Good products become our soul mates. Flowing energy and natural understanding.
One of my favorite products is Whereby — beautiful, simple video calls. 1-click to start talking from your browser. No apps, downloads, or logins. It’s so easy.
Whereby follows Y Combinator’s two step formula for making something people want.
Step 1. Talk to users
Step 2. Build product
Here’s how Whereby created a great product by following these two simple steps.
Let’s focus.
1. Whereby talks to their users
Whereby believes in freedom. Freedom to work and live where you want.
For workers, this freedom means flexibility to control their days.
For companies, this freedom means happier, more productive employees.
True to form, the entire Whereby team is fully remote across 12 countries. They want to be the video tool that powers remote work.
What does this mean?
It means Whereby is specifically built for the needs of remote teams.
Imagine your entire team is remote and it’s time to work…
5 person team wants to talk? Start a call in seconds.
Our manager wants to join? Share the link. No apps or downloads.
Sara wants to update the proposal text? Ping it in the chat.
Brian (customer) joins and wants to see our work? Screen share in 2-clicks.
Brian asks for changes? Track changes quickly in Trello.
Zamba needs to leave but wants to stay on? Join from her phone.
Chris is out sick? Record meetings to watch later.
Plus draw on whiteboards, watch videos together, and breakout into groups.
All this, within one tool: Whereby.
Everything remote teams needs to work productively, Whereby handles. And it’s easy. People don’t want to solve technology problems. They want it to work so that they can do their work.
It’s evident that Whereby talks to their users to understand how they work, and as a result, all these awesome features were built. It’s purpose driven features that enables better work between people.
That’s how you build something people want. By deeply understanding your customers and building to solve those needs.
2. Whereby build products
It’s clear as sunlight that Whereby builds products. But they do it FAST.
After they talk to users, they implement changes, features, bug fixes FAST. Their website changes frequently, from the text on the landing page to new features on the product. They urgently make the product better and better.
Why is this important?
As a user, if each time you enter the product you see something working better, how do you feel? Less clicks. Useful features. More integrations with the way you work.
The product builds a relationship with you. And you with the product. You trust each other.
Once more, let’s use our imagination. You’re on a 15 person call on Whereby. You want to flush out next steps with Manny and Zara so you need to call them. How do you do that on a 15 person call?
Just breakout into groups. Directly on the video chat, create different chats and assign the right people. Then click ‘Join group’ to automatically move into a new room with the right people.
You just continue to work. No problem.
Products that become better FAST makes us really like them. We trust the next time we use it, that something meaningful will be there waiting for us.
Sum up
We have relationships with the products we use. Most of those relationships sucks. Some are better. Few are magical.
Whereby knows what I want and gives it to me. Instead of me working to figure out how to add people, join another call, draw on a whiteboard, it gladly works for me. That builds trust between me and it. That builds a great product.
To Whereby.
