Great Collaborators Should Challenge Your Thinking

In your startup, you should be looking for collaborators who challenge your thinking. 

This does not mean they are 'assholes' or devil's advocate just for the sake of it, but rather they are sure to delineate the risks (so that they can be managed), help reveal blind spots, and fill in the blanks in terms of your own skillsets and capacity. 

In some cases these people should make you a little uncomfortable because they're giving you new data and areas of focus that you hadn't previously understood or considered important. 

It's important, though, that those people are able to 'disagree and commit'. Once you make the call, they should get on board and work their heart outs to make your decision and vision a reality.

Originally Posted On Facebook

3 Key Product Mistakes To Avoid

Startups often make a number of key product mistakes over and over. Some that come to mind today...

1. Starting with too broad a "platform" trying to solve all categories/verticals/use-cases. E.g. "It could be anything!"

2. Starting with the wrong specific problem or niche vertical when there might be another niche that has more pain and money associated with it. E.g. Working to help gardeners get leads instead of helping lawyers (more money in the latter).

3. Starting with the wrong specific solution by not directly attacking the #1 sub-problem in the given market/use-case. E.g. Building a product to help lawyers write proposals when what they might actually need most is new business leads

Originally Posted On Facebook

It's Not A Startup Unless...

• 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.

Originally Posted On Facebook

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

1. 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).

2. The market your addressing is large enough such that your total revenue can become meaningfully large.

3. 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)

4. 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.

Originally Posted On Facebook

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.

Originally Posted On Facebook

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.

Originally Posted On Facebook

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

Originally Posted On Facebook

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.

Originally Posted On Facebook

Product Management Isn’t That Hard.

It just requires a little bit of... 

1. Empathy

2. Common sense

Oh and a little bit of...

1. Taste

2. Design skills

3. Technical understanding 

4. Project management

5. Leadership and consensus building

6. Diplomacy

7. Pattern matching

8. Data analysis

9. Vision

10. Pragmatism

11. Attention to detail

12. Long term discipline

13. Experience

14. Passion

15. Curiosity/truth-seeking

But that’s about it...

Originally Posted On Facebook

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.

Originally Posted On Facebook

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.

Originally Posted On Facebook

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.

Originally Posted On Facebook

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

Originally Posted On Facebook

A Bird In The Hand

If you have a great term sheet on the table, take it.

Originally Posted On Facebook

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.

Originally Posted On Facebook

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.

Originally Posted On Facebook

The Startup Sprint

Startups are a sprint in the short term and a marathon in the long term. Very hard to balance.

Originally Posted On Facebook

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.

Originally Posted On Facebook

What Is The Worst Sound You Could Hear From Your Team?

The worst sound you can hear from your team is silence.

Originally Posted On Facebook

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.

Originally Posted On Facebook