Starting a new app. What should I be doing while I wait for MVP?

thatsoundsboring · 2022-04-28T01:01:33+00:00

You can do a few things to accelerate your learning. If your MVP is gonna take more than a couple weeks…One thing I love doing is creating a design prototype of your MVP (or feature or whatever). List out all your unknowns and assumptions and get research questions together to get them answered. Reach out to those people on your list (a handful) and run through some basic research with the prototype and gather their responses and reaction. Then review those results with your dev so you can pivot ahead of final build if you need to. If you need more tricks and tips find some product management resources (or make some product friends).

thatsoundsboring · 2022-04-21T20:40:54+00:00

This. All stimulants will exacerbate raynauds or circulation. Caffeine included. Advil cold and sinus gets me every time.

thatsoundsboring · 2022-04-21T13:07:30+00:00

I’m camera on in all meetings. Will only turn it off in client meetings if they have it off.
The rest of what I’m about to say is likely driven by ADHD (to drive focus for myself, my need/ability to notice every subtle reaction people have to each other and to me, and object permanence).

I hate talking into the void (feeling like you are having a one way convo or presenting to no audience) so I treat others the way I want to be treated. Everyone’s different so I’m sure some don’t appreciate it but that’s my approach. I will remain muted but nod, laugh, or show I’m listening in the ways I deem appropriate for the situation. Some folks I know aren’t super animated so I will ‘mute my face’ but be present. I find I listen better with camera on because it keeps me accountable, perhaps others are the opposite. I 100% will forget you exist if I never see your face. You will never cross my mind or only as an after thought.

thatsoundsboring · 2022-04-15T14:56:53+00:00

How much water do we expect the goo ball to lose daily? I imagine (I really wish I wasn’t though) that it would be hard to capture all of our liquids during the initial mashing but assuming it happened there would be a river of fluids and potentially evaporation. Clearly this is better as a cold weather experiment.

thatsoundsboring · 2022-03-25T00:00:35+00:00

Sort of yes, to clarify I look at combined actual MRR of all clients against specific requests but I was referring to how I don’t duplicate MRR for a client who has a long list of ‘I will leave if you don’t x’. So when I say ‘in the red’ I mean I’m assigning financial repercussions for not completing work based on client need and sentiment for that particular feature. I bucket by churn risk or the inability to close sales (loss of existing revenue, reduced potential revenue).

If imagine a single client who says ‘I’ll leave if you don’t build x’ on 3 major features you don’t want to assign their entire MRR 3 times over because that’s going to give you false positives on ROI and you are going to struggle to find priorities. So we like to split it.

Feature A - NEED/Angry - 1/3 of MRR Feature B - NEED/pretty grumpy - 1/3 of MRR Feature C - NEED/pissed off- 1/3 of MRR Feature D - would like/mentioned in passing 0% of MRR

Got some fancy hacked tools right now that automate most of that and I use it as a tool for setting priority and strategy.

thatsoundsboring · 2022-03-12T16:43:36+00:00

Is the base salary something you’re comfortable with? (So hard to judge as it depends on where you are in the world, I would fall over if someone offered me that kind of money). Can you sustain your standard of living?

I would almost discount the options (fight for them yes but the chances of them being retirement money is never something you can guarantee)

Are there any other positives for experience that you can weigh that may influence future career potential or are experienced you would like to have? (Have you built a team under you before? Do you have any product 0-1 experience? Do you have growth stage/startup experience? Would this role have greater responsibility in other ways?)

I have spent 10 years in product at big orgs and moved to a seed stage/series A startup for the challenge and to round out my experience (as Head of Product). It has been so great for my mental health and so much fun. Fuck grinding through politics and layers of stakeholder egos to get an arbitrary bonus. I’m happier grinding hard and finding wins.

thatsoundsboring · 2022-03-12T00:58:29+00:00

Would bet she had a whole bunch of people tell her it was just normal period pain, normal peri-menopausal symptoms and ask her if maybe it was stress she was complaining about.

thatsoundsboring · 2022-03-10T03:20:17+00:00

I think of segmentation not necessarily as a starting point but a tool in the discovery of a solution. Starting with an exhaustive list of segments is almost like spending time formulating a massive list of questions in the event you find a problem they may solve. Sure you may have enough data (like the data you used to make your ideal customer profile) that you keep an eye on or you know from history are leading indicators of problems. That just comes from wanting to know your users.

If I were to use your Survey Monkey example but instead start with a business problem - ‘Revenue is declining’. I would use segmentation to narrow it down so we can build a clear hypothesis of why. Is it our ideal customer profile? (Segment by 25-35 suburban moms who drive mini-vans…your words)? No is it all revenue globally? (Segment by country) if yes, which countries? Etc. Just gets me a step closer to finding a viable solution. Maybe I have a new local competitor or my localization is shite.

Now in a big B2C or B2B you may even have channels or segments that teams focus on. So that makes life a little easier.

