How to scale a product in the sharing economy

This was a talk delivered at Dublin Web Summit 2014 on the Builder's Stage.

It is a brief overview of how we managed to scale our product at Hassle.com during a period of intense growth.

Transcript

1. @julescoleman Hey, I’m
2. Founder & Chief Product Officer
5. How to scale a product for the sharing economy
8. Uh… the internet?
12. How do you build a product like ours?
13. Just follow this Reddit guide
14. We started by from a book building Twitter
15. We built Twitter
16. But we hadn’t built
17. Business Development Customer Service Data Analytics Demand Management Design Engineering Finance Human Resources Legal Management Marketing Operations Performance Management Supply Management Supply Recruitment The code
18. Minimum Viable Product
19. We’d built 66% of an MVP
20. Minimum Viable Product
22. Minimum Viable Product
23. So we started Again
24. Minimum Viable Product
25. Meanwhile…
26. The sharing economy is Booming
27. Collaborative Consumption Co-Consumption Co-Creation Global Village Crowdsourced Economy Peer Economy Sharing Economy
32. So where’s the complexity?
33. They all involve interacting in the real world people
34. People are Complex
35. You can have the most perfect tech…
36. …but still Fail
37. Every interaction has a single point of failure
38. humans
39. Our business is the edge case
40. This can be built in a weekend This can’t 80% 20%
41. We provide a utility
42. Utilities are boring
43. Good gosh, my water supply company is awesome “ ” – No one, ever
44. Our best customers forget we exist
45. Instead of a feature request, we get Churn
46. How do we manage that?
49. How can we solve the biggest as quickly as possible? problem
50. define quick != bad_code && no_testing
51. Do it right Do it right now Do the right thing
52. Product manages the natural between these demands tensions
53. Minimal Viable Process
54. Sprints slowed us down
55. We feared valid break-ins
56. Re-prioritising is not inherently bad…
57. …but it does need to be managed
58. We use kanban
59. Discovery Wireframe Build User Acceptance Testing Deploy
60. Not everything is solved with a pull request
61. Sometimes microcopy is better than a feature
62. Ease Benefit
63. Ease Benefit
64. We choose the top 20% of ideas 80% 20%
65. Discovery Wireframe Build User Acceptance Testing Deploy
66. A picture paints a thousand words
67. It is infinitely easier to criticise than to create. “ ” – John McCormick
68. Discovery Wireframe Build User Acceptance Testing Deploy
69. Week 1 Week 2 Week 3
70. Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Feature Monday
71. Kaizen Friday Week 1 Week 2 Week 3
72. Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Feature Build
73. Discovery Wireframe Build User Acceptance Testing Deploy & Measure
74. Have you really solved the problem?
75. Discovery Wireframe Build User Acceptance Testing Deploy & Measure
76. Without metrics there can be no glory
77. Did we pick the right 20%?
78. So in conclusion…
79. Building an MVP is hard
80. Scaling a product for humans is harder
81. Focus on solving biggest edge cases
82. Embrace the 80/20 rule
83. Strive for the Minimal Viable Process
84. Measure the improvement
85. Thank You @julescoleman