#455 – The Doldrums of August

This week we performed a light analysis on what to expect for platform activity in August.

Every August, signups and meeting activity for Parabol slows way down. As CEO, it’s a scary feeling. I forget that this is when most of the world takes a vacation and many teams suspend their regular rhythms.

August is often the time when I get some of the most work done. Many of my colleagues are on vacation. There are fewer sales calls. I can focus and do some of my best work. Seeing platform activity drop off a bit feels counter to my personal experience.

For most of the year, Parabol has averaged between 350 and 500 signups every day. Friday tends to hold the weekly high for signups. Today, Friday, August 15th there were only 279 signups.

This morning, I was interested to learn which months are actually the busiest and quietest for us. We have a rich data analytics capability inside the company and so I jumped into our platform and ran the following analysis:

A few insights jumped out at me:

Metrics were generally quieter this week (and inspired this post!) We expect the rest of the month to be relatively quiet, sign-up wise until the 2nd week of September.

…held our first innovation advisory board retrospective. We’ve been working on designs and architecture of the next major iteration of Parabol and have engaged a panel of industry executives to help shape our initial offering. We’ll certainly have more to share here soon!

…planned development Cycle 10. Next week our 10th, six-week ShapeUp cycle kicks off. We’re focused on the general release of Parabol Pages and some innovation-related development activities.

…kick off Cycle 10!