Intercom co-founder Des Traynor explains how to “build the right thing” and scale strategically with principles, values, and mission.

1. Build the
right thing
from @intercom@destraynor

2. “What’s the one thing?”
“Your #1 tip?”
“What would you say to…”
“If there’s one lesson”
“What can be learned from….”
People often ask:

3. Find the right co-founders Pick a big important problem Understand the JTBD
Build the cupcake solution
Find your first users Iterate product from feedback Measure their engagement
Iterate to increase engagementLaunch a good beta
Remember to price it properly
Design world class onboarding Market the Job the product does Launch
Iterate your marketing Work your ass off to get customers
Listen to them and learn Study their usage
Interview them
Release new features
Get customers using them Kill your dead features Update your marketing
Fix your onboarding Increase your prices
Scale up your marketing team
Blog about your product vision
Have a strong vision Pick a good product name
Know your real competitors Grow an audience
Understand your competition
Build a great support team
Never give up
But there is no #1 top tip

4. So how do you build the right thing?

5. Know your strategy

6. STRATEGY
What should you build?
Growth and maintenance
Keep everything aligned
Why this matters

7. “Can’t we skip all this
strategy fluff and get
back to building great
product?”

8. This is a product team without a clear strategy

9. This is the same team with a clear strategy

10. But this is only one piece of the puzzle

11. All your teams need to be aligned around what you’re doing
Product
Marketing
Customers
Brand

12. Every decision you have to make
highlights a missing principle

13. Should we build a
Marketo integration?
Our biggest customer
wants us to roll out custom
permissions, should we?
Customers keep asking for this,
should we build it?
Someone is using our product in a weird
way, should we support that?
Our competitor already has this,
should we add it? Only 2 users need this, but it’s easy
to build, should we?
DECISIONS

14. Frequent
Generalizable
Decisions are either generalizable or not,
and either frequent or not.
You want your principles to be commonly
used and valuable, so they should be top
right.
This is where principles make sense.

15. Frequent
Generalizable
“What’s our stance
on integrations?”
“Should we build a
FogBugz integration?”
“Should we build a
Jira integration?”
“Should we build a
Trello integration?”
“Should we build an
Asana integration?”
Find the general principle
Cluster by
similarity

16. STRATEGY
What should you build?
Growth and maintenance
Keep everything aligned
Why this matters

17. Before you get started, ask yourself…

18. Text here
Viability
Feasibility
Desirability

19. Big
Rare
Small
Frequent
✓
✓
✓
✕
✓
You have to solve a big, frequent problem

20. High Value
Per Account
Low/No Touch
Onboarding
Low Value
Per Account
High Touch
Onboarding
✓
✕
✓
✓
What does it take for someone to use your product?

21. Problem:
“I need to grow
my business”
Grow
an
audience
Getthem
to
yoursite
Send
outbound
m
essages
Qualifythem
Create
opportunity
Schedule
dem
os
Negotiate
deals
Start
conversations
Solution:
“Net New ARR
up 10%”

22. 1.Find the first step in the user workflow
where your product can add new value.
How can you make it faster, easier, cheaper or more accessible?
2.Plan how to transition from the previous
step, seamlessly.
Minimize the “tool time” of the user.
Where should you start?

23. 1. If the next step is done by a market leader that
you don’t intend to fight.
e.g. Amazon, Salesforce, etc.
2. If the next step is completed in many different
ways.
e.g. transferring money, creating a report, invoice, etc
3. If it’s something you just can’t innovate on.
e.g.“They always phone their customer here and do the rest over
the phone.”
Where should you stop?

24. Run Ad
Campaigns
Purchase
lists
Sponsor
events
Research
Leads
Publish
content
Send
emails
Plan Follow
ups
Retarget
Leads
Negotiate
Pricing
Create
Prospect
Mark as
Closed Won
Assign to
Customer
Success
Start
Conversation
Qualify
Lead
Create
Lead
Schedule a
demo
It’s easy to think that you need to build all of this…

25. Run Ad
Campaigns
Purchase
lists
Sponsor
events
Research
Leads
Publish
content
Send
emails
Plan Follow
ups
Retarget
Leads
AUDIENCE BUILDING OUTBOUND MARKETING
Negotiate
Pricing
Create
Prospect
Mark as
Closed Won
Assign to
Customer
Success
CRM
Start
Conversation
Qualify
Lead
Create
Lead
CAPTURE AND CONVERT
Schedule a
demo
…but among all these features, there’s a few products.

26. How can we make
this as easy as possible?
Create
Prospect
How can we
remove work here?
Start
Conversation
Qualify
Lead
Create
Lead
CAPTURE AND CONVERT
Schedule a
demo
So you pick the product that you can add the most value to:

27. The Scopi-locks principle for Product Strategy
Just rightNot too big Not too small
or no one can adopt it
you’ll be dismissed as a
feature, not a product
small enough to adopt,
big enough to matter

28. cake base filling icing
cupcake cake wedding cake
versus
When you’re building your product, start with a cupcake.

