Building Product: Michael Seibel

Building Product: Michael Seibel

Created time
Dec 13, 2022 04:43 PM
Summary
Focus on what is your client and what are the needs
Progress
Done
Category
Startup
URL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C27RVio2rOs&list=WL
Source
Youtube

What made Justin.tv survive?

  1. The team was extremely technical
  1. They did not spend a lot of money
  1. Their ego was highly tied to the success of the startup

What problem are you solving?

  • Can you state the problem clearly? It better to be spoken in 1-2 sentences
  • Have you experienced a problem yourself? Not required, but you need at least to find a person who experienced that
  • Can you define the problem narrowly? [Important] What people you would address first?
  • Is the problem solvable? is it really possible to do that, at least in term of connecting sellers and buyers

Who is your customer?

  • Everyone! (no)
  • How often do they have the problem? Customers are sometimes not buyers but sellers
  • Who is really getting the most value of the product?
  • How intense if your problem? Would first customers buy it “like that’s a deal!”?
    • Starting with a higher price is better than to starting free. Working with bad customers leads to baaad decisions
  • Are they willing to pay?
  • How easy are they to find?
    • If it is not easy, you need to find it out upfront

Does your MVP actually solve the problem?

💡
[Important] It is a required step.
MVP is not an art, it need to get more than 1 person to appreciate it.

Which customers should you go after first? (the easy ones!)

Do not try to get from hardest customers first.
Find people who are the most desperate for your solution.
Example: If you are trying to get a 1000$ contract with company for 6 months, that’s not a desperate company.
Do not seek for impressive customers but not desperate, you’re doing it wrong. Find customers, which businesses will go broke without your solution.
Investors are not indicators of the company’s success.
Ignore investors, ignore friends, focus on finding the desperate customer.

Should you discount or start with a super low price? (NO!)

Do not discount on your own incentive, not theirs. Do not be desperate on customers.

Third party solution

You can provide discount if there is a third party discount AND a deadline. For instance: if AWS is providing free 30 days of servers, you can tell your customers so they see a deadline providing the benefit. So people will be discussing the deadline and the topic will be brought up.

How to setup metrics

💡
[IMPORTANT] This is required.
  • Google Analytics + something else for inner actions
  • Pick 5-10 metrics
  • Make measurement a part of product spec
Metrics must to be directly correlated with the growth of the company.
Without metrics, your product will be a black box.

Product Development Cycle (v1)

  1. Always write the specs of the development cycle
  1. Focus on more productive ideas
  1. State the future dev cycles based on the experience of iterations
 
  • KPI Goal
  • Brainstorm
  • Easy/Medium/Hard
  • Decide
  • Written Spec

Pivot vs Iterate

  • Pivot = changing a customer and/or the problem (rare)
  • Iterate = changing the solution (common)

Fake Steve Jobs vs Real Steve Jobs (how not to be a product dictator)

Steve Jobs was not creating the perfect product from start, he was always iterating.

Q&A

  • #1 problem of pre-sale is discounting
  • Development cycle need to develop quickly to iterate than to do one good solution slowly