1. Product Management for
Entrepreneurs
Wan Li Zhu
Fairhaven Capital
Blog: hacktrend.com
March 2012
1

2. Product Management
Development Marketing
• Specifications • Product positioning
• Architecture • Channel/sales
• Programming • Partnerships
• Testing/QA • Business models
Engineering Customer
2

3. Part 1:
Product Development
3

4. Product Development Lifecycle
Idea
Feedback Spec
Test Build
4

5. The Constraints of Software Projects
Choose 2 of the 3
Features
Speed Quality
The winning combo: Quality + Speed (less features) ?
5

6. Waterfall vs. Lean – the oversimplified version
Waterfall Lean
Philosophy Know what you’re Don’t know what’s
doing before you do right until market
it. Plan, spec, validates it, so
develop, test, ship. throw it out there
and iterate fast.
Origin Software on CDs The web 2.0, SaaS
Where Large, old school Startups
software companies
Suitable for Enterprise Consumers
customers
6

7. Waterfall vs. Lean – striking the right balance
• Instead of long specs, aim for high level requirements and
more wireframes
• Agile process (i.e. SCRUM, pair programming) + regular triage
to manage bugs
• Prototype - test in small user groups to gather feedback and
iterate quickly. A/B testing
• Shift more towards a waterfall method when working with an
outsourced development shop
7

8. Roles in a Technology Organization
Starting out: As the company grows:
• (CTO) • CTO / VP Product /
• Developer Architect
• Outsourced UX • Developer
• Designer (UX)
• Test (QA)
• Operations
• Biz-specific roles: User
Education, Community Mgr
8

9. What is a spec?
• Wireframes – storyboards to quickly iterate on features
and UI
• Scenario – describes a user with a complex goal
performing multiple actions (use cases)
• Use case – a sequence of steps performed by a user that
represent features in the software
• Requirements – discrete must-haves that the product
must meet
9

10. Spec Example:
• Scenario: Joe is a college student and wants to stay on top of
what his friends are up to. He first looks up his friends by
their email address, then adds them, and once he’s connected
checks regularly for their status updates.
• Use cases
– Add friends
– Approve friend request
– Monitor newsfeed
– Comment on newsfeed item
• Requirements
– Must be able to look up people by email, by name, by school, etc.
– Must be able to add friends (send invite to connect)
– Must allow user to approve (or disapprove) of a request to friend
– Must allow users to update their status with text, picture, location, etc
– Newsfeed must be cached and updated on increments of X minutes
– Etc etc
10

11. User Flow Diagram
Quick way to define user experience,
get sense of complexity
Forces you to flush out the product
logic and flow
Can be created with MS Visio, Lucid
Chart (online)
11

12. Storyboard (wireframe)
Keep it low-fidelity! Use for brainstorming, debating
functionality, UI design iterations
Google
Search
1. Type in search term 2. Click search
12

13. Spec drives dev, test, marketing
Architecture / dev design
Dev Time/effort estimates
Code + documentation
QA plan / test cases
Spec Test Performance / scalability
Security
Scenarios
Use cases Product demo video
Features Marketing Product positioning
Prioritization Marketing collateral
UX wireframes Support documentation
13

14. Spec Best Practices
• Stay organized: each scenario contains multiple use cases,
each use case contains multiple requirements.
• Prioritize (high, med, low) all scenarios, use cases, and
requirements - you will need to cut features to make
deadlines. When cutting, keep track of dependencies.
• Other requirements - Don’t forget requirements that are
outside of explicit use cases, i.e. security, scalability.
• Outsourced development - More detailed specs. Make sure
code is well-documented, ask for developer design docs.
14

15. Bug curve
QA to a point, then release and fix/iterate.
SaaS/agile - release earlier and more often.
# of Bugs
Enterprise – need a certain level of quality
Consumer – users can do some of the testing, fix rapidly
Track bugs using a system i.e. FogBugz
Fix/iterate
Feature Release Time
Complete
15

16. Suggested Reading
16

17. Part 2:
Business Models / Marketing
(for Consumer Internet Startups)
17

18. Factors for success in consumer internet
• Viral built into product
– Sharing/collaboration is baked into the core use case (photo sharing)
• Value increases with more use
– Makes it harder to leave (Dropbox)
• User engagement and repeat use
– High # of vectors for engagement (Facebook), universal tool (Google)
• Low user input to value ratio
– Minimum friction to get to value
• Distribution/buzz
– Partnerships, celebrities, prominent investors
• High value user demographics
– Female, teens, wealthy
• Adapting a successful model to new channel/device
18

19. Network effect
Search User traffic +
Users Videos Traffic content
Users
Users
Advertisers Advertisers Apps
Advertisers (Adwords)
Publishers
Publishers
(Adsense)
What are the viral loops in your model?
19

20. Go-to-market
• Staging your big vision
– Plan for platform but simple features first - consumers can only
absorb so much.
• Multi-sided platforms: Create standalone value first
– Focus on the side of the platform that is more desirable (to the other
side of the platform)
• Seed the platform
– Trusted networks (i.e. universities)
– Aggregate existing content
– Recruit content creators
• Price @ free to capture market
– Only works if you can monetize through other means (!)
– Pricing at free also deters new entrants
20

21. Positioning
• Be careful of “we’re more ____ than _____” and
“we do ____ plus a lot more”
• Differentiate/position by… • Type of market affects
– Vertical positioning
– Device/channel (mobile) – Emerging - define
– Audience – Fragmented/crowded -
– Geography aggregate
– Mature/declining - disrupt
• Against large incumbents
– Misaligned economics
– Feature gaps
– Too small to move needle
21

22. Creating and sustaining momentum
• Regular new product launches
– Creates PR buzz and educates users
• Viral built into product
– Lowers user acquisition cost and sustains PR momentum
– OK to explicitly incentivize users to invite others
• Search engine optimized landing pages
– Auto-generate content to attract organic search traffic
• Content focus and community development
– Flavor of the day/month, popular trends
• Partnerships
– Google/Facebook don’t need your 1M users, they need better ways to
monetize existing user base.
22