In most pitch decks there is a slide called ‘why us’. This is the slide that lays out a company’s ‘strategic advantage’ — the secret sauce that will ensure they succeed where others have and will fail.
In my experience this slide is often the most challenging one to write for many start-ups. Many founders are so concerned with getting their products out of the door and getting initial traction that they have spent little time considering what will enable them to win long term.
Even if a market is not already crowded, it’s a sure bet that if a…
Everyone knows what a minimum viable product is, right? It’s what you build to test your assumptions before you build the bells and whistles version of your product? Well kind of, yes, but also kind of no.
I’ve written quite a lot about MVPs on this blog. You might want to check out some of my previous articles including the critical things you need to know about building an MVP part 1 and part 2.
In this article I talk about the difference between an MVP and a prototype. It’s a confusion that I see in lots of my clients…
Learn from the infopreneurs when it comes to product marketing.
I’m a big fan of Russell Brunson. For those that don’t know him, he’s an internet marketer that’s made huge amounts of money selling stuff online. Now he makes huge amounts of money telling other people how to sell stuff online. One of the new breed of ‘infopreneurs’ that make money telling other people how to make money. He also co-created Click Funnels — which is a great platform for quickly setting up landing pages and sales funnels.
Russell is one of those brash internet marketers that often appear in…
Five essential books for anyone involved in digital product production.
The Lean Startup by Eric Reis
Yes it’s a cliché, but I don’t think any product list would be complete without it. The Lean Startup is probably the most referenced book in product development and for good reason. Taken from the lean manufacturing ideas of 1980s Japan, this is the book that gave us the concept of the Minimum Viable Product — the idea of building just enough to test a hypothesis and no more, with continuous feedback and iteration built into the product development process.
Vanity metrics and the search for truth in product growth
There’s a saying in business, ‘turnover is vanity, profit is sanity and cash is king’. I feel that there’s something very similar that could be applied to product growth. Far too many times I have asked a client in an early meeting what their traction targets are, for them to respond with vague talk about downloads and engagement.
The trust about downloads
Let’s be clear about something straight up. The number of downloads is a vanity metric. …
Test your marketing assumptions before you launch your product.
The Lean Startup is now 8 years old and product teams are getting much better in understanding how to test their assumptions pre-launch. Indeed, the best product teams know that the key to any successful product is to really get under the skin of their users early on. This means regular user testing, insight and research as soon as the first post it note hits the wall of the office.
But while we are getting better on testing assumptions around the product, what is often forgotten about is testing marketing assumptions.
Make marketing part of the product itself
Product teams often think of marketing as an ‘add…
An examination of user experience in crypto applications.
I spend quite a bit of my time talking to other blockchain and crypto enthusiasts at conferences. The same themes come up again and again. There’s a lot of excitement over new protocol layers, custodian solutions and algorithmic stable coins, but there is a distinct lack of interest in something I consider fundamental.
The actual user experience of crypto applications.
Have you ever tried to buy crypto? If you’re reading this then there’s a good chance that you have. But did you find it an easy experience the first time? Unless you’re…
A close friend of mine called Oscar runs a medium sized business in the health sector. For many years now his finance department has been run by a silver haired, 60 something, semi-retired accountant called Alan. Alan spends about 2 days a week working in the business.
Throughout his professional career in big organisations Alan always used Sage so it was a natural choice when it came to Oscar’s business. And for many years it worked quite well. …
In my last blog post I talked about some of the biggest mistakes I see in my clients when they are considering building an MVP (or Minimum Viable Product). It’s a great feeling to finally get your MVP released. But really, that’s only the beginning of the process. In this blog post I want to discuss the next part of the lean cycle and what can potentially go wrong.
Quite often when I’m speaking to clients they’ll say something like this:
Or something like this:
I speak to a lot of potential clients about new app projects — both start ups and established businesses. During our first conversation I can pretty much guarantee that something like this will be said.
It sounds great doesn’t it? Build an MVP and get to market quickly.
But more I speak to clients, the more I realise how much misunderstanding there is out there on what actually constitutes an MVP.
This article lays out some of the crucial things clients need to know about building an MVP, and perhaps more importantly, the misconceptions.
Understand the basics
MVP stands for ‘Minimum Viable Product’…
Tim Bichara
Digital product consultant and entrepreneur. Writing about product strategy and optimisation — timbichara.com
