This document discusses how Postman grew its monthly active users from 1 million to 3 million through a focus on product design and rapid iteration without traditional marketing. It emphasizes shipping features quickly, building network effects, validating the product through real-world use, and talking to users. The document provides tips for product teams such as making UI components reusable, focusing design decisions on desired outcomes, prioritizing action over opinions, and controlling conditions are not the best predictors of success.

1. Product Design
for Rapid Growth

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How we grew from 1 million to 3 million
developers using our product
55-60%
Monthly Active Users
4 Platforms
Chrome, Mac, In-Tab Legacy, CLI

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APIs are
exploding
Software and devices are
more and more connected.
Developers are not.
Service oriented
architecture.
Primary interface
is the browser.
Smartphone revolution.
Apps require APIs in
the backend.
API-first development.
HTTP at scale internally
and externally.
Internet of things
& Micro-services
4 million apps
18 million developers
10 million internal APIs
27 million
developers
50 billion
loT devices
APIGROWTH
EARLY 2000s 2010 PRESENT FUTURE

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Zero “traditional” marketing
CONFIDENTIAL
No sales people01
No online or offline ads02
No sales events or launch events (yet)03
No tech event stalls/booths04

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CONFIDENTIAL
What do your design
discussions sound like?
User Flows & Journeys
Funnels
Errors and Bugs
Analytics
Drop Offs
Conversions
Customer Complaints
Testing
Pricing
Colors
Fonts
Layout
Templates
Icons
Buttons
Assets
Graphic
Slicing
VS

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Improves collaboration between
designers and developers
01
The team becomes a lot more
systematic and disciplined
02
Get to the real effective product
design decisions, faster
03
1. Make all the
UI Components
Encourages prototyping rather
than static mocks and wires
04
Helps the team choose the right
toolchain for themselves
05

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You can be really creative with UI
components, they won’t limit you if
they are done right.
06

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2. Design decisions should always be
in context of the result you want
For eg: more app downloads, more sign ups, or helping people go from manually testing
APIs to automating so it’s less painful and time consuming for them…

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“Good design is good business”
Thomas Watson Jr. (Chairman IBM, 1961-1971)

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Be Action Oriented
Minimise hypothetical and opinion-based design
+ Don’t be afraid to make mistakes

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CONFIDENTIAL
Focus On
Iterating internally
Opinions
“Meetings”
Verbal Concepts
Brainstorming
Shipping
Testing
Prototyping
Sketches
Making
VS

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3. Ship, Ship, Ship!
Ship as much as you can, as fast as you can, as frequently as possible

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Demo Days

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Focus on parts of your product
that encourage usage
01
Don’t block usage and sharing
with payment gateways or any
other creative blocks.
02
4. Build up network effects

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Onboard developers to your API in seconds

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The best API publishers use
the Run Button

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How does your product
work in the wild?
01
How quickly can you
test it IRL
02
Will people pay for it/Is it
validated by high usage?
03
Product Validation

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CONFIDENTIAL
What validation is
Focus groups say yes
Surveys say yes
Market research looks good
POC app
A successful presentation
Media buzz
People are using your product
Per person usage is increasing
People want their friends to use it
People are buying your product
They are asking for more features
and services
VS
What it isn’t

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5. Validate your product in the wild
Controlled conditions are not the best predictors of success

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6. Talk to people who use your
products everyday

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“Users don’t know what they want”
Are you sure about that?

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Chat with them

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“Every tool carries with it the spirit by which it has been created”
Werner Karl Heisenberg

29. Thank You