast-changing privacy law (GDPR) and a single app serving both enterprise and consumer users, and the vendors were young. Only after the mobile apps reached product-market fit did they integrate an MMP again (early 2024).
What happened
Repeated privacy issues, and large bills (due to high MAU) for software they were not really using, because optimization only pays after product-market fit.
- Stage
- early
- Effort
- Paid vendor contracts over roughly 2015-2018
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Operating Like a Start-up inside the World’s Biggest Company — Ramit Arora, Microsoft“One was privacy issues, because privacy laws were changing really, really fast.”
“we were paying this big bills, but we were not really using it, because on one side, we were just figuring out the products.”
“So optimization comes much after your product-market fit is there.”
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