Product Management in Early Stage Startups

Product Management in Early Stage Startups

• 1. Product Thinking & Management in Early Stage Tech Startups Amit Ranjan

• 2. Presentation Flow ❖ Need for Product Thinking / Management ❖ What is Product Management? ❖ How Product Mgmt varies with Startup LifeCycle ❖ Managing Products in Early Stage Startups - 10 Lessons

• 3. Sobering Startup Truth No 1

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• 5. Uncertainty / Patterns / Insights Clarity / Focus Research Concept / Prototype Design The Product Squiggle (“The Drunken Walk”) Sobering Startup Truth No. 2

• 6. Knowing What to Build ? THE HOLY GRAIL OF STARTUP SUCCESS Prototype Design MVP Product Scope Customer Development Features / UI & UX Value Proposition

• 7. Knowing “What, When, Why, How, Where, Who” to build is the role of Product Management…..

• 8. Product Management is the function that manages the product life cycle through activities like planning, forecasting, production, marketing.

• 9. Product Management Vision Design Execution Product Management owns the Vision, Design and Execution of the Product

• 10. Vision ❖ Align org goals with market conditions & user needs ❖ “Get” the pulse of the product Design ❖ Give shape to the product: feature mix, user experience Execution ❖ Work with engineering, quality, marketing to deliver

• 11. Product Management Vision Design Execution What is Product Thinking? “Product Thinking is a user-first look at the problem being solved and its solution” Users / Target Audience → Vision / Strategy → Goals / Features Product Thinking

• 12. “A great product manager has the brain of an engineer, the heart of a designer, and the speech of a diplomat…”

• 13. “The best Product Managers become CEOs of their products...”

• 14. Product Mgmt varies along Startup LifeCycle “Product Mgmt is required at all stages, but it’s structure varies from informal (early stage) to formal (late stage). Initial PM role (early stage) may be handled by founders or enggs, while later (late stage) thoroughbred PMs take over”

• 15. Product Management v/s Startup Lifecycle Discovery Validation Growth Idea/Team Fit Product Market Fit Business Model/Market Fit Business Model Canvas Minimum Viable Product Business Planning Conceptualize / Ideate Build / Iterate / Release Scale / Expand Informal Product Mgmt Semi Formal Pdt Mgmt Structured Product Mgmt Founders Founders / 1st Pdt Mngr Product Mgmt team Fitment Method Tasks Structure Team Process Intuitive Transitory Scientific

• 16. 10 Lessons in Managing Products in Early Stage Startups

• 17. Startup - From First Principles Create → Repeat → Scale “A startup is a temporary organization searching for a repeatable & scalable business model – Steve Blank” 1

• 18. 2 Minimum Viable Product Build Learn Measure Pivots Experiments Metrics MVP is an early version of the product that gives maximum learning about customers with least effort.

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• 20. Rationale for MVP: Startups ≠ Perfect “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late – Reid Hoffman”

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• 22. 3 Product Market Fit (PMF) PMF is the degree to which a product satisfies a strong market demand. Target Customer Value Proposition Underserved Needs Features UX Product Market Fit Product Market

• 23. How do you know you have PMF? *illustrative examples Consumer PMF looks like* ❖ Organic growth - 1000s of signups/day ❖ Returning users - 100s of users returning 3 days/week ❖ Clear path to 100K users Enterprise/SAAS PMF looks like* ❖ Freemium-to-paid conversion rate 5% ❖ LTV/ CAC ratio > 3 ❖ Monthly churn rate < 2% ❖ Clear path to $100K MRR

• 24. - Rahul Vohra @SuperHuman

• 25. 4 Startup Funnel Metrics Revenue Referral Activation Retention Acquisition How users find you? How is their first user experience? Do users return? How do you make money? Do users tell others? Funnel metrics is visualizing the product’s key workflow in terms of a conversion funnel.

