Product & Startup Builder

6 Things To Avoid As A Young Startup

Added on by Chris Saad.

As a young startup, the things you must avoid include...

  • Biting off more than you can chew

  • Protracted timelines/scope creep that can blow out

  • Over engineering your solution before you know what your users really need

  • Vague requirements

  • Poor/miscommunication between stakeholders

  • Over promising and under delivering

This is why MVPs and strong cross functional process is essential. 

Reminder: If your problem is getting from A to B then the MVP is a skateboard (then a bicycle, then a motorbike, then a little hatchback, then a sedan, then a Porsche), not 4 wheels.

Originally Posted On Facebook

Product Design In 3 Phases

Added on by Chris Saad.

When working on product design:

  • First you want to get the "architecture" right (E.g. what are the core areas/screens/patterns)

  • Second, the UI metaphors (e.g. Are lists, feeds, carousels etc the right thing to do in each situation)

  • And finally, the fine grained details (is it 'your stuff' or 'my stuff', is it 'overview' or 'summary', is it 'done' or 'complete' etc).

Originally Posted On Facebook

Be Aware Of Your Personal Narratives

Added on by Chris Saad.

Be careful of your personal narratives and biases. They might be getting in your way and sabotaging your stated goals. For example:

  • Fundraising is not 'grovelling for money' - it's sharing your ideas and looking for partners who want to join you on the journey.

  • Monitor for any internal struggle between wanting to build a  'lifestyle business' and 'high-growth startup'. Both are fine, but they are different things and you should pick one intentionally. 

Originally Posted On Facebook

As A Product Manager, You’re Running A Factory Assembly Line

Added on by Chris Saad.

All the data, opinions and ideas are the raw material piled up at the start of the process. Ultimately it’s up to you what gets packaged up and sent down the line for assembly (in the form of a PRD).

If debates are going on too long it’s your job to drive a decision, codify it into a PRD and send it down the line to design or engineering.

Originally Posted On Facebook

Product Prioritization Through Clear Vision

Added on by Chris Saad.

“Given that we have limited resources, what would you say is more important, that it looks good or it's technically accurate?"

As the product manager, your job is ultimately to make it both. The trick is to break the problem down into discrete product "moves" such that each move is both beautiful and functional.

The process is not to figure out what resources you have and then work backwards to something you can ship. Your job is to figure out what you believe the user needs and figure out how to marshal your resources to get you there.

Usually, that requires you to create a shared purpose and mission for your team, a reasonable roadmap of discrete releases/moves and the discipline and focus to keep everyone's eye on the prize.

Originally Posted On Facebook

As A Young Startup, Should You Listen To Existing Customers Or Pivot?

Added on by Chris Saad.

It depends.

  • If you feel like you have great product-market fit, and there's a large market of like-minded customers you can dominate: Listen to existing customers and continue to incrementally improve your product.

  • If you feel like you have great and growing product-market fit, but there isn't a big, profitable market left to conquer (or you've found yourself in a product/market you're not passionate about anymore): Sell to someone who wants to tap that market.

  • If you feel like you don't have great product-market fit and can't see a path towards finding it: Pivot, hard. Ignore existing customers and focus all your resources on the new direction.

Originally Posted On Facebook

2 Ways To Handle First Calls

Added on by Chris Saad.

As a Strategic Advisor, there’s two ways to handle first calls:

Option 1. Talk about how you could help, in theory, if they formalize the relationship with you. In this case you’re leaning on scarcity and mystery.

Option 2. Help as much as you possibly can, for free. In this case you’re hoping they understand the immediate value and recognize that the devil is in the implementation details.

I prefer option 2.

Add value. The rest takes care of itself.

Originally Posted On Facebook

Platforms: Show Me The Money!

Added on by Chris Saad.

Show me the money!

Devs (especially top 50 apps from FB to Eventbrite) care about new users, re-engagement and money.

Unless your platform is solving fundamental technical challenge like SMS, Voice/Video etc (i.e. you're offering "nice to have" features) you need to demonstrate - in as concrete terms as possible - how you are going to drive new users, more sessions or more money for the developer.

Originally Posted on Facebook

How Did Uber Scale So Fast?

Added on by Chris Saad.

My friend just asked me how Uber scaled so fast. My off-the-cuff answer:

  • Huge ambition/vision/appetite - this animates and motivates everyone and everything 

  • First principles thinking - this leads to ignoring legacy constraints and encourages new innovative thinking/solutions

  • Fearless execution with ownership/accountability at the edge - which allows everyone to move fast without waiting for permission

I’d also add...

  • Bias towards action - move fast. Have the meeting this week, not next week

  • Hire strong operators that, in-turn, hire strong operators. 

Of course, these are some of the same things that got it in trouble too.

Originally Posted On Facebook

Ask For The Right Amount Of Funding

Added on by Chris Saad.

Investors have limited bandwidth and a chunk of capital they need to put to work. 

Don’t try to minimize your funding ask thinking it will be easier to get a “Yes”. You need to be asking for the right amount of money to put you on a trajectory to win your category and get a 100x return on their bet. 

Anything less than that is uninteresting and comes across as naive.

Originally Posted On Facebook

Unbundling Consensus From Legacy

Added on by Chris Saad.

The world is built on consensus.

Concepts like ownership, law, money, monarchy, governance etc - they are merely constructs built on this fundamental mechanism. 

Said another way: the only reason we can own a piece of land or money has value or the queen is the queen is because a sufficient number of people agree that those things are true. All the mechanisms and norms of society only exist because the majority basically agree they exist.

In an era where our most senior business and political leaders are explicitly calling into question our fundamental institutions of operationalized consensus - or manipulating them for their own greedy and corrupt ends - a new kind of consensus needs to emerge.

That’s why Blockchain technology is so very important.

Being able to turn human consensus into running code and an immutable distributed dataset (e.g a ledger) transforms our implicit rules operated by central authorities into distributed, peer-to-peer operations. 

We can now unbundle consensus from legacy, centralized institutions and put it at the edge. 

The implications are profoundly disruptive. For both good and ill.

Originally Posted On Facebook