How to build product campus week

Peter Nixey @peternixey peternixey.com

Peter Nixey & Taavet Hinrikus

THINGS I’VE LEARNED ABOUT HOW TO BUILD GOOD PRODUCT

POTTED HISTORY OF PETER

• PhD in Computer Vision (left to start company)

• Raised from YCombinator (2007, same as Dropbox)

• Moved to San Francisco. Sold company 18 mths later

• Now Rails Engineer, Product lead and CEO at Copyin

THINGS I USED TO DO

THEN I WENT TO YCOMBINATOR

ACQUIRED BY YOLA

VEGAS WITH YOLA

SO OBVIOUSLY I QUIT

LAST 10 YEARS

• Written, designed and sold software myself

• Paid and managed remote contractors (bad idea)

• Been part of 40-person product / engineering teams

• Been project / product lead in 3-10-person teams

TAAVET HINRIKUS

TAAVET

1ST EMPLOYEE

CO-FOUNDER

TAAVET

Good price Easy to use and transparent Fast

• Solves your customer’s problem

• Is built in reasonable time at reasonable cost

• Delivers sufficient strategic or financial value

GOOD PRODUCT

MOST PRODUCT

Is a mutant chimera

Costs too much and takes too long

Destroys company value

GOOD PRODUCT HAPPENS WHEN...

1. People want it

2. Your construction process is sound

3. You can build very quickly

WHAT WE’RE GOING TO COVER

1. How to build product people actually want

2. How to build quality product that works

3. The processes that make you 10x faster or slower

4. (Why you need to embrace your inner Craigs)

MAKING SOMETHING PEOPLE WANT

PART 1.

• The Golden Rule of Traffic

• 10 numbers that tell you whether your project is daft

• How to interview potential customers

WHAT WE’LL COVER

THE GOLDEN RULE OF TRAFFIC

IF YOU BUILD IT THEY WILL NOT COME

SEARCH & SOCIAL WON’T SAVE YOU

...& of 134,000 visits to peternixey.com last year...& of 134,000 visits to peternixey.com last year

Twitter 6.7%

Facebook 2%

Google 1.5%

500 page Q&A service => 500 Google visits/day

10 numbers that can tell you whether your idea is viable

1. GOLDEN RULE OF SOCIAL

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/09/the-logged-out-user-continued.html

- 90% of people consume- 10% of people curate- 1% of people create

2. RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

Registered users / installs:

- 30% will use it each month- 10 % will use it each day- 1% will be use it concurrently

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/07/301010.html

3. FREEMIUM CONVERSION

1% of your signups will pay

(normally 1-5%)

http://readwrite.com/2013/02/20/6-ways-to-make-freemium-work-for-b2b-products

4. EXPENSIVE IS PROFITABLE

“50% of our revenue comes from only 11% of our customers..”

- Ryan Carson, Founder Carsonified and Treehouse

5. CHEAP IS EXPENSIVE

“It is our universal experience that the support load for cheap/free customers crushes the support load for the higher plans” - Patrick McKenzie

Cheap accounts cost more in support(7x)

6. ADVERTISING REVENUE

Social network CPM ~ $1Times Newspaper ~ $10

CPM = cost per 1,000 page views

$1M/year in revenue == 1Bn page views

(good luck)

7. EMAIL SUBSCRIPTIONS

Open rates = 20-40%Clickthrough rates = 1-5%

~ 1 sale per 3,000 emails

8. CHURN DETERMINES SAAS SIZE

If you have 10,000 customersand 5% leave a year

then you need 500 new ones just to stay level

(so your signup rate determines your company size)

9. IS YOUR MARKET SIZE SANE?

360M people in the US

Firm size # firms (US) Avg. # employees

1-100 6M 7.24

101-500 6M 10.1

501-10,000 17,000 1,672

http://www.census.gov/econ/smallbus.html

10. DO YOU HAVE 10 ITEMS?

Only a fool would have 9 items in a 10 item list.

CUSTOMER DEVELOPMENT

INTERVIEWEES MAY BE

SEDUCTIVE

DON’TPITCH THEM

YOUR JOB IS TO LISTEN

THEY MAY ASK FOR

SOME FREAKY SHIT

Peter Nixey @peternixey peternixey.comKEEP LISTENING

STILL DON’T PITCH

AND DEFINITELYDON’T ARGUE

YOU WIN WHEN THEY VISUALISE YOUR PRODUCT IN THEIR LIFE

NOT IN SOMEONE ELSE’S

TAAVET

Speaking the language of your customers and key message development

person to person currency exchangevs

money transfer

analyzing your customer feedback

TAAVET

THE HARSH REALITY OF YOUR PRIVATE FANTASY

• The Golden Rule of Traffic

• 10 numbers that tell you whether your project is daft

• How to interview potential customers

WHAT WE COVERED

HOW TO BUILD HIGH QUALITY, RELIABLE PRODUCT

PART 2.

