That Thing You Forget to Do: Lessons in Product Development, Management & Marketing

Everyone thinks that a start-up is just about building a product. However, it is more than just that. Product development is part of the cycle where managing the product from feedback of users and marketing the product are also tied to build up the start-up as a sustainable business. The talk is delivered on JFDI.Asia, 1 March 2012 and focused on providing incubatees the best practices in working out how to build, manage & market your product within a short time.

Transcript

1. That Thing You Forget to Do Lessons on Product Development, Management & Marketing Bernard Leong 1
2. If you have 64 days left, you should spend 30 days for product development & 30 days for testing, feedback & raise money ... 2
3. Let’s start with two buildings in Orchard Road, Singapore 313@Somerset Orchard Central What are your experiences in navigating within the building? 3
4. In a nutshell How do you build a product? Product Development: Features, Content & Help How do you measure a product? Product Management: Getting the right set of metrics from customers How do you market a product? Product Marketing: Getting users & Managing media 4
5. Questions from Founders • Who should decide the final product if founders differ from vision? • When is the time that we can say “the product is ready for launch!”? • How do we get publicity and distribution of our website/app or any product? • How do we resolve conflicts on product within the team? • Should you build on adequate or great open source technologies? 5
6. Planning without Execution is a pipe dream. Execution without Planning is waste of effort & time. 6
7. Product Roadmap Minimum Viable Product What you can build within 30-60 days? What is the ideal product you will like to have? Infinity The ideal product does not exists What you can build with an initial investment & some customers What you can build with more investments & more customers (includes feedback) Beta Product Iterated Product for customers Time Day 0 7
8. Product Development 8
9. How do you decide features? • Alignment with the user objectives - Is your product solving the problem you state? • Less is more: How many extra features which you can cut for now? • Can a user figure the product out without much education? Kano Model 9
10. Is UI/UX a science? Check out this video: http://youtu.be/iVFTBj_BYy0 Wireframes Screen Sizes (Mobile/Web) Colors, Fonts, Icons, Buttons & ... Actions, Events & Analytics 10
11. Product Management 11
12. Measure data but find the killer metric that addresses virality & potential /real revenues. (the one you pitched to investors) How many downloads, users, impressions? (Vanity) How many monthly active users performing actions with your app or website? Construct metrics, on how many actions per user or how much time user spend and benchmark against known metrics. 12
13. Day Product Development Product Management Product Marketing 10 Build feature 1 & 2 Test trial for feature 1 & 2 Figure out where your customers get the product. 20 Build feature 3 & 4 Test trial for feature 3 & 4 Prepare seeded content Figure out how to educate users Prepare the setup for the distribution 30 Prototype ready for testing Get users to try the complete prototype & see what they thinks Prepare and starts sending invites to alpha or beta users Let everyone knows the plan and start your execution. Do keep each other in check. 13
14. Product Marketing 14
15. Distribution & PR: 2 different issues for product marketing Distribution: How do customers access or buy your products? PR: How do customers hear of your products? 15
16. Product Marketing: Distribution • What is the platform do you distribute your product? • What is the delivery process of your product? An app store or a SaaS provider? • How easy can a customer access your service? • How accessible are your partners with customers? • Firehose Strategy: Should we open it up as an API? 16
17. Product Marketing: PR • How should you engage the press from bloggers to journalists? • What are the things that the team should or should not share? • What are your own channels or marketing? Social Media? • How do you respond if the press turns against your company? • PR is about enhancing the company’s image & hoping that more customers use your product. 17
18. Align your product releases & launches & business objectives to your media strategy Months Product Milestones What’s the story? Media Channels 1 Product Launch & beta launch in local market How does your product solve the problem? Social Media Sites 3 Release version 2.0 with feature X & expand to three markets What’s the new thing that will improve the experience of your customers? Social Media Sites Printed Media 6 Compile, Classify & Analyze data coming from the product An insight about the behavior of customers about your product Social Media Sites, Printed Media Radio or TV 18
19. References • Smashing Magazine: http://www.smashingmagazine.com • Presentation Zen: http://www.presentationzen.com • Mobile UI Patterns: http://mobile-patterns.com/ or Pttrns: http://pttrns.com/ • Color Palettes: http://thedesignmag.com/27-color-tools-and-resource-for- choosing-the-right-color-palette.html • Kano Model, Agile Software Methodology • Eric Rees, “The Lean Start-up” • Jeffrey Moore, “Crossing the Chasm” • Project Management Tools: Pivotal Tracker, Basecamp or Asana? • FrameThink, “The Four Viral Objectives: http://framethink.wordpress.com/ 2008/01/15/the-four-viral-app-objectives-aka-social-network-application- virality-101/ Contact: bleongcw@gmail.com 19