29. 1. Build products that are feasible, viable and desirable.
2. Don’t solve small, rare problems.
3. Start and stop your products at good points in the user journey.
4. Your initial release shouldn’t be too big, nor too small.
5. Think cupcakes, not wedding cakes.
To recap on what you build

30. STRATEGY
What should you build?
Growth and maintenance
Keep everything aligned
Why this matters

31. Great products fight for a mission
Increase the GDP
of the internet
Be the place where
work happens
Make internet business personal
Transportation as
reliable as water Email designed
for work
The heartbeat
of the planet

32. Great products represents a set of unique opinions and values
Design for both sides
of the conversation
Integrate with all top
tier MarTech stacks Selling never stops -
works on mobile
Always show
the people
The right messages
to the right people
at the right time
Single platform for
all conversations

33. Marketing Sales
"The right messages
to the right people
at the right time.”
“The easiest way
to write sales emails.”
“The fastest way
to import an email list and
start a campaign.”
Bad things happen when key functions
sell fundamentally different things
Product

34. Marketing Sales
"The right messages
to the right people
at the right time.”
“The easiest way
to write sales emails.”
“The fastest way
to import an email list and
start a campaign.”
Bad things happen when key functions
iterate independently
“The best targeted messages
by channel”
“The largest selection of email templates
and pre-canned content”
“The highest deliverability rates for
the lowest prices”
Product

35. Misaligned product team
Misaligned marketing
Misaligned sales teams
If a function doesn’t do its job, someone else has to
• builds messy product that’s impossible to market
• builds features that work against brand
• ignores boring iteration for fun innovation
• runs campaigns for a fictional product
• runs vague campaigns, leaving Sales to explain it
• builds audiences that don’t need the product
• makes promises not delivered in product
• sells messy use cases

36. what youBuild Sell

37. what you BuildSell

38. 1. You need a unique vision and set of values.
2. Product, Sales and Marketing must be aligned around the
same message.
3. Independent iteration is dangerous.
4. Ensure Product builds what you sell and Sales sells what
you build.
To recap on alignment

39. STRATEGY
What should you build?
Growth and maintenance
Keep everything aligned
Why this matters

40. What got you here won’t get you there.

41. Early product companies work off intuition,
inspiration, gut, feel, etc.
This doesn’t scale.

42. Even if it did scale, it’s not a good idea.

43. Roadmap
Current
customers
Product
iterations
Voice of sales
Competitive
landscape
Churn
reports
Product
health
New ideas

44. Current
customers
Product
iterations
Voice of sales
Competitive
landscape
Churn
reports
Product
health
New ideas
How you allocate your time here is crucial

45. Current
customers
Product
iterations
Voice of sales
Competitive
landscape
Churn
reports
Product
health
New ideas
Some will flare up, some you have to earn

46. They will require different modes of work
Addressing problemsIterations & new ideas
Speculative
Open ended
Failure is acceptable
Opportunity to differentiate
Well understood outcome
KPI driven
Failure rarely acceptable
Follow best practices

47. Every piece of product work needs a revenue hypothesis
This work will…
Help Sales close more deals
Help us sell at higher prices
Decrease customer churn
Improve our site conversion rate
Give us a unique position in market
Decrease costs to serve our customers

48. Adding features just to close deals is easy.
It leads to consulting-ware long term.

50. Feature Feature Feature Feature Feature Feature
%ofcustomersthatuseit
Most products have a few important features…

51. Feature Feature Feature Feature Feature Feature
%ofcustomersthatuseit
Feature Feature Feature Feature Feature Feature
“Just this once”
“Look at the ARR tho!”
“Said they’ll quit”
…but adding features that are only used by a few customers
is how your product becomes a bloated mess.

52. This isn’t some product purist bullsh*t.
You pay for that complexity in
Marketing, Support, Success, etc.

53. Maintaining all
of this code is
a nightmare.

54. None of this will protect you from competition

55. In SaaS every feature you work on either:
a) fails to get adopted by customers
b) gets copied (aka becomes best practice)

56. Delighted
Customer
Small
Investment
Disgusted
Customer
Large
Investment
Everything becomes table stakes over time
At first they’re delightful…
…then they’re performant…
…then they’re a must-have.

57. Economies of scale - accept a tiny margin for a massive volume
Network effects - ensure your product improves the more it’s adopted
IP/Patents trade secrets - make it illegal to copy you
High switching costs - make it simply too much work to leave
Customer loyalty - make it so no one ever wants to leave
The old moats

58. A platform - make it the norm for businesses to build on top of you
A community - you can’t ⌘C⌘V a community around shared ideas
A brand - a crisp identity that’s relevant and resonant with your customer
The new moats

59. A platform

60. A community

61. A brand

62. 1. You have to make room for lots of inputs into your roadmap.
2. How you weight each of those inputs is a massive decision.
3. Your product team should tailor its processes to match its
problems.
4. All product work should have a revenue hypothesis.
5. Be wary of adding incremental features based on
anecdotes, they cost you.
6. None of this prevents you from being copied, so decide
what’s in your moat.
To recap on growing and maintaining your product

63. Get everyone aligned around the mission and the strategy,
and the decisions all take care of themselves.

64. Capture more leads and
close more deals
More than live chat. Use bots and messenger apps to capture more leads,
and automatically qualify and schedule sales meetings with the best ones.
Capture and convert leads Powered by 💬 Inbox + 🛧 Messages
Check out our capture and convert use case →

65. Turn more signups into
active, valuable customers
Send targeted messages to onboard new users, increase
engagement, announce new features and more.
Onboard and engage customers Powered by 🛧 Messages
Check out our onboard and engage use case →

66. Show customers that you care.
Transform your customer support.
Use email and messaging to get quicker responses, faster resolutions
and more satisfied customers.
Support and retain customers Powered by 💬 Inbox + 📖 Articles
Check out our support and retain use case →

67. Thanks
des@intercom.com
from @intercom@destraynor