Kin Ambassadors Event 2018: Alex Frenkel on Product Philosophy (Recap #2)

“Product is not about sitting in a room and trying to figure out which cool features we should build. It’s about building something people will actually use — it’s about building very fast, very lean, and actually testing things with real users.” — Alex Frenkel

The Kin development team is working on some of the first cryptocurrency products people will “actually use” in their everyday lives. Our VP of product Alex Frenkel is shaping how those offering come to market — leading the three cross-functional teams behind our 5 minute SDK, core blockchain SDK, and standalone app vision (respectively).

At the 2018 Kin Ambassadors Event (April 11–12), Alex chatted with Rod McLeod — our senior director of communications — about the philosophy behind our development roadmap. Read on few highlights from his remarks, then watch the full video recap above.

On product

“[Product should] not be like working in the laboratory for two years before launching something, but building something very agile and then getting feedback and measure real data from users. That’s a key part of my philosophy, and another important part is the design, the experience.

“It’s really clear to me that product and design work hand-in-hand together because if you want people to actually use the product, you need the product to be simple, easy to understand, and provide amazing, beautiful experiences.

“And maybe the last thing is that product is, in my mind, not only the screens or the features inside the app or web service — it’s the entire experience the user has touching the brand. So when we think about Kin, it’s not only the app or the SDK — it’s everything. It’s the emails, the community management, the visual side of it, the service design, and the product design.”

On democratizing development

“The Internet really started with a big promise to like democratize information and create a more open world. But when you look at it today, it’s really clear that there are big pains for the developers. When you look at how the digital space is actually working, you see this duopoly of Facebook and Google being the only companies able to monetize in any substantial way, and they have almost full control of the market.

“[For example, around] six of the top 10 apps in the App Store are ones that are come from Facebook. That’s not why the Internet started, right? It’s not even why the App Store started!

“But that’s why, when I join our meetings with potential digital services partners, I see the same picture Ted described for Kik: Amazing products with millions of users and tons of engagement and a known brand, yet fighting to monetize. They either need to target users with ads, use the data to target users even better with more ads, or charge for the services. So I think that their pain is real, and this is something that we can really change.”

On IPLv2 learnings

“We really believe that as long as we’re learning we’re making progress, and our goal is to really move fast and learn fast as possible. So I view IPLv1 was a good beginning; we allowed users to hold kin inside of Kik, but it was very limited — they could see the balance and basic functionality of the wallet

“In IPLv2, we had users inside of Kik actually earning and spending Kin. And that was super interesting because what we saw is that users were willing to invest a lot of intention and energy to earl Kin, and they used the tools to actually unlock content inside of Kik. So the engagement there was way higher than we expected, and that that was a really strong, positive surprise.”

On Kin in gaming

“So, how can users get more Kin? One way is users will be able to earn, so they don’t need to go through fiat currency. They can create value inside of the game, or they can help other players that create content inside of the game, and they earn Kin by doing that — by providing tips or help, or joining a guild.

“There are many, many use cases where a user can earn Kin inside of the game just by providing value. And the amazing thing is that [earning Kin] is a transaction, right? And the game developer is rewarded by the KRE for facilitating those user-to-user experiences. So the developer earns Kin as well… [that] they will be able to either reinvest in and provide like richer user experiences or to awards users with gain or use part of that king a as a way to monetize.”

Stay tuned for more recaps! Learn more about the Kin Ambassadors Event here.