Consumer Product Lessons for Enterprise PMs ©2014 LinkedIn Corporation. All Rights Reserved. 1 NASSCOM Product Conclave Michael Korcuska Vice President, Product Management LinkedIn October 31, 2014 Beyond the obvious
Jun 14, 2015
Consumer Product Lessons ���for Enterprise PMs
©2014 LinkedIn Corporation. All Rights Reserved. 1
NASSCOM Product Conclave
Michael Korcuska Vice President, Product Management
October 31, 2014
Beyond the obvious
Connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and
successful
Our mission
Member metricsQ
1’12
Q2’
12
Q3’
12
Q4’
12
Q1’
13
Q2’
13
Q3’
13
Q4’
13
Q1’
14
Q2’
14
Q3'
14
332
313
296
277
259
238
218
202187
174161
Members (mn)
Q1’
12
Q2’
12
Q3’
12
Q4’
12
Q1’
13
Q2’
13
Q3’
13
Q4’
13
Q1’
14
Q2'
14
Q3'
14
90
8482
7678
75
65
58
525150
Unique visiting members (mn)
Q1’
12
Q2’
12
Q3’
12
Q4’
12
Q1’
13
Q2’
13
Q3’
13
Q4’
13
Q1’
14
Q2'
14
Q3'
14
28
2526
222221
18
15
131211
Member page views (bn)
1 as of quarter end | 2 monthly average during the quarter | 3 total during the quarter 4
1 2 3
Revenue
Q1’
11
Q2’
11
Q3’
11
Q4’
11
Q1’
12
Q2’
12
Q3’
12
Q4’
12
Q1’
13
Q2’
13
Q3’
13
Q4’
13
Q1’
14
Q2’
14
Q3'
14
$568$534
$473$447
$393$364
$325$304
$252$228
$188$168
$139$121
$94
% Y/YNet revenue ($mn)
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
120%
140%
160%
6
Strong Product Management Culture: Alumni
©2014 LinkedIn Corporation. All Rights Reserved. 5
CEO and VP Product
CEO
SVP Product
EIR
VP Product
VP Product
VP Product
Chief Product Officer
Product Director
SVP Product
VP Product
Enterprise Software Stinks
©2014 LinkedIn Corporation. All Rights Reserved. 6
Why? Buyer ≠ User
©2013 LinkedIn Corporation. All Rights Reserved. 7
Consumer Software: ���User is the buyer
In the Consumer world…
You are the user. Your teammates are users. This is fantastic!
©2013 LinkedIn Corporation. All Rights Reserved. 8
©2013 LinkedIn Corporation. All Rights Reserved. 9
Actually, it’s a minefield
Your boss is the user. The CEO is the user. Your mother is a user. Everyone knows why your product stinks.
This is a giant pain.
©2013 LinkedIn Corporation. All Rights Reserved. 10
Beyond the obvious
©2013 LinkedIn Corporation. All Rights Reserved. 11
Responsibilities
Metrics
Culture
Practices
©2014 LinkedIn Corporation. All Rights Reserved. 12
Differences
Responsibilities
©2013 LinkedIn Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
13
You are unlikely to be involved in pricing. Heck, your product may not make money. You won’t be preparing the sales team to sell the next release. No customer dinners.
Metrics
You cannot measure success by revenue/profit.
So much for that MBA.
Culture
No formal signoffs from 6 VPs. Please launch faster.
Optimized for speed and team independence.
Consumer Product Practices
©2013 LinkedIn Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Practice 1: Data Guided (not driven) 17
Practice #1: Data Guided (not driven)
§ A/B Testing is hard in enterprise software – You need to do it. – You need to be clear with your customers that this is good for them.
§ A/B Testing at a different level – Many variations in a single test. Hundreds of tests. Many test
interactions. What about long term effects? – You better hire yourself a PhD statistician. Really.
§ Finding the right metric – User value. Value to company. Short term versus long term. – Example: New User Signups
§ Voice of Member – You need to get the Voice of the Member into the conversation – How do you find a clean signal with 330 million members?
©2013 LinkedIn Corporation. All Rights Reserved. 18
Practice #2: Swim In Rivers 19
Swim in Rivers
§ Distribution is key – Nobody is going to make your users log in. – Be where the user already is.
§ Rivers to think about – Email. Lots of noise here. – SEO. Takes a big investment to get it right. – Search. You want to appear here. – Home Page. Can you be on the user’s home page? – Mobile Deck. This is the new home page.
§ Virality – Not every product is naturally viral. But every product should ask this
question: How will users share their experience with others? – Also, cycle time matters. Google “Adam Nash virality” for details.
©2013 LinkedIn Corporation. All Rights Reserved. 20
Practice #3: Immediate User Value
Immediate User Value
§ Don’t ask for information you’re not going to use to improve the user’s life
– LinkedIn Example: Date of Birth – Useful to LinkedIn for advertising – But what can we provide to the user that’s valuable?
§ Make sure you can deliver the reward quickly
– Ideally on the next page § Show rather than tell
– Demonstrate to the user why the information matters, don’t just tell them that it does
§ Find indirect ways to get information – Adding University delivers immediate value to LinkedIn users. – Does a pretty good job of approximating age.
©2013 LinkedIn Corporation. All Rights Reserved. 22
Practice #4: What’s the Asset?
Practice #4: What’s the Asset?
§ In addition to user engagement and revenue, great consumer products also build an asset.
– That asses is valuable by itself – But ideally it also increases the width of the moat
§ A set of data that:
– Improves the user experience – Increases your competitive advantage – Can be (carefully) monetized
§ Enterprise software companies realize this eventually – You should try to build it in from the beginning – SaaS helps this tremendously
©2013 LinkedIn Corporation. All Rights Reserved. 24
Critical ���mass ���
of data
Valuable products ���
Technology platform
Member growth and engagement
Final Difference
©2013 LinkedIn Corporation. All Rights Reserved. 26
Final Difference
©2013 LinkedIn Corporation. All Rights Reserved. 27
Enterprise PM Consumer PM
Final Difference
©2013 LinkedIn Corporation. All Rights Reserved. 28
Enterprise PM Consumer PM
Questions?
29
Photo credits: Thanks to Creative Commons!
§ Stinky feet: https://www.flickr.com/photos/hantlas/25861420 § Woman smelling flower:
http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=15616&picture=woman-smelling-flowers
§ Minefield: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DANGER_MINES.jpg § Thumbs down: https://www.flickr.com/photos/striatic/2191404675/ § Lego binoculars: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kalexanderson/5696097036/ § Price tag: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Price_Tag_99%2BTX_99_cents_%2B_tax.jpg § Approve: https://www.flickr.com/photos/didmyself/7568581920/ § River: http://www.flickr.com/photos/neilsingapore/12371587994/ § Maze: https://www.flickr.com/photos/golbenge/5400710724 § Palace/Moat: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesjustin/2852529200
©2013 LinkedIn Corporation. All Rights Reserved. 30