Product Development for Startups

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENTUzi Shmilovici - CEO, Future Simple

What to build 2

You need a reason to exist What is the problem that people really have and we are trying to solve? Make something people want 3

User and market researchScenario What it means Research? You understand the None / minimal research. problem intimately and Post launch - track can envision a solution.You are the user usage, TALK with You can probably come customers, understand up with a decent ﬁrst discrepancies. version. The worst scenario. Don’tYou think you are the user See below fall into this trap. Talk to as many people as You can’t understand the possible. Find experts. essence of the problem.You are not the user Don’t rely on focus Your ﬁrst version will likely groups (they rarely bring suck. great insights). 4

What to build in the first version 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. 5

Roadmap decisions - the “business metrics” testAlign your product roadmap decisions with growth in thekey metrics of your business.For example, develop a feature only if it will: Increase monthly signups by 10% -or- Increase retention rate by 2% -or- Increase revenues by 5%* Your key metrics might be totally different Used by Evernote 6

Roadmap decisions - the “risk/reward” testWould you rather have a 10% shot at a$10M business or a 0.1% shot at a $1Bbusiness?Shooting for a bigger business meanstaking more risks and building innovativefeatures that might as well fail miserably. vs. 10% Risk 0.1% Value 7

Roadmap decisions - the “betting on theinevitable” testAre you betting on the future or the past? Try toﬁgure out what will happen NEXT. 8

This guy... Bezos goes big all the way, betting on the future with huge projects (Kindle, AWS) while optimizing key metrics (1-click purchase).* From a letter to Amazon’s investors 9

How to build it 10

Your constraintsTime, budget and quality. Choose... one. Budget will below either way (unless you are Color). Most of the timeyou’ll start with a version you’ll be ashamed off,compromising quality in order to get to the market fast. Time Budget Quality How much time do we How much money to What is the level of have for this project. we have for this quality we want to Are there any external version? deliver. (L2O vs. factors affecting our Dave’s Kebabs). timeline? 11

Returns on qualityThere are great returnson quality, especially intoday’s market. Theinvestment in time Quality Zonemight be worth it (it Most people stop here Successtook Dropbox 18months to release theproduct). vs. Time and Effort 12

Many times the startup mantra will be: 13

Our philosophy @ Future Simple 14

Who should build 15

Hire only A players - really!!! X10 “Its not just a matter of 10 times more productive. Its that the average productive developer never hits the high notes that make great software.” Joel Spolsky 16

A note on dogfooding 17

Dogfooding #ftwJeff Hawkins carried a woodprototype of the Palm Pilot inhis pocket as he consideredhow customers would usesuch a device throughout thecourse of a day.At staff meetings, hesometimes even pulled outhis wood block to scrawlimaginary notes on the"screen." 18

F-O-C-U-S 19

So hard to achieve - but crucial...“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’vegot to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. Itmeans saying no to the hundred other good ideas thatthere are. You have to pick carefully.” 20

futuresimple.com/base Thanks.

http://blog.futuresimple.com	1715
http://www.glorum.com	404
http://www.scoop.it	227
http://glorum.com	39
http://paper.li	14
http://feeds.feedburner.com	14
http://a0.twimg.com	3
http://translate.googleusercontent.com	3
http://www.onlydoo.com	3
http://adarb.tumblr.com	3
http://twitteresting.com	2
http://us-w1.rockmelt.com	1
http://www.planearth.net	1

Product Development for Startups

by Future Simple on Dec 18, 2011

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Product Development for Startups — Presentation Transcript