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Marie Prokopets & Hiten Shah
What building 5 products in a
year forces you to do
producthabits.com🤓
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We share everything we do and
learn about Product.
(Except these super secret stories)
@marieprokopets @hnshah

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Learn with us…
producthabits.com🤓
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📅 One Year
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📅 One Year
🔨 Five Products
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📅 One Year
🔨 Five Products
😎 One Team
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📅 One Year
🔨 Five Products
😎 One Team
💸 Self-Funded
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five products
made with Ralph
share on Product Habits

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1 - We started with a product that
we will likely kill very soon.

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Fundraising is a PITA 🥙
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50 interviews, 100s of decks

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• Raising money sucks
• Pitch decks aren't compelling
• Thousands of companies raise money every year
• Investors want to fund great companies
• We always want to be helpful
Fundraising is a HUGE problem & market!
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1 deck per company
1 round per year/s
1 user per company

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A big market and problem isn’t
enough… regular usage is a must.
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Takeaway 🔑

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Is the market big or are you
just convincing yourself it is?
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2 - We tried to copy & paste a product
without doing technical research.

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“Let’s copy and paste it.”
Hiten Shah
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“Let’s copy and paste it. And add audio!”
Hiten Shah
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Our Big Mistake

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No Technical Research
Our Big Mistake

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Don’t build without doing thorough
technical research first.
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Takeaway 🔑

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Technical Research will bring to light
almost every obstacle you’ll
encounter as you build your Product.
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New product
New feature
Iterating
Changing direction
Crazy idea
If you care about time…
do technical research

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• Research findings
• Product overview
• What needs to be included
• What doesn’t need to be included
• Open questions
• Initial mockups
Our fuck-up proof Technical Research process
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• Initial trade-offs - technical considerations, workarounds
• Speed - very rough estimates
• Decisions - stuff we have to decide now and later
• Risks - barriers, problems, nightmares
• Resources - do we have everything we need to build?
Our fuck-up proof Engineering Research process
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Are we cutting corners and
causing preventable delays?
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draftsend.com/examples

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3 - We stumbled on a new product
while doing research for Draftsend.

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6 weeks
2 surveys
1,500 responses
52 customer interviews
Priceless learnings!
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The Approach Paid Off 🚀

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Learn without bias and take action.
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Takeaway 🔑

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There was a bigger problem to solve…

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The #1 problem people have with
documents is finding them.
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Are we solving the most
important problem?
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4 - We gave up on our favorite
features to build a product in days.

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Time to solve the #1 problem

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The #1 problem people have with
documents is finding them.
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After all that research, we had
3 features we wanted to build.
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• Research findings
• Product overview
• What needs to be included
• What doesn’t need to be included
• Open questions
• Initial mockups
Our fuck-up proof Technical Research process
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“What’s the fastest path to learning?”
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We had 3 features we wanted to build.
What feature do we need to nail first?
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You have to ship fast to learn faster.
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Takeaway 🔑

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Three days later, we were playing
with a functioning product.
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Three days later, we were playing
with a functioning product.
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Two more days and the product
was being used by customers.

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Now we’re building a totally
different feature thanks to
customer feedback.

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Are we building to learn?
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5 - We were afraid to run user
tests without the help of an expert.

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Product #5!

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Designer Researcher

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We decided to just do it.

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User testing can get you unstuck.
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Takeaway 🔑

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We nailed our new product idea
in just a few hours!

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We nailed our new product idea
in just a few hours!
And we’re building it!

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Anyone can do user testing.
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Takeaway 🔑

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Our prototypes
Our websites
Competitors
Successful products
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User Testing
The goal is to learn fast.

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How should we do onboarding for
our new tool in the document
space?

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First we user tested a competitor
How should we do onboarding for
our new tool in the document
space?

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First we user tested a competitor
Then we user tested the best
How should we do onboarding for
our new tool in the document
space?

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✅ List all the features on the homepage
✅ Multiple install CTAs with the word free
✅ Repeat features over and over again
😐 Make sure the copy at the top of your website is compelling
😐 Invite people to join early
Mixmax user test results
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✅ Show (don’t just tell) people the value they’ll get right on your homepage
😐 Make sure your homepage loads fast
😐 People see through impersonal personalization
😐 Keep the excitement level high during onboarding
😐 Avoid unexpected surprises about paid plans
Grammarly user test results
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Are we doing enough user
testing?
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🔨 Five Products
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The most efficient way to rapidly
learn is to have multiple
products.
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Or, act like you do.
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“The only way to do more is do more.”
Hiten Shah
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“The only way to do more is do more.”
Hiten Shah
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It’s actually about making room for
what matters.
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5 Products & counting…
9 People
1 Ralph
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We have no choice but to achieve
more with less.

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You have a choice to achieve
more with less.
We have no choice but to achieve
more with less.

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What are you working on right
now that doesn’t matter?
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Work on things that matter.
Make those things better.
Be happier ☺

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Questions?
Ask us anything!
hiten@producthabits.com
marie@draftsend.com
bit.ly/5-products