• 26. Simplified Funnel Metrics Stripped down version of Funnel Metrics ❖ Acquisition ❖ Retention ❖ Revenue SlideShare version of Funnel Metrics* ❖ Distribution (Team “distro”) ❖ Engagement (Team “engage”) ❖ Monetization (Team “biz”) *Team division based on Funnel Metrics stages

• 27. SlideShare – Team Division along Funnel Metrics Team Distro Team Engage Team Biz User Journey

• 28. Early Stage Team Hiring & Composition 5 Product Engineering Design “Product Engineers” Backend Devs Testers Designers / UX Front End Devs Product Enggs are “Enggs with Product Sense” “Startup CEOs are Glorified Recruiters”

• 29. Team Structure Morphs along Startup Cycle “Product Engineers” Backend Devs Testers Designers / UX Front End Devs Early Stage Product Managers Backend Devs Testers Designers / UX Front End Devs Growth Stage Engineering Managers + Data Science

• 30. 7 ❖ A Product Requirements Document (PRD) is the “running blueprint” of the product. ❖ PRD builds team consensus & gets buy-in from all stake holders. ❖ Links product scope, value prop, market analysis, use cases, product requirements, constraints, workflows & mockups, metrics, milestones, timelines Product Requirement Document (PRD) 6

• 31. Who Why What How Product Management Engineering PRD: From Product Mgmt to Development Market Segments Personas Customer Journey Scenarios Constraints Features Infrastructure Technology UX Design Specs Implementation Details User Interface

• 32. 3 Point Thumb Rule for Product Prioritization Product Features (prioritizing for a product) ❖ Metrics movers ❖ Satisfiers ❖ Delighters Product Roadmap (prioritizing overall product plan) ❖ Core ❖ Strategic ❖ Venture 7

• 33. Prioritizing (Iterative) Product Feedback ❖One person's opinion (OPO) / Highest paid person’s opinion (HiPPO) ❖Strong suggestion ❖Vocal minority phenomenon ❖Mandate 8 The context for feedback as imp as feedback itself!

• 34. Focus on core, Outsource non-core complexity 9 ❖ Cloud: AWS, Azure ❖ Hosting: Digital Ocean, Softlayer ❖ Billing: Braintree, Razorpay ❖ Analytics: Mixpanel, Clevertap ❖ Voice: Twilio Don’t Reinvent the Wheel! Engineers (by default) like building new shiny tech toys:) “The Build v/s Buy Decision”

• 35. Consumer (B2C) SAAS (B2B) Building for End Users End Users / Buyers Key Focus User’s emotional need Workflow efficiency Success Metrics Build what users love Revenue driven Team Orientation Consumer mindset Business mindset Product Adoption Virality driven Sales / BizDev driven Consumer v/s SAAS User Values & Functionality 10

• 36. And last but not least….

• 37. The Art of Managing - Failure, Risk, Ambiguity Failure Risk Taking Ambiguity MVP, Lean, Agile are all ways to manage risk!

• 38. https://twitter.com/amitranjan https://twitter.com/amitranjan http://in.linkedin.com/in/amitranjanprofile http://in.linkedin.com/in/amitranjanprofile Thank You

• 39. References ❖ http://steveblank.com/2010/01/25/whats-a-startup-first-principles/ ❖ http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html ❖ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140602024642-22330283-avoiding-the-unintended-consequences-of-casual-feedback ❖ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-enterprise-products-differ-from-consumer-angela-yoonjeong-yang ❖ http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-ways-to-prioritize-a-list-of-product-features ❖ https://medium.com/design-of-a-technology-business/ultimate-guide-to-product-prioritization-b08c18d5c00f ❖ http://www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats/startup-metrics-for-pirates-long-version ❖ https://www.slideshare.net/andrew_null/zero-to-traction ❖ https://leanstartup.co/a-playbook-for-achieving-product-market-fit/ ❖ https://www.slideshare.net/greylockpartners/the-hierarchy-of-engagement/9-its_a_corl_tiifatior_of ❖ https://www.amazon.in/Zero-One-Start-Build-Future/dp/0753555190/ref=sr_1_1 ❖ https://thedesignsquiggle.com/ ❖ https://www.bbva.com/en/why-do-startups-fail/ ❖ https://growthanomics.com/2019/04/28/the-10-commandments-for-any-startup-at-any-stage/ ❖ https://280group.com/what-is-product-management/documents-templates/product-requirements-document-prd/ ❖ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product/market_fit ❖ https://medium.com/@jaf_designer/why-product-thinking-is-the-next-big-thing-in-ux-design-ee7de959f3fe

• 40. References : Product Thinking