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The Roadmap of a Product-Oriented Company Continues with Prioritization

Building a business with a product is fun. It’s also a long, difficult journey. That journey of developing a product that includes the many twists and turns of building features, sunsetting features, and the like is called a product roadmap. However, like a traditional map, each road leads to a decision point. In the product world, this is where product prioritization comes into play.
Early on in a product’s lifecycle of a business just starting out is the vision of its founders. The term “MVP” may be tossed around meaning “minimum viable product” as coined by Eric Ries in The Lean Startup. At its core is the prioritization of the key features that will generate the most value and demand in the market as quickly as possible – read: as minimal resources as possible.
But once initial traction takes off (or perhaps doesn’t), there’s a myriad of choices a startup can take in its product journey. This is where the importance of product prioritization comes in. Why is product prioritization so important?
  • Most folks enjoy the creation of new ideas, not necessarily incremental improvements to existing features/ product(s).
  • Development can take on the personal interests rather than based on the impact and influence of another.
  • As a partof the shield to guard against the “Next Feature Fallacy” where the idea that “this” new feature will improve traction, sales, etc.
  • To align cross-functional teams on not only the impact, but the efforts required by all to produce XYZ changes.

Really, the key is being able to optimize for value based on limited resources. Product prioritization requires objective measuring to ensure the most valuable product, and thus company, is created.

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New Idea: Risks vs. Mitigation

A friend recently spoke to me about an idea from helping clients work out tedious real estate issues. He worked with several clients who had poor management of a particular aspect of the business. Most of the work was done painstakingly in Excel, if any process was instilled. 
Like any idea, there are several risks. However, we talked about early mitigations:
  • Risk: As a standalone tool for a single “client”, usage would be infrequent. For one client, the problem occurs every several weeks. Mitigation: The target customer is an entity that manages several clients. This enables more frequency of the problem and exponentially increasing the pain. Thus, the benefit, too, exponentially increases.
  • Risk: Explicit pain could be felt with management of several spreadsheets. However, quantifying the impact of pain could be difficult. Mitigation: Benefits start with both monetary and legal exposure. As added bonus, there was a time-saving component. Stick to benefits that get closer to the wallet.
  • Risk: Is this a big enough opportunity? Are there competitors/ monetized solutions today? Mitigation: My friend had a colleague who left his company to start his own – similar services for clients. Meanwhile, my friend’s clients are large institutions and just a few of the large firms in Atlanta. Additionally, macro-economic environment points to a growing trend.
  • Risk: Introduction of a new solution to companies/ employees – adoption. Mitigation: the pain seems explicit and with good benefit potential. Many of my friend’s current clients are using incumbent solutions (i.e. spreadsheets). This also could enable an “import” process addressing empty-state issues.

A good early step is doing customer discovery. While doing so, ask prospects to agree to pilots of an MVP.

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No Good Time to Let Aspirations and Inspirations Delay

“exit by feature set or by a deadline, but above all, exit” – Intercom’s Des Traynor on launching (exiting) a product.

I’ve been thrilled to hear two entrepreneurs I met with last year take to heart the importance of launching quickly, even if they did not feel “ready”.
In one case, the entrepreneur was building pitch decks trying to get funding on the idea before any development started. No bites for funding, and I finally asked if she believed in the idea enough to fund the initial development herself (and trim scope to MVP). She said yes, funded the initial development, launched, got great traction, and raised a sizable seed round.
In the other case, the entrepreneur needed to believe in her idea more, and share her product. She needed to share her story. With a few connections, she’s gone viral, and has been getting great traction, great mentoring and advisement… doors are now opening easily for her.  
Then, I run into the occasional wantrepreneur or idealist who claims to want to start something so bad, and then spins wheels on trying to make things “perfect”.
The funny thing about perfect is that there can be no improvement. It’s already the best. That is the very definition of perfect. The problem is that “perfect” doesn’t exist… and while chasing perfect, “good enough” or “great start” don’t occur.
First-time entrepreneurs struggle hard at this concept as they enter this new world full of energy, passion, and vision of “what should be” rather than “what could be”.  
Today is too fast-paced to “reach perfection” as we are constantly evolving – improving or otherwise, we change too often. Our perspectives, our desires, they all change. So what lofty visions we aim for and try to build before launching will ultimately delay our ability to launch, test, learn, and iterate towards a reality that evolves.
Invest today, launch sooner rather than later, and iterate while on your journey. Rare is it that your journey requires so much investment, so little room for error that you can’t give it a go now.
Like Des said – define a line to launch, and launch. Don’t sit there dreaming and moving the line farther. There’s simply no good time to let aspirations and inspirations delay.
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Make Imperfect Perfect

Seth Godin’s got a great post titled “While waiting for perfect”. From his blog:

You’ve permitted magical to walk on by. Not to mention good enough, amazing and wonderful. 

Waiting for the thing that cannot be improved (and cannot be criticized) keeps us from beginning. 

Merely begin.

He’s got another titled “Abandoning perfection”.

I really enjoyed these posts for their writing simplicity and their messages. I speak to many friends and new contacts who all admire entrepreneurs. They share daydreams of doing their own thing. Many of them are waiting… they’re waiting for a big client… they’re waiting for a great idea… they’re waiting to find a partner who can code. 

Everyone’s waiting for perfection when there are so many ways enabling them to act now. They can act now, build something simple, and start learning. Waiting for perfection stops us from learning. Stops us from finding out if our idea even works. It stops us from potentially learning of an even greater opportunity. 

I like Seth’s writing… a lot. I like that his blog is a bit philosophical, and I’ve been playing with the idea of posting my own stream of consciousness posts. So to that end, I’ll say this and add to Seth’s post: “We make imperfect perfect.” 

