Startup Essentials
by Marty Cagan
Why do so many products flop?
Marty Cagan worked on products at HP, Netscape and eBay before advising tech companies. In Inspired he asks why so many teams ship features customers don't want, and what the best product companies do differently when they decide what to build.
Cagan starts from two facts most companies ignore. At least half of our product ideas won't work. And the ones that do usually need several rounds of changes before they deliver what we hoped. Nobody, the boss included, can tell in advance which ideas are which.
A product team does two jobs side by side. Discovery works out what to build, by testing ideas quickly with real users. Delivery builds it properly, so it's reliable enough to sell and support. Cagan argues that most companies skimp on discovery and pour their effort into delivery.
Cagan's teams tackle four risks before building. Value risk is whether customers will buy it or choose to use it. Usability risk is whether they can work out how. Feasibility risk is whether engineers can build it. Business viability risk is whether it works for the rest of the business.
Cagan's main discovery tool is the prototype, anything from a clickable mock-up to a small live-data test. It takes days, and costs a fraction of building the real thing. Strong teams, he says, test many ideas a week this way and drop the ones that fail.
Cagan borrows the investor John Doerr's line about wanting teams of missionaries rather than mercenaries. Mercenaries build whatever they're told. Missionaries care about the customer's problem, and they're trusted to work out how to solve it.
Most ideas fail
Expect at least half your ideas to fail. The good ones still need several tries.
Discovery
Find out what's worth building before your engineers build it.
Four risks
Test four risks early. People must want it and be able to use it, and you must be able to build and sell it.
Prototypes
Test ideas with cheap prototypes in days, instead of shipping them over months.
Engineers
Bring engineers in from the start. They often see the best solution.
One thing to try
Pick one feature your team plans to build next. Before anyone writes code, mock it up in an afternoon and show it to five real users. Watch where they get stuck, and ask for something real, like signing up for early access, to see if they value it