Se how product management is done at Firstbird and take away the pitfalls and lessons learned. From road mapping over user testing to experimenting and introducing impact driven development.

1. Product Management in an Early Stage Startup
Markus Hafellner - Product & Project Manager
@mhafellner
markus.hafellner@firstbird.com
mhafellner.com

2. Agenda
Prologue
● Early stage startup means?
Main Part
● The starting point
● The journey
● Where we are now
Epilogue
● Pitfalls and lessons learned
@mhafellner

3. @mhafellner
● Founded in 2013
● Product v1 built by an external team
● Product v2 built in house with the
launch in March 2016
● ~1.000 customers
● Pre Series A
Early stage startup means?
Brief History of Firstbird

4. ● Development team of 5
● Not much usage data
● Founder driven roadmap
● No user testing
● No experiments
● No metrics to measure success by
@mhafellner
https://media.giphy.com/media/PlnQNcQ4RYOhG/giphy.gif
The starting point
Our State of Product Management in 2016

5. ● Website tracking
● Event tracking
● Define MAU (or DAU)
● Define product KPIs and gather the
relevant data
@mhafellner
The journey
Get More Usage Data
http://www.itsice.com/ingram-
flyhigher/gdpr/images/gdprmangif.gif

6. Top down
● Vision
● Pillars of Success
● Product Themes
@mhafellner
The journey
Define a Product Vision

7. “We just need that one feature to sell
the product.”
@mhafellner
The journey
- Every sales rep ever (at some point)

8. @mhafellner
The journey
Introduce Communication Tools
● Feedback from customer
facing roles must be valued
● BUT don’t follow it blindly
● Make use of a Product
Intelligence Tool
○ Structured feedback
○ Transparency
○ History

9. ● Define product stakeholders
● Hold quarterly product goal meetings
● Hold monthly roadmap meetings
@mhafellner
The journey
Set up a Roadmap Process
http://design-kit-
staging.s3.amazonaws.com/procedures/transparent_cover_images/000/000/00
7/index/0_Roadmap_575x575.png?1409087521

10. ● Customer Council 2,3
● Start with feedback as early as possible in the development cycle
● Define the goal of a feature
● Connect the goal with a success metric (if reasonable)
● Control and iterate, don’t ship and forget
@mhafellner
The journey
Start User Testing and Experimenting

11. @mhafellner
The journey
Give the Front Lines Some Material
● Join your Sales/CS teams in recurring
meetings to introduce new features
● Create press releases for internal and
external use 4

12. @mhafellner
The journey
Visualise Whenever Possible - Product Tree 1
● Dependencies are hard to know for
non-product/tech folks
● The importance of infrastructure is
often not understood
● Think about “logs to burn”

13. Feature Factory 5 -> Impact Driven Development
● Move away from celebrating the release to
celebrating the impact of a feature
● Keep customers in the loop early on
Impact (measured 30 days after release)
● Goal: More transparency and clear
communication for no reward cases
● Success metric: People selecting a reason
● Result: 90% feature usage
@mhafellner
Where we are now

14. Test Early and Test Often
Pitfalls
● You don’t and can’t know everything
● “Get out of the building” has to be taken
seriously to discover unknowns
Lessons learned
● Make user testing a habit 6
● Share results openly and with everybody in
the company
● Involve other team members
@mhafellner
Pitfalls and lessons learned

15. Be a Strong Product Leader
Pitfalls
● Don’t let others tell you what to do
● Reactive product management lags behind
Lessons learned
● Tell others what you do
● Proactive product management leads the
way
@mhafellner
Pitfalls and lessons learned

16. Communicate, Communicate, Communicate
Pitfalls
● Nothing is implicit
● More people means more structure
needed
Lessons learned
● Better say the same thing three times
● Casual conversations are not enough
when becoming a bigger team/company
@mhafellner
Pitfalls and lessons learned

17. Markus Hafellner - Product & Project Manager
@mhafellner
markus.hafellner@firstbird.com
mhafellner.com

18. Resources
1) Bastow, J. (2016). The Product Tree Game: Our Favorite Way To Prioritize Features. Retrieved April 11, 2018, from
https://www.prodpad.com/blog/product-tree-game/
2) Massey, C. (2017). Taylor Wescoatt - Being the First Product Manager - Mind the Product. Retrieved April 11, 2018, from
https://www.mindtheproduct.com/2017/08/taylor-wescoatt-first-product-manager/
3) All Hail the Customer Council : Seedcamp. (n.d.). Retrieved April 11, 2018, from http://seedcamp.com/resources/all-hail-the-
customer-council/
4) McAllister, I. (2012). Ian McAllister’s answer to Amazon (company): What is Amazon’s approach to product development and
product management? - Quora. Retrieved April 11, 2018, from https://www.quora.com/Amazon-company-What-is-Amazons-
approach-to-product-development-and-product-management/answer/Ian-McAllister
5) Cutler, J. (2016). 12 Signs You're Working in a Feature Factory – Hacker Noon. Retrieved April 11, 2018, from
https://hackernoon.com/12-signs-youre-working-in-a-feature-factory-44a5b938d6a2
6) Harward, T. (2018). Your team needs to make user research a habit. Retrieved April 11, 2018, from
https://www.invisionapp.com/blog/user-research-habit/
@mhafellner