That is, we may start an entrepreneurial endeavor short of our grander vision. We’ve launched a simple MVP (or maybe MLP?), but by doing so, we’re able to test traction sooner. When we do that, we learn, and we iterate. We put our names out there rather than sitting quietly with no notice. We pursue something that has been eating at us for so long.

As we iterate, we gauge traction, and we grow or pivot the idea… perhaps reaching the limits we once dreamed of, or perhaps greater. We make the endeavor perfect. We make some seemingly ordinary person that perfect someone. We make do with our situations and create perfect opportunities. 

At that point, we’ll probably look back at our starts and laugh how it was all imperfect, but to get to where we are and who we are, we wouldn’t change a thing. We made those imperfect opportunities… perfect.
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Minimum Viable? Maybe It’s Minimum Learnable or Saleable Instead

I’ve written a few articles about Minimum Viable Products (MVP), and after deliberating with various entrepreneurs about what they believe is their MVPs, I wanted to do more research about the concept.
I found an article by Vishal Chandra called “Understanding Minimum Viable Product : MLP vs MVP vs MSP” referencing not just an MVP but two other Minimums: Minimum Learnable Product (MLP) and Minimum Saleable Product (MSP).
Eric Ries, author of the Lean Startup, defines a minimum viable product as the initial step to begin the learning process as quickly as possible – paramount to the central idea of the ‘build-measure-learn’ feedback loop.
Vishal distinguishes what an MVP is by defining the two other types:
  • Minimum Learnable Product – the minimum product needed to learn what will need to be built for the MVP. These can include designs, articles/ blog posts and the conversations that flow from them, surveys, etc.
  • Minimum Saleable Product – the minimum product that motivates customers to pay for the product. In this case, Vishal cites an MSP for B2B customers may include additional features like security, integrations to other tools, etc.

I definitely see how MLPs and MSPs fit in the startup cycle (product, marketing, sales, etc.). However, I’d argue that MVPs can be saleable, too, but not necessarily SCALEABLE.

For example, a new clothing subscription service may manually curate subscription boxes while charging customers. That enables the startup to learn the process, pricing, etc. But as the company grows, they may then build a robust “fitting” engine that takes earlier learned lessons into an algorithm. There was no MSP per se as much as the MVP evolved as they should as the product reaches product-market fit.

What are your thoughts on distinguishing other minimum viable/ learnable/ saleable products? What are other minimum _____ products, and how would they work?

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Learning from Hacking My Writing Style for 15 Posts

Wasn’t long ago when I hit my 100th blog post, and I decided to hack my writing style with 15 posts 300-words or less as well as test post frequency.
At the end of the exercise, some thoughts:
  • 300 words was arbitrary, but it was a test for effectiveness and readability (my “MVP”). During the 15 posts, I’d write full drafts (~400-500 words) before trimming. After 30 minutes, I’d get to sub-400, and painstakingly carve potentially good content to get to 300. I’ll opt for 400-word limit moving forward with judgement.
  • I thought posting twice weekly would boost readership. It does… kinda. Multiple posts are great especially with sites like Atlanta Tech Blogs which showcase the latest posts from startups and entrepreneurs; however, I get “organic” traction just fine with daily social shares.
  • Two posts weekly is tough for me. Inspiring content is the challenge. More than twice a week would be unsustainable for me at the moment. I’ll still do two-a-weeks till October.
  • Friday, Saturday, Monday aren’t great times to share at 11AM or 2PM. I’ll gather data from Google Analytics later. For now, anecdotally, the best days to post on any outlet (LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook) are Wednesday, Tuesday, and Thursday (in order).
  • I love how Hypepotamusshares a post multiple times a week socially. Before, I did one social blast per post, but realized I was missing opportunities with multiple shares. Now, I share a single article several times citing quotes from the article on social media outlets — each day for a week after the initial post. I get more residual Favorites, Shares, Retweets, Comments, etc.
I’m always looking for ways to improve, and this was a great exercise to improve my writing and overall communication skills.
What are some other ways I could change up my writing style? Any other recommendations on writing style or what blog/ writing styles you’ve enjoyed reading?
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Downward Trends of MVPs

At Body Boss, we built features on feedback that coaches would buy and be more engaged, but we didn’t see upticks in conversions once features were built. Instead, sometimes, the best customer discovery occurs when you’re actually testing an MVP – minimum viable product.
I’ve been working with several startups since Body Boss and each claim to be building an “MVP”. But instead, they’ve overbuilt their products adding complexity in features and user experience.
From these “MVPs”, I’ve noticed common trends leading to poor adoption and significant rework:
  • Developing an MVP in silo. By nature, entrepreneurs believe they know the “right way” to address a problem, so they starting building their vision. However, the right way may only address the problem for a few versus a mass market. Building an MVP alongside customer-partners from the beginning mitigates risks of missing bigger opportunities or building unwanted features.
  • Inability to adapt hypotheses and approach. Entrepreneurs can be extremely bullish in their beliefs of what is right, resisting the pull of the market. This can be a terrible trap where the market isn’t listened to. If they aren’t heard, they won’t buy.
  • Focusing on one side. In startups with two markets (think: Uber, Airbnb with supply and demand), it’s hard to successfully recruit one market without the other. There is no “chicken” or “egg” in priority anymore. Yet, I’ve seen too much effort focused on one side, while the other is ignored.
  • Building too much, too soon. A startup should evolve as the market evolves and matures. However, many entrepreneurs try building their visions of grandeur on Day 1. As a new startup, there’s a high level of education for the market and low degree of trust. Building too much early on can overwhelm consumers (bad experience!) and potentially dilute the startup’s value proposition.

What are your thoughts of customer discovery via an MVP? What trends have you seen when building an MVP? How have startups over built MVPs that you’ve seen and the problems that have come about?

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