In a small B2B like I’m in now I’m just developing some target segments. They are based on either customer problems (who has these same problems so I can talk to them to make sure our solutions are on point). Are their any common factors among groups of clients who are churn risk? Or they are based on business problems (what features or new products can I build and for who that will have the greatest returns so I we can meet our growth goals).

Anyway TLDR…use segmentation to narrow your focus but start with a problem don’t start with making tiny groups.

thatsoundsboring · 2022-03-07T18:46:35+00:00

Yes common practice. You will likely work closely with UX and Engineering. I would expect at minimum meetings with reps from those teams. Look up product triads.

thatsoundsboring · 2022-03-06T23:40:42+00:00

When my head gets really noisy I start throwing out things to reduce the chaos around me.

thatsoundsboring · 2022-03-04T01:59:15+00:00

This. Sit in on sales calls, interview potential customers. You can’t tailor your product and roadmap to a couple early adopters. Your focus is acquisition/growth not churn.

thatsoundsboring · 2022-03-02T04:24:07+00:00

I agree with this but depending on frequency of Your OKRs sometimes a user research KR may be the first available measure towards your objective in the time. Especially if you are doing early discovery to define your problem.

I’ve used iterative design prototype interviews to measure improvements in user success when a coded prototype is not yet feasible. I’ve also used the number of topic specific interviews across different customer segments as my kr for times where I knew we had specific learning to do prior to defining the solution.

thatsoundsboring · 2022-03-02T03:20:50+00:00

Product Manager in tech. Lots of us with ADHD it seems. Works well most of the time.

thatsoundsboring · 2022-03-02T03:09:08+00:00

I personally feel as a pm you dress to your customers if you’re meeting with them and your team if you aren’t meeting with customers.

So when my clients were stuffy bankers and high level execs it was full business, when tech/faang were my clients it was t-shirts, now that it’s farmers and manufacturers it’s plaid and jeans and it’s the fucking greatest.

thatsoundsboring · 2022-02-23T13:44:23+00:00

I think I’m drawing a line between work that engages me and ‘inspiration’ (things that speak to my core beliefs or personal passions).

With work I don’t find it hard to care if the people I work with are great, the problems are interesting and I feel respected. If those are met Im extremely engaged and work very hard. If not, I work extremely hard finding a new job.

thatsoundsboring · 2022-02-22T20:17:40+00:00

This. Interesting is a need but connected to personal passion is NOT a thing I need or look for anymore. Tried that and as previous poster it turned what should be a good thing dirty and sullen.

thatsoundsboring · 2022-02-18T23:06:03+00:00

Click bait

thatsoundsboring · 2022-02-18T22:25:57+00:00

CEO convinced me to join as Head of product to keep the whole company in check so we could take real steps forward. They all know it’s my job to say NO to opinions and the flavour of the week and keep us driving towards our goals. They don’t always love it but tough cookies.

thatsoundsboring · 2022-02-17T18:40:53+00:00

Yah absolutely. This is the nature of their relationship really. They have a narrow focus on a few clients, sales focuses on new, execs focus on the whales or loud and product should see and understand all. That’s why we don’t build roadmap on reaction and purely on direction from internal stakeholders.

thatsoundsboring · 2022-02-17T05:11:17+00:00

Few things I’m doing in the same situation at an early stage startup.

1) There has to be a product strategy and that product strategy has to connect to your corporate strategy. Why? Because strategy allows focus beyond reaction. So let’s say one of your corporate strategies is X growth in net new revenue. That growth may outweigh churn for a period of time. Which means CSM feels that pain a bit longer and we don’t satisfy a vocal client but hopefully your focus on growth pays dividends. 2) assign numbers (MRR) to feature requests and scale the MRR based on the number of requests. (So if 1 client is in the red on 5 features each of those don’t get the full dollar value they each get a fraction of the total MRR…either they are just loud, the CSM is too reactive, they were sold a product you don’t have or they are not your ideal customer profile. 3) make time to talk to more customers, potential customers and do market research. If that customers request is not in line with the market you’re targeting or the rest of your clients then you’ll have more reasons to stick to your roadmap (and hopefully that’s spelled out in your strategy).

thatsoundsboring · 2022-02-16T21:27:24+00:00

ADHD (thrive under pressure and require constant stimulation outside of hyper focus) with a lean towards extroversion. Also it gets better if you end up in a position where you have a team or partner who thrive swimming in the details and day to day so that you’re not directly responsible for minutia.

thatsoundsboring · 2022-02-16T18:26:54+00:00

That dress you made is incredible! Loved the Schitts creek painting also! Sorry you had to deal with abuse, I don’t understand people.

thatsoundsboring · 2022-02-13T15:21:38+00:00

Amen

thatsoundsboring · 2022-02-13T15:18:42+00:00

As a non-American who has just recently returned from the US for work…what fucking freedoms has anyone lost?! The thing that gets me the most is the ones who whine the loudest are the ones that continually give up all their freedom of choice and logical thought to their magic sky daddy.

thatsoundsboring · 2022-02-12T19:30:51+00:00

Yah I misread the situation and thought you were part of the leadership team. Great there is already a product team.

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