• How to avoid making the same mistakes twice

• Why releases matter more thank you think

• How to know your metrics

WHAT WE’LL COVER

THINGS WILL GO WRONG

DOESN’T HELP

5-WHYShelps a lot

WE WERE SENDING EMAILSIf people didn’t get them they freak out

SO ONE DAY WE ACCIDENTALLY SWITCHED THEM ALL OFF...

WHY DID THIS HAPPEN?

Emails aren’t arriving

Switch them on

We were using a different DB in production to development

Use the same DB in development as in production

Symptom

AND IN LARGER FONT...

5-WHYS GIVES YOU CURES NOT

TREATMENTS

(and avoids blame)

RELEASES MATTER MORE THAN YOU THINK

WHEN RELEASES ARE HARD...

• People avoid them

• Features back up

• You learn slower

• Everyone feels worse

#2 Can you do a release in a single step?

SO IMPORTANT

1. Makes sure your releases don’t break things

2. Make sure that everyone releases and it’s not one person lumped with it

3. Avoid backlogs of unreleased product

4. Speed up feature time-to-market

ANALYTICS

I AM ADDICTED TO STATS

I’VE TRIED ALL THE STATSOPOPS

I’VE EVEN BUILT MY OWN

BUT I LIKE HARD NUMBERS

I want to see my own data

GET INTO YOUR OWN DATA

GOOGLE SPREADSHEETS FOR ANALYSIS

HOW LIKELY ARE YOU TO RECOMMEND OUR COMPANY/

PRODUCT/SERVICE TO YOUR FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES?

TAAVET

•5-whys for cures not treatments

•Why good releases matter

•Get freaky with your own database

WHAT WE LEARNED

HOW TO MANAGE A PROJECT TO BE 10X FASTER

PART 3.

THEY FUCK YOU UP YOUR PLANS

BIG PLANS MEAN BIG CHURN

You will spend time...

• designing features you may never build

• discussing features you may never build

• avoiding useful features because you “need to get old stuff done”

THIS IS BAD

THE LARGER THE PROJECT THE GREATER THE CHURN

YOU MAY NEVER BE ABLE TO COMPLETE YOUR PLANS

SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL

WAYS TO LIMIT CHURN

• Do it in 2 weeks or delete it

• Keep a separate feature wishlist

• Ban discussion on things which aren’t on the plan

THINK FARBUT PLAN CLOSE

HEALTHY BALANCE BETWEEN PREDICTABILITY

AND TIME SPENT PLANNING

TAAVET

SHIP FAST

YOU’RE A STARTUPYOU WANT TO BE THE BEST

You dream of one day ringing the NASDAQ bell

Peter Nixey @peternixey peternixey.comBut then your buddy headbutts the cockpit :(

STARTUPS LIVE ON BORROWED TIME

•Time

•Money

•Momentum

YOUR ASSETS WILL EXHAUST QUICKLY

YOU MUST BUILD FEATURES IN DAYS

Embrace your inner Craig #1

Saw this feature on Monday...

took her for a drink on Tuesday.

We were making love by Wednesday...

...and on Thursday...

...Friday...

...Saturday...

Chilled on Sunday.

BUILD FEATURES FAST

DON’T COMPLETE EVERYTHING

DON’T FIX EVERYTHING

COMPLETE FEATURES ONLY WHEN YOU HAVE TO

DOING THINGS COMPLETELY TAKES 4X LONGER THAN

DOING THEM SUFFICIENTLY

ALSO...

IF YOUR ENGINEER SAYS IT’S GOING TO BE INTERESTING...

TRY TO AVOID IT

DESIGN

GRAPHIC DESIGN IS THE LAST PART OF DESIGN

GRAPHIC DESIGNCOMES AFTER

PRODUCT-MARKET FIT

EMBRACE YOUR INNER CRAIG #2

BUT YOU STILL NEED UX

...AND CSS :(

DON’T PAINT THESE WALLS

TAAVET

$320 @ Hatchwise.com

TAAVET

AVOID PROCESS GAPS

MOST PRODUCT DELAYS ARE DUE TO QUEUES

NOT BOTTLENECKS

MOST DEVELOPMENT TEAMSAMASS ROTTING INVENTORY

REMOVE QUEUES. SPEED DEVELOPMENT.

MINIMISE PEOPLEMAXIMISE CROSS-DISCIPLINE

CULL YOUR BACKLOG RUTHLESSLY

• Work in genuine 2 week sprints

• Don’t settle for slow product development.

• Don’t spend time unless you have to

• Don’t spend time on graphic design until after fit

BUILDING FAST

TO CONCLUDE...

TO GET GOOD PRODUCT

1. Make sure the numbers make sense

2. Make sure people want it

3. Give yourself sufficient process to be reliable

4. Maximise your speed to be useful

QUESTIONS?

PeterNixey.com @peternixey

How to build product campus week

potted history of peter

product people

quality product

project product lead

nancial value good product

company size

taavet good priceeasy

golden rule of social

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