Your guide to how to build your first product (web/mobile).

1. Building a Product
Meraj Faheem
@Merajf
fb.com/merajismeraj
meraj@thehackingschool.com

2. India’s First Coding Bootcamp
(2014)
World’s fastest and easiest
website builder. (2015)
Patent Pending FX trading tool
(2011)

3. Product = Business

4. Idea Validation: Type 2
Examples of most abused
user acquisition models:
● Free rides
● Free food delivery
● Free home services
● Free blah blah blah
Basically, on-demand
business models - popularly
known as ‘Uber for X’ model.

5. Idea Validation: Type 1
● So basically build nothing
and then try to sell it.
● Set up just a landing page
with your product specs.
See how many it excites.
● Go ahead and build your
product if at least 50
people pay for it.
● Friends, family, relatives,
in-laws - they don’t count.

6. Building the product
● Decide upon the bare minimum
features that you can ship you
product with.
● Have a product roadmap with
milestones:
○ 1-100 Users: Feature A-C.
○ 101-500 Users: Features C-M
○ 501-999 Users: Features N-Q
● Test the efficiency of the existing
features before adding new.
● Prioritization (Bugs/New Ideas/Big
Ideas)
● Build > Release> Test> Repeat

7. User Experience:
Build at least ONE
remarkable,
extraordinary feature in
your product that your
customers would want to
come back for, or talk
about it to their friends.

8. User Experience
● Do not ever think you
can predict the user
behaviour. You just
can’t. No one can.
● Optimize the user
onboarding experience
by simplifying the path.

9. User Experience: A/B Test

10. Analytics
● Thumb rule: Do not
launch without
implementing
Analytics*.
● Analytics is the way you’ll
get to know how your user
actually uses your
product.
● Use these insights to
refine, tune up and
optimize your product and
conversions.
*not sure how to implement? Ask me!

11. Growth.
There is only metric in
this world that’s
important. And that is
your Growth metric.
If your product* needs
a sales guy to explain
people why they
should consider using
it - You’ve already lost.
How many users you
had yesterday? How
many you’ve today?
Tomorrow? You should
be green every day.
Automate
the Hell
out!
User retention is
more important
than User
Acquisition.
*Valid in case of
web/internet
consumer products

12. Taking the leap

13. Thank you!!!