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The Magic Potion Quadrant — when PM becomes a scientist

This is the third article on ‘The product portfolio matrix’ theme. The introduction article can be found here.

This quadrant talks about purely backend products with almost negligible direct front-end visibility to the customer. That’s the reason this is the magic potion quadrant because that’s where all the magic is created.

To understand this better, let’s imagine the following three products -

1. Seller inventory management for a marketplace — At the core of e-commerce engine, the magic of inventory assigning/blocking/reverting/updating happens real time. All this while sellers are continuously updating their stocks and the buyers are constantly putting items in and out of the cart. (Reference: Amazon Inventory Management)
2. Assignment algorithms for Uber and all other Uberified models — When you tell the Uber app to look for the driver, Does someone from Uber office call all the drivers near you and assigns the driver?(References: Assignment Factors or AI Simulation Framework)
3. Google maps traffic engine — How google keeps finding all the traffic of the world at all the times. (References: Real Time Traffic or Google Traffic Wiki)

Since all the above are sophisticated large scale products, these problems are now being explored in the realms of artificial intelligence and machine learning. However, it is still important to notice that the questions being answered are still simple enough to be explained to an 8 year old.

Case 1 — How to ensure that the best binoculars are mostly available in your city?

Case 2 — How to ensure that you get a cab every day every time in 5 minutes?

Case 3 — How long will it take to reach the water park?

How to create the magic potion products?

1. First of all, First principles. Ask the most fundamental question about the product or service you are providing. And keep getting deeper into the same. Only after you get fed up of the layers of ‘why this’, ‘why this’ you will find the right questions and right answers.
2. Define the problem scope very clearly here. Unlike the red carpet quadrant, the ground realities have to be in detail incorporated before designing this product. [E.g — how does inventory sync for a small town seller in India, Which phone would a driver be using and what are some other limitations of the driver etc]
3. The red carpet quadrant should take care of most of the acquisition, but the magic potion will define your retention metrics. And retention is what actually defines the business. No one wants a product where customers come to drop out. So, this is where the user experience will be defined for your product.
4. Do not overcommit to a large solution in the beginning. And do not over-engineer. Depending on the timing and context of your company / product, define the fastest MVP possible. MVP is an overused term, and the subjectivity of both ‘Minimum’ and ‘Viable’ makes it difficult to draw boundaries. Work closely with the engineering to understand iterations better.
5. Experiment — Gather feedback from users (Cx, driver, seller etc) — Measure well — Iterate. Easier said than done. At times we get committed to a solution and then we drag the dead horse. Have the right vision to avoid this.
6. The magic potion will be created in the mines of A/B testings. Try them all. So even if a feature fails, the experiment wins.

Go Create! There is nothing more interesting than making magic! :)

As a followup, I will be writing a couple of posts on

1. How we moved the driver efficiency of our e-grocery business by over 100% by a magic potion hack
2. How we increased mom retention by double the amount in a 4 weeks by