Lego™

Building Products - 101

Its a NP-hard problem

Building a product is not as simple as it may seem. It is very easy to get distracted and forget the actual problem you were trying to solve.

So,

Prioritize and Focus
Make Mistakes, Iterate Fast, Fail fast
Build less but better

Personally, I look to the above mantras whenever I find myself in a state of confusion or during situations where I have to make an important call.

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.”

Steve Jobs, WWDC ‘97 [Video]

There are 4 things which are very cruicial during Phase #1 = “How to Define and get off the ground”

1. Idea/Problem
2. Market/Customers
3. Competition
4. Minimum Viable Product (What to build ? How to prioritize ?)

Obviously this does not end here, Phase #2 = “Now, how to get it to the masses” but thats a whole other story.

1. Idea/Problem
What is the problem you are trying to solve ?

This question pretty much sets up your product/company’s theme and the charter. You may have paragraphs of text explaining the problem statement, but condensing it down to 3 to 5 words or a sentence helps in prioritizing and focusing !

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2. Market/Customers
Who are you solving the problem for ?

Define your market and your customers very clearly. The following questions can help in this process

1. Consumer or Enterprise market. Total Market size.
2. Who are the target audience ? Define them and estimate market size for the same.
   Ex: 25-60 year old tech savy professionals, smartphone users, social media aware, content creators
3. Numbers don`t lie. Understand them, it helps you structure when you are building your product and during the marketing phase.

Note: It is hard to think from a customer’s perspective. We often end up assuming a lot about our customers and end up making unnecessary product decisions.

3. Competition
Who are the others solving a similar problem

If you do have competition (which you will in most of the cases), its great for multiple reasons.

1. Validates the market you are targeting (also helps pin point the appropriate market if you are having a hard time figuring it out)
2. Validates the importance of the problem you are trying to solve and that it is the right problem to work on.
3. Healthy competition helps spur creativity and innovation.
4. Provides baseline metrics which can be used as one of the success metrics for your product.
5. Remember, there is a very thin line between being feature parity with the market offerings and plain copying to just get up there. Either ways, if not handled with caution you may end up losing focus on your product and constantly imitate your competition.

If you do not have any competition, you have a clear advantage of being first to the market. Make sure that your product creates a need and in turn a market

4. Minimum Viable Product
What to build ?

MVP = Minimum set of functional features along with a great user experience in line with your problem statement.

If you are testing your business idea, build 10% of your core product offering and make sure to showcase it to your customers.

A working prototype is the best thing you can pitch to your customers and in return collect detailed feedback.

“Really pay attention to negative feedback and solicit it, particularly from friends. …Hardly anyone does that, and it’s incredibly helpful.”

“I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better.

Elon Musk, Founder of PayPal, Tesla Motors, SpaceX, and more.

How much to build ? How to prioritize ?

Depending on the type of product (consumer/enterprise), various metrics play an important role to help you prioritize on features/tasks.

If it is a consumer product, make sure to constantly keep shipping, quick tangible targets keep the momentum going, spurs innovation and keeps your competition on their toes.

If you are having a hard time figuring out what to build next, try to evaluate your feature/task on the following properties

1. Customer Feedback - how much are you listening to your customers
2. Business Metrics
   a. User Metrics (user acquisition/retention/engagement)
   b. Revenue Metrics (determine how this could co-relate with particular user metrics)
3. Risk/Reward - Is there a risk ? If yes, is the reward worth the risk ? What are the rewards ?

Note: To make feature decisions even simpler, try to assign a number between 1-100 for your task/feature on the above properties. If the average is 90 >=, then its a must do, If its between 75-90, then it should be considered, but anything below 75 needs to be re-evaluated.

Make something which people want or Create a need for it.