How to build products people pay for
A quick overview of the “Minyo Model” of building desirable products people are bound to pay for.
Long story short — I’ve been (willingly and uncontrollably) building products for the better part of the past 20 years. Many (most, to be honest) have failed, but a number of them thrived quite nicely.
These are the lessons I’ve learned that led to the “Minyo Method” of creating desirable products that people (and organizations) are compelled to pay for.
First, some context. I’ve started out in tech in 2000 — as an Internet Cafe attendant; most of my days were spent cleaning operating systems and cashing out. This is what first exposed me to the “build once, pay indefinitely ” mentality. Later on, I’ve gone on managing game servers at another company (Quake 2 if memory serves me), where I took this concept to a whole new level.
That particular start led to where we are today — I help build products people pay for. The company I founded 8 years ago, INC3, is helping organizations grow, innovate and solve problems through a specific focus on design thinking, product management, and marketing.
As I’ve started this journey in the lovely city of Cluj-Napoca, Romania (arguably the fastest-growing tech hub of Eastern Europe, if not its Silicon Valley), which meant adjusting to its particularities, of which the most pre-eminent is the fact that we’re used to building things first then trying to figure out what to do with it.
As you surely know, in the normal, business-centric world, the product-building approach is user-centric: find a problem to fix and build a solution.
In Cluj, we mostly build founder-biased solutions to specific problems some people might have. And while you (justifiably so) might think this is not a straightforward or even feasible approach, it did create the ideal breeding ground for a new approach to product development.
On the one hand, you have companies jumping head-first into code-writing with little or no insight. On the other hand, you have the lean/sell-it-first/business-centric/powerpoint-for-200k ideology.
But you see, Cluj (and Romania in pretty much its entirety) is a different kind of animal. Things that work in the US don’t truly apply to us; Approaches that get you meetings in the UK don’t fly around here. While conferences all of kinds do help the ecosystem develop and become more self-aware don’t (and can’t) do much in terms of changing mentalities.
Hence, your regular Joe can’t (and probably won’t) be a successful product manager in such an environment. Heck, one can hardly become a successful founder coming out of a corporate environment.
That’s not to say the corporate environment doesn’t have its amazing advantages — far from it. What I’m saying is that it’s time to learn and adapt if we’re bound to build great products, both for ourselves and our clients — and this is what I’ve done over the past few years. And in the process, I’ve come up with a framework for building desirable products people pay for.
Desirable products are not what you crave for at first use.
You’ve probably heard of design thinking — if you didn’t, it’s probably time you took a glance; It’s a problem-solving framework that you can apply to pretty much any aspect of your life. You also probably heard of agile development, the lean approach and the “move fast, break things” mantra.
All these are amazing on their own and applying them in your daily work will yield tremendous results.
If you’re a Romanian (or Balkan-based) dev, marketer, or a general techie you’ll most definitely sigh right now, as you know that this is not how things happen in your organization. You’ve built stuff and now your job is to figure out to make money with it. Here’s where the “Minyo Method” comes into hand ☺️
It’s a reverse method based on both design thinking, as well as agile methodologies.
Simply put, what you do is that you brainstorm applications instead of problems. You ideate on the real-world applications rather than trying to unearth issues. It’s not ideal, but it will help you get your product to market fit faster than any other methodology.
Is it ideal? Hardly. Does it work? Absolutely!
Not all products were created with problems in mind. Many, if not most products in this part of the world are created based on a “Wouldn’t it be cool” mentality. And that’s also OK — don’t let the naysayers tell you otherwise.
Here’s how it works in practice (and let me know if you apply it, I’d love to hear from you):
- You’ve built a software product for whatever reason
- It works and you’re confident it’s stable
- You want to make money with it — or at least get some of the investment back.
- You stop active development and apply the “Minyo Method” — ideating problems and scenarios where your product can be of use.
- You start applying the MM to real-life scenarios, talking to potential clients that don’t know they have that particular problem.
- Change the product according to their needs,
- Charge clients for changes and see if those changes can be implemented to other clients as well.
- Congratulate the team for a job well done.
All the above are a slight tongue-in-cheek — and even though the above scenario does happen, it doesn’t mean it can’t become a success story. I’m sorry if it seems somewhat ironic — our reality does seem to pivot toward it.
Why take the above detour to make a point? It was necessary to do so because we always seem to miss the bigger picture. And even if we don’t, most of us can’t (or won’t) break out of the box we’ve been accustomed to.
What I’ve found in my 20 years of getting things made is that people don’t really want to pay for painkiller products, but they have to.
What people want to pay for are products they love.
You see, according to the (actual) Minyo Method, there are four types of products:
- non-desirable, that people wouldn’t pay for (think lame insta-games)
- desirable, that people wouldn’t pay for (think e-mail, calendars)
- non-desirable, that people would pay for (think iCloud)
- desirable, that people would pay for (think Calm or your must-have app)
So, what is really that app people want to pay for?
Ready?
It’s a vitamin that turns into a painkiller.
Wait, what?
You’ve read that right. It’s a product that starts out as a vitamin, that’s, in the beginning, a total whatever to you. This ensures that your product not only it will be loved, but also needed. And that’s the Minyo Method — turning a vitamin product into a painkiller product.
It’s not so much of a “trick” as it is a strategic foresight — I’ve explained this recently in more detail at ITDays 2019; simply put, it has to do with addictiveness and dependency. More so, with creating for desirability.
Specifically, how do you turn a vitamin into a painkiller?
Glad you asked — I’m starting a newsletter on building, managing, and marketing products and the first email goes out next week with this exact topic: how to turn vitamins into painkillers; you can sign-up here — it’s totally free.
Thanks for reading — I’d appreciate a clap and a share, it helps me tremendously!
