It’s not a startup until you quit your day job. Until then it’s a side project.
It’s not a product until users are onboarding themselves. Until then it’s a technology/prototype/experiment.
It’s not a business until your product is generating revenue.
It’s not truly scalable until you can grow users/activity/revenue without a corresponding growth in employees.
It’s not sustainable until your business is breakeven/profitable.
Product & Startup Builder
4 Things You Need To Prove To Raise Capital & Have A Good Exit
If you're building & running a self-serve consumer app, you really only need to prove 4 things to raise capital and have a good exit
You can spend $x on acquiring a user and get $y in return. Where y is the Customer Life Time Value (LTV). It’s ok if Y is initially less than X (this is investing/subsidizing growth - see point 3).
The market your addressing is large enough such that your total revenue can become meaningfully large.
You have a clear and believable strategy to reduce the cost of X and increase the return of Y (This is essential if X is still greater than Y)
You have an IPO in your future and/or (more likely) you have a number of potential acquirers lined up - ideally you've started building relationships with them already.
Product Managers Need To Say ‘No’
I've noticed a lot of product managers end up in a situation where an avalanche of shit is landing on their head from multiple sources.
When in this situation they often take it all on and view their job is to just keep shoveling - trying their best to dig themselves out - all the while failing to meet anyone's expectations and not having very much fun.
While this might seem admirable it is ultimately ineffective.
Part of the Product Management role is to clearly communicate to all stakeholders (including the people providing resources) how much is on your teams plate and if you need more resources, time and/or prioritisation.
The most powerful thing you can do is say "No" as clearly and thoughtfully as possible.
You do this in multiple ways, including...
1. Be ruthless about prioritizating your backlog (in collaboration with your stakeholders)
2. Provide clear information/visualization for your stakeholders about what's on your roadmap and how long things will take to get done.
3. Push back against stakeholders who say "Isn't it easy to..." or "Can't we just..." and instead make it very clear what it takes to build and ship a quality product (using your roadmap as a tool for communication).
4. Insist that if your team is going to be responsible and accountable for more than it can handle, that you either get more resources or fewer responsibilities.
If the stakeholders around you don't understand or respect this process, then you're also free to move on.
You Need To Hire When...
Don't hire until you're absolutely ready to hire. Building a team to run an imaginary business just burns time and money.
You know you need someone to join your team when...
1. You, or someone on your team, is underwater and the tasks hitting the floor are holding the business back.
2. You don't have anyone on the team who is good enough to complete an essential and immediate task at the level of quality/effectiveness needed.
For example, don't hire a sales person unless you have a product to sell - and you've personally figured out how to sell it with the first few sales. Don't hire a growth marketer until you have a self-serve product ready to onboard and retain users. Don't hire a community manager until you have a product worth building a community around.
Noticing a trend? Build a PRODUCT that people want to use and is ready to scale before scaling your team.
It’s Not Enough To Have An Idea...
It’s not enough to have an idea
It’s not enough to give it a name
It’s not enough to tell your friends
It’s not enough to dabble or do research
It’s not enough to build a pitch deck that clearly explains the problem, solution, market, business model, etc
It’s not enough to build consensus with key craftspeople (engineers, designers, sales, marketing)
It’s not enough to build a clear and easy to use user interface/user experience
It’s not enough to build a prototype
It’s not enough to build an minimum viable product
It’s not enough to ship it
It’s not enough to market it
You have to do ALL of those things - and much, much more. Consistently and effectively. And then iterate, iterate, iterate
What Does Being A Product Manager Mean?
Upon asking a colleague what being a product manager meant to him, he gave me one of the best answers I've heard.
P. R. D
Product managers will recognize that this acronym refers to an oft used tool of Product Management known as a Product Requirements Doc. It's the way that a PM shares the details/spec of the product that needs to be built with all key stakeholders (especially engineers).
In this context, though, he came up with:
Priorities
Requirements
Design
I love this. An elegant way of repurposing the acronym to neatly summarize what PMs should be focused on.
Product Management Isn’t That Hard.
It just requires a little bit of...
Empathy
Common sense
Oh and a little bit of...
Taste
Design skills
Technical understanding
Project management
Leadership and consensus building
Diplomacy
Pattern matching
Data analysis
Vision
Pragmatism
Attention to detail
Long term discipline
Experience
Passion
Curiosity/truth-seeking
But that’s about it...
Use Internal Updates To Drive Alignment
Internal stakeholder updates can make all the difference between alignment and chaos.
