Consumer Internet Lessons for Enterprise Product Managers

Beyond the obvious
Consumer Product Lessons for Enterprise PMs
©2014 LinkedIn Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
NASSCOM Product Conclave
Michael Korcuska
Vice President, Product Management
LinkedIn
October 31, 2014
1

Our mission
Connect the world’s professionals
to make them more productive and
successful

Member metrics
332
313
296
277
259
238
218
202
187
174
161
Q1’12
Q2’12
Q3’12
Q4’12
Q1’13
Q2’13
Q3’13
Q4’13
Q1’14
Q2’14
Q3'14
Members (mn)
90
84
82
76
78
75
65
58
50 51 52
Q1’12
Q2’12
Q3’12
Q4’12
Q1’13
Q2’13
Q3’13
Q4’13
Q1’14
Q2'14
Q3'14
1 2 3
Unique visiting members (mn)
28
26 25
22 22
21
18
15
12 13
11
Q1’12
Q2’12
Q3’12
Q4’12
Q1’13
Q2’13
Q3’13
Q4’13
Q1’14
Q2'14
Q3'14
Member page views (bn)
1 as of quarter end | 2 monthly average during the quarter | 3 total during the quarter 4

Revenue
Q1’11
Q2’11
Q3’11
Q4’11
Q1’12
Q2’12
Q3’12
Q4’12
Q1’13
Q2’13
Q3’13
Q4’13
Q1’14
Q2’14
$568
Q3'14
$534
$473
$447
$393
$364
$325
$304
$252
$228
$188
$168
$139
$121
$94
Net revenue ($mn) % Y/Y
160%
140%
120%
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
6

Strong Product Management Culture: Alumni
5
CEO and VP Product
CEO
SVP Product
EIR
VP Product
VP Product
VP Product
Chief Product Officer
Product Director
SVP Product
VP Product

Enterprise Software Stinks
6
Why? Buyer ≠ User

Consumer Software:
User is the buyer
©2013 LinkedIn Corporation. All Rights Reserved. 7

In the Consumer world…
You are the user.
Your teammates are users.
This is fantastic!

Actually, it’s a minefield

Your boss is the user.
The CEO is the user.
Your mother is a user.
Everyone knows why
your product stinks.
This is a giant pain.

Beyond the obvious

Responsibilities
Metrics
Culture
Practices
12
Differences

Responsibilities
You are unlikely to be
involved in pricing.
Heck, your product may
not make money.
You won’t be preparing the
sales team to sell the next
release.
No customer dinners.
©2013 LinkedIn
13

You cannot measure
success by revenue/profit.
So much for that MBA.
Metrics

Culture
No formal signoffs from 6 VPs.
Please launch faster.
Optimized for speed and
team independence.

Consumer Product Practices

Practice 1: Data Guided (not driven)
17

Practice #1: Data Guided (not driven)
§ A/B Testing is hard in enterprise software
– You need to do it.
– You need to be clear with your customers that this is good for them.
§ A/B Testing at a different level
– Many variations in a single test. Hundreds of tests. Many test
interactions. What about long term effects?
– You better hire yourself a PhD statistician. Really.
§ Finding the right metric
– User value. Value to company. Short term versus long term.
– Example: New User Signups
§ Voice of Member
– You need to get the Voice of the Member into the conversation
– How do you find a clean signal with 330 million members?
18

Practice #2: Swim In Rivers
19

Swim in Rivers
§ Distribution is key
– Nobody is going to make your users log in.
– Be where the user already is.
§ Rivers to think about
– Email. Lots of noise here.
– SEO. Takes a big investment to get it right.
– Search. You want to appear here.
– Home Page. Can you be on the user’s home page?
– Mobile Deck. This is the new home page.
§ Virality
– Not every product is naturally viral. But every product should ask this
question: How will users share their experience with others?
– Also, cycle time matters. Google “Adam Nash virality” for details.
20

Practice #3: Immediate User Value

Immediate User Value
§ Don’t ask for information you’re not going to use to improve the user’s
life
– LinkedIn Example: Date of Birth
– Useful to LinkedIn for advertising
– But what can we provide to the user that’s valuable?
§ Make sure you can deliver the reward quickly
– Ideally on the next page
§ Show rather than tell
– Demonstrate to the user why the information matters, don’t just tell them that it
does
§ Find indirect ways to get information
– Adding University delivers immediate value to LinkedIn users.
– Does a pretty good job of approximating age.

Practice #4: What’s the Asset?

Practice #4: What’s the Asset?
§ In addition to user engagement and revenue, great consumer
products also build an asset.
– That asses is valuable by itself
– But ideally it also increases the width of the moat
§ A set of data that:
– Improves the user experience
– Increases your competitive advantage
– Can be (carefully) monetized
§ Enterprise software companies realize this eventually
– You should try to build it in from the beginning
– SaaS helps this tremendously

Critical
mass
of data
Valuable
products
Member growth
and engagement
Technology
platform

Final Difference
26

Final Difference
27
Enterprise PM
Consumer PM

Final Difference
28
Enterprise PM
Consumer PM

Photo credits: Thanks to Creative Commons!
§ Stinky feet: https://www.flickr.com/photos/hantlas/25861420
§ Woman smelling flower:
http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=15616picture=woman-smelling-flowers
§ Minefield: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DANGER_MINES.jpg
§ Thumbs down: https://www.flickr.com/photos/striatic/2191404675/
§ Lego binoculars: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kalexanderson/5696097036/
§ Price tag: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Price_Tag_99%2BTX_99_cents_%2B_tax.jpg
§ Approve: https://www.flickr.com/photos/didmyself/7568581920/
§ River: http://www.flickr.com/photos/neilsingapore/12371587994/
§ Maze: https://www.flickr.com/photos/golbenge/5400710724
§ Palace/Moat: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesjustin/2852529200

Consumer Internet Lessons for Enterprise Product Managers

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