AMA with the Userflow Founders
Co-founders of Userflow, Esben Friis-Jensen and Sebastian Seilund play a delicate game of balancing current market demands with driving real revenue outcomes. Fortunately, the insatiable appetite for AI proved to be more than just another shiny object for the Userflow team. Learn how Esben and Sebastian brought a new AI feature to market that played perfectly into improving customer retention and increased value for users.
“We needed to build something that was a revenue generating feature. Something that provided real value and we could charge something extra for, and not just a 'nice to have.'”
💡 Key Moments
- 14:02 Turning the shiny object into a revenue generating opportunity
- 18:11 How the bootstrapped, three-person team built their first prototype
- 25:45 How the team ran their closed beta
- 35:19 Balancing revenue outcomes and increasing value creation
- 49:43 Figuring out an early pricing model
- 54:29 Finding the right balance between the new AI feature and the core product strategy
▶️ Session play-by-play
- 0:30 Intros and lightning round
- 7:03 Userflow journey and their bootstrapped story
- 10:49 Why and how Userflow built the AI assistant
- 14:02 Turning the shiny object into a revenue generating opportunity
- 18:11 How the bootstrapped, three-person team built their first prototype
- 20:22 Finding original answers in a world of fake or obvious
- 22:30 How the Userflow team fine-tuned their model
- 25:45 How the team ran their closed beta
- 27:53 The UI/UX considerations behind the AI assistant and integrating it in the core product
- 29:28 How the Userflow team handles sensitive data and data privacy issues
- 34:08 How Userflow chose their vector database
- 35:19 Balancing revenue outcomes and increasing value creation
- 39:49 How did customers react to the new feature (in beta)
- 42:00 Iterating off of early feedback and fixing early flaws
- 44:25 When did the team realize this was something big for customers?
- 46:18 How did the team know the feature was ready for beta?
- 49:43 Figuring out an early pricing model
- 51:12 Leaning on existing ecosystems for organic launch
- 51:12 The happy retention surprise
- 53:33 How did the team measure success of the new AI assistant?
- 54:29 Finding the right balance between the new AI feature and the core product strategy
- 57:00 Where does AI fit into the core product and roadmap?
The People
Esben is co-founder and Chief Growth Officer at Userflow. He was formerly Chief Customer Officer at Cobalt, driving a customer-centric perspective across all business-critical processes, including sales, product, finance, and support.
Prior to becoming part of Cobalt’s founding team in 2013, Esben was a consultant at Accenture, where he specialized in test and deployment management of global IT implementations, particularly large-scale SAP implementations.
Sebastian is co-founder and CEO at Userflow. A self-taught software engineer, Sebastian is currently bootstrapping Userflow - a platform for building onboarding guides, product tours and more. He's a fullstack developer and has always been involved in both the back-end and the front-end. Originally from Denmark, Sebastian spent some time in San Francisco, worked at Google, founded Userflow, and his current journeys has found him back in Copenhagen.
Franciska Dethlefsen is the Head of Growth Marketing at Amplitude, a leading digital analytics platform that helps companies build better products. She has been with the company since 2021 when she started as a Senior Product Manager working on the developer experience.
She joined the company after they acquired Iteratively, where she worked as Head of Growth. She is also currently lending her knowledge as an Advisor at multiple companies including Essence Venture Capital, Metaphor Data, and Metaplane.
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We run a monthly AMA series to bring real stories from the field with a focus on actionable insights. We focus on failures, wins, and ways to help people like you build confidence in your own analytics journey.