Be sure that your investor update emails (and internal stakeholder updates of all kinds in fact) start with clear charts to show key KPIs and include Highlights, Lowlights and What's next.
Ensure each section is concisely written with bullet points that contain key facts and implications without too much fluff.
Be sure to be real so that your stakeholders can help you when possible and aren't blind sided if things go off the rails.
Planning Is Not A Distraction.
If you have too much on your plate (fires, bug fixes, feature requests) to find the time to do 2019 strategic planning while your hemorrhaging capital, then the ONLY thing you have time for is strategic planning for 2019.
Planning is not a distraction, a nice to have, or a way to find MORE to do. It's a way to find FEWER more FOCUSED and more ESSENTIAL things so that your time is better spent and your outcomes are maximised.
Simple Is Often Better Than "Sophisticated"
If no one is buying your product, it doesn't matter how smart/sophisticated it is. You must solve the top of the funnel first. You MUST figure out how to make something simple to understand and use that people will self-adopt.
4 Great Cultural Values For Startups
Last week I spoke to a startup with some great cultural values. I got their permission to share them - so here they are!
Initiative but not a lone wolf
Urgency but not rushed
Fun but not unprofessional
Scientific but not heartless
A Bird In The Hand
If you have a great term sheet on the table, take it.
Pricing Strategy
Pricing strategy is a very interesting game of psychology, unit economics and gamification.
In two sided marketplaces it gets even more interesting. There are so many counter-intuitive ways to get creative to drive the kind of demand and supply side behavior you want.
Recruiting Is A Real Art
It’s a cliché these days to say people are the most important part of any company. But it’s absolutely true.
Hiring strong people, particularly product managers, is a real art.
Prior to my experience at Uber, I considered myself pretty poor at interviewing and recruiting candidates.
However, seeing how Uber does it up close, and going through many, many, many interviews as part of the hypergrowth the company was experiencing, really gave me new insights into how to do it well.
One of my favorite compliments I received after leaving Uber was how effective a team builder I was.
Even though people can really make or break a company’s success, I find that most startups really don’t know how to recruit for key roles. So these days I’m increasingly helping the startups I work with think through how to describe their job requirements, find and reach out to candidates, and build interview loops that really test for a great fit with the company’s needs.
It’s so rewarding finding amazing people to supercharge the dreams of founders.
The Startup Sprint
Startups are a sprint in the short term and a marathon in the long term. Very hard to balance.
Product Is About Nuance Across Multiple Dimensions
Product is about nuance across multiple dimensions - context, intent, markets, personalities and more.
As someone who started out as an engineer, I’ve made the mistake of forgetting this over and over in my career.
As a (good) Engineer, you want to generalize things as much as possible. You want to look for common patterns and implement as few entities and workflows as possible.
An asset is an asset, right?
Wrong.
As a Product Manager you need to understand the difference between Persona A and B, Use Case A and B, Intent A and B etc. they can and should be very, very different.
Word choice, framing, UX metaphors etc should all radically change even while the underlying entities might remain the same.
The goal is not maximum system elegance/rationalization but, rather, maximum user understanding/alignment with their existing mental models and needs.
What Is The Worst Sound You Could Hear From Your Team?
The worst sound you can hear from your team is silence.
One Thing Product Managers Should Try To Avoid
As a product manager if you can avoid inventing something new to solve a problem, you've achieved something great.
Are You Not Shipping Great Features At A Regular Cadence?
Does it feel like you’re not shipping great features at a regular cadence? You likely have a product management problem.
Sell Your Own Product!
In the early days of a b2c startup, doing bizdev activity for b2b2c distribution can feel so fun and gratifying.
It can feel like high-momentum, effective work that allows you to lock down glossy brands and partnerships who might get you big batches of users through the door. It also feels great to announce them to friends, family, media etc.
Often times, though, the reality is much, much different. Why? Because...
They often move very, very slowly.
They demand new features and behaviors that are tangential or orthogonal to your core product and business strategy.
They change their mind mid-stream
If you eventually get to ship the partnership/co-marketing program the results/conversion are often much, much smaller than you expect
If the results are marginal (which they almost always are at the beginning), your partner will often give up quickly and not put in the effort to optimise
For all these reasons, and many more, bizdev partnerships for a b2c app is really something to push off for later as a long-term bet and moat.
Instead, there's an axiom that says "Sell your own product'
Often times this feels like a harder, more data driven grind. However if you crack it (and you need to crack it!), it's high-scale, repeatable and has a huge, huge upside. It also forces you to really polish your product so that the user acquisition and retention really works.