Five Frameworks for First-Time Founders to Thrive
What are frameworks good for?
Every founder (or product manager) will use his/her frameworks to sift through an overwhelming amount of information while capturing what matters and translating it into actionable insights for themselves and their teams.
If you don’t yet have your favorite frameworks, let me help you to level the playing field.
The best part — you can use these frameworks for building your own product, starting your own business, or growing and expanding any existing business!
I tried to order the list according to importance so if you are new to this whole startup, business founder “thing”, you’ll know where to start:
Here are five core frameworks:
1/ Lean Startup — from Eric Ries
Crucial for MVP and pivoting mentality and learning to scale down as much as possible everything you do early on, until you find product market fit. It’s all about reducing your risk of failure.
2/ Business Model Canvas — from Strategyzer
You can use the original or any variation — like a lean canvas — for getting a quick overview of moving pieces in your business strategy or idea plan. This is crucial for technical founders who often need to get into the mentality of business first.
Never start coding or developing without seeing your business model canvas filled. You want everyone on board and understanding your cost-drivers as well as ways you plan to make money.
3/ Design Thinking — from Stanford’s d-School
This is a bit fancier one but great for understanding that there is always a creative way to solve hard problems. You will also learn to see the value through customers’ eyes and stories.
Many people I know got a real understanding of cross-functional team benefits through design thinking workshops or programs.
4/ Agile — in its basic form of Agile Manifesto
Plus any suitable agile methodologies spurred from it (like Scrum). Great for team empowerment practices and understanding that constant change and shorter cycles reduce risk, increase shipping cadence, and still let you deliver technical excellence.
By delivering less in one shorter cycle you deliver more and better over longer periods. But the cycle length is not a dogma. It needs to fit your working style and the type of your product. For example, Basecamp guys use six-week cycles very successfully!
5/ Product Management ala SVPG
It means using empowered product teams in the spirit of Marty’s book Empowered and Martina’s book Loved. They’re both great for understanding that the best teams do things differently and for a deeper understanding of team roles, PM responsibilities, and the critical role of product marketing.
For you as the first time founder, this is a glimpse into the future how you should progress in building product teams once your business finds product-market fit and you’ll start growing.
Bonus frameworks:
Bonus — Strategy Canvas
In the spirit of keeping it simple, I’ll only mention the Industry Shifts Map as a helpful tool to think through the bigger picture before making any long-term plans and commitments.
You can use the one from Strategy Tools for free; and they have other very helpful canvases which can help you get more clarity on issues like — fundraising, scaling, strategy, industry, and many more.
Bonus 2 — Minimum Lovable Product
This is for you only if you already are living and breathing MPVs because it extends the concept into very interesting but “hard to know” territory of lovable product.
Many product leaders today would sware by not MVP but by MLP — Minimal Loveable Product — because in the crowded market you need to delight users to even give you the chance.
There is some truth to it. But the fact is there’s no clear definition (and can’t be) of lovable product and it is very very subjective for industry and product category. But I find the concept fascinating.
And that’s it.
This is all you need (and more) to be able to frame any business idea, product, or service and nail down what matters to your customers.
You can use these frameworks to build product roadmaps, startup business plans, pitch decks, and even corporate strategies.
Basically, anything that involves creating products/services for customers or users.
Let me know if you have any comments or questions and make sure to follow along for more tips on how to start and build successful businesses faster!
