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PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT FOR STARTUPS

What to build

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You need a reason to exist

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What is the problem that people really have and we are trying to solve?

Make something people want

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User and market research

4

Scenario What it means Research?

You are the user

You understand the problem intimately and can envision a solution. You can probably come up with a decent first version.

None / minimal research. Post launch - track usage, TALK with customers, understand discrepancies.

You think you are the user The worst scenario. Don’t fall into this trap. See below

You are not the user

You can’t understand the essence of the problem. Your first version will likely suck.

Talk to as many people as possible. Find experts. Don’t rely on focus groups (they rarely bring great insights).

What to build in the first version

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Answer: what do we need to build in order to test our business idea?

Hint: usually ~5% of the what you think you should build.

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Roadmap decisions - the “business metrics” test

Align your product roadmap decisions with growth in the key metrics of your business.

Increase monthly signups by 10%

-or- Increase retention rate by 2%

-or- Increase revenues by 5%

Used by Evernote* Your key metrics might be totally different

For example, develop a feature only if it will:

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10% 0.1%

vs.

Risk Value

Roadmap decisions - the “risk/reward” test

Would you rather have a 10% shot at a $10M business or a 0.1% shot at a $1B business? Shooting for a bigger business means taking more risks and building innovative features that might as well fail miserably.

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Roadmap decisions - the “betting on the inevitable” test

Are you betting on the future or the past? Try to figure out what will happen NEXT.

This guy...

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* From a letter to Amazon’s investors

Bezos goes big all the way, betting on the future with huge projects (Kindle, AWS) while optimizing key metrics (1-click purchase).

How to build it

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Your constraints

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TimeHow much time do we have for this project. Are there any external factors affecting our timeline?

BudgetHow much money to we have for this version?

QualityWhat is the level of quality we want to deliver. (L2O vs. Dave’s Kebabs).

Time, budget and quality. Choose... one. Budget will be low either way (unless you are Color). Most of the time you’ll start with a version you’ll be ashamed off, compromising quality in order to get to the market fast.

Returns on quality

12

Time and Effort

Succ

ess Most people stop here

Quality Zone

vs.

There are great returns on quality, especially in today’s market. The investment in time might be worth it (it took Dropbox 18 months to release the product).

Many times the startup mantra will be:

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Our philosophy @ Future Simple

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Who should build

Hire only A players - really!!!

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“It's not just a matter of 10 times more productive. It's that the average productive developer never hits the high notes that make great software.”

X10

Joel Spolsky

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A note on dogfooding

Dogfooding #ftw

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Jeff Hawkins carried a wood prototype of the Palm Pilot in his pocket as he considered how customers would use such a device throughout the course of a day. At staff meetings, he sometimes even pulled out his wood block to scrawl imaginary notes on the "screen."

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F-O-C-U-S

So hard to achieve - but crucial...

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“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.”

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