Fighting the Five Core Product Problems ft. Des Traynor

Rarely do I hear a podcast that gives me pause long enough to force multiple listens.  This week’s feature of Des Traynor did just that.  It’s a must listen for anyone building a product.  He’ll walk you from discovery through scaling with insightful lessons even grizzled vets can make use of:

http://thisweekinstartups.com/launch-incubator-des-traynor/

Here are some classic product problems Des tackles:

1 - Founder Focus

Be:

• Customer focused – use customer conversations to drive decisions
• Pattern focused – use metrics to drive decisions
• Visionary – have a strong belief about the way the world should work and execute on that
• Artistic – execute for personal engagement with little regard to external perception
• Pick one and stick with it.

2 - Scope
Swiss Army knife vs scalpel.  Be the scalpel.  Your early product should be easy.

• easy to understand
• easy to test
• easy to compare

It should not do a bunch of things marginally well.

3 - Creep

Every feature should help more people or help people do more. 
i.e. Each of your features needs to engage a larger audience or more deeply engage your existing audience.  Celebrate usage - not launches.  Focus on the core – launch features that help everyone – not a small segment (leads to consulting work).

Features are much harder to remove than launch.  So, if you make a bad choice that feature will likely rot quietly in your product degrading the overall experience.

Apply these tests to all new features:
-Does this fit your company’s vision?
-Does the reward significantly outweigh the cost of adoption for a user?
-Will this grow your business (higher satisfaction, more users, more frequent usage)?
-Will it matter in 5 years?
-Can we support this feature if its successful?

Beware of features that drive engagement but destroy values.  e.g. the LinkedIn/FB friend suggesters  Now that everyone adds everyone else on those social networks users no longer have a list of their deep connections.

4 - Purpose
Understand jobs to be done. e.g. Analytics dashboards are often built to be presented.  So, portability/aesthetics are more important than precision/detail.

Continue to innovate on your job not on a technology platform

5 - The New Magic (aka core trends)
What was once amazing innovation is now table stakes.  These three things are must haves for products coming of age today:

1. Do one thing – apps that can be operated with one click (Uber/Instacart).  
2. Data is there – by connecting to FB/LinkedIn etc.  You can get all the data you need.  Be very careful when asking users for data that you couldn’t get it elsewhere.
3. Recommendation – systems are smart enough to deliver the information to you (ie in a daily email) rather than forcing you to go find it.  Workstreams can be made increasingly more passive with daily digests and activity streams.

The Case for Being Pig Headed

One of my dad's favorite analogies comes from breakfast.  In the classic plate of bacon and eggs the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed.

When applied to entrepreneurship I think about the interplay between investors and entrepreneurs.  Investors have money at stake - usually in the single digit percentages of their net equity.  Entrepreneurs on the other hand are betting it all - all of their time, all of their energy, and often all of their money.

So, I've always been surprised that entrepreneurs evaluate the viability of their company by the input they receive from investors.  The chickens, often with comparatively little at stake, evaluate opportunities and give advice from the perspective of the involved...not the committed.

Entrepreneurs should instead focus on themselves - the committed. Are you all in?  Does every piece of evidence point to this venture being worth the next 1-2 years of your life?  Are customers willing to bet the farm on you?

Be brave.  Be pig-headed.  And stop listening to those chickens.

No Business Card Challenge

I have a confession to make: I don’t have business cards.  I used to carry them religiously – 3-4 in my wallet at all times – ready with a card for a serendipitous connection.  I’ve given and received hundreds of cards over the years, but can still count on my fingers the number of valuable connections made. Following up ‘later’ just never happens.

When I meet someone interesting today – I simply send them an email on the spot. It takes just a second - type in the email address, fill in the subject and you both have a cue to connect sitting in your inboxes instantly.  This removes the separate task of follow up after an event, ensures that the message isn’t lost in a jacket pocket for eternity, and provides an immediate cue to connect later. 

In a time before iPhones and 4G business cards had a place as the most efficient means of exchanging information.  However, today, when we all carry our computers in our pockets they  just don’t make sense and should be relegated to being a lost vestige of the meeting ritual:

So I ask of all of you to shelve the archaic cardstock artifacts of last generation’s business world and join the mobile generation. Make connections instant and persistent.

Take the No Business Card Challenge!

And now that you have a bunch of business cards you won’t be handing out anymore – Hugh MacLeod has found that they make the perfect cartoon canvases: