This document provides guidance on product development for startups. It emphasizes the importance of understanding user needs through research, building minimal viable products, focusing on key business metrics and risks when planning roadmaps, prioritizing quality over speed or budget, hiring only top talent, and dogfooding or testing products internally before launch. The overall message is that startups should solve clearly defined user problems, thoroughly research the market, develop focused minimal products, and make decisions aligned with business goals in order to successfully develop products.

1. PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
FOR STARTUPS
PRESENTED BY

2. What to build
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3. You need a reason to exist
What is the problem that people really
have and we are trying to solve?
Make something
people want
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5. User and market research
Scenario
What it means
Research?
You are the user
You understand the
problem intimately and
can envision a solution.
You can probably come
up with a decent first
version.
None / minimal research.
Post launch - track
usage, TALK with
customers, understand
discrepancies.
You think you are the user
The worst scenario. Don’t
fall into this trap.
See below
You can’t understand the
essence of the problem.
Your first version will likely
suck.
Talk to as many people as
possible. Find experts.
Don’t rely on focus
groups (they rarely bring
great insights).
You are not the user
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6. What to build in the first version
Answer: what do we need to build in
order to test our business idea?
Hint: usually ~5% of the what you think
you should build.
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7. Roadmap decisions - the “business metrics” test
Align your product roadmap decisions with growth in the
key metrics of your business.
For example, develop a feature only if it will:
Increase monthly signups by 10%
-or- Increase retention rate by 2%
-or- Increase revenues by 5%
* Your key metrics might be totally different
Used by Evernote
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8. Roadmap decisions - the “risk/reward” test
Would you rather have a 10% shot at a
$10M business or a 0.1% shot at a $1B
business?
Shooting for a bigger business means
taking more risks and building innovative
features that might as well fail miserably.
vs.
10%
Risk
0.1%
Value
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9. Roadmap decisions - the “betting on the
inevitable” test
Are you betting on the future or the past? Try to
figure out what will happen NEXT.
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10. This guy...
Bezos goes big all the
way, betting on the future
with huge projects (Kindle,
AWS) while optimizing key
metrics (1-click purchase).
* From a letter to Amazon’s investors
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11. How to build it
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12. Your constraints
Time, budget and quality. Choose... one. Budget will be
low either way (unless you are Color). Most of the time
you’ll start with a version you’ll be ashamed off,
compromising quality in order to get to the market fast.
Time
Budget
Quality
How much time do we
have for this project.
Are there any external
factors affecting our
timeline?
How much money to
we have for this
version?
What is the level of
quality we want to
deliver. (L2O vs.
Dave’s Kebabs).
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13. Returns on quality
Quality Zone
Success
There are great returns
on quality, especially in
today’s market. The
investment in time
might be worth it (it
took Dropbox 18
months to release the
product).
Most people stop here
vs.
Time and Effort
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14. Many times the startup mantra will be:
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15. Our philosophy @ Future Simple
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16. Who should build
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17. Hire only A players - really!!!
X10
“It's not just a matter of 10 times more
productive. It's that the average
productive developer never hits the
high notes that make great software.”
Joel Spolsky
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18. A note on dogfooding
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19. Dogfooding #ftw
Jeff Hawkins carried a wood
prototype of the Palm Pilot in
his pocket as he considered
how customers would use
such a device throughout the
course of a day.
At staff meetings, he
sometimes even pulled out
his wood block to scrawl
imaginary notes on the
"screen."
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20. F-O-C-U-S
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21. So hard to achieve - but crucial...
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve
got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It
means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that
there are. You have to pick carefully.”
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