Your heart only has a certain number of beats. Why are you wasting your time on this shit?
According to the Internet: 9/10 (projects|startups) fail. Probably more like 50%, but still… What can we do to not fail? The rest of the conference will be about technical awesome, this one is about how not to build something no-one wants.
Product managers: didn’t matter whether you do market research or pull it out of your arse. [citation required]
Took job as PM at SourceForge (after boardroom shuffle) to keep it away from someone worse than the old team. But how to do it? With testing!
Anecdote about SourceForge project page redesign:
User testing is how you know you’re making progress.
What sort of world would we have if product managers used the scientific method? Arguing over product choices is stupid, just test it and do what’s right; this takes personality, arbitrary decision making processes, etc.
Dave McClure, Metrics for Pirates
- Acquisition
- Activation
- Retention
- Referral
- Revenue
You need to measure how people get to your site (or whatever). If you can’t test this, you’ll have trouble testing anything else.
Testing the aspects which cause users to sign up, pay, etc.
Will they keep using it, doing it, buying it?
Will the refer their friends, etc. Of it. Net promoter score is potentially a proxy for quality: people won’t say it’s shit to your face, they just won’t refer their friends.
Anecdote about Zappos making sure they could actually sell shoes on the web before spending heaps of money building infrastructure to sell shows on the web. Started with a guy going and buying shoes when they got an order.
Need great idea, great implementation, great marketing, and something about timing.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. About “normal science” vs “revolution”. Pity that marketdroids stole “paradigm shift”.
Startups that are doing something interesting are those that are about paradigm shifts. Discovery vs Optimisation; normal science vs paradigm shift.
Steve Blank, The Four Steps to Epiphany. Don’t do product development, do customer development. Get customers, then build the product they want.
Desiderata are: desirable, feasible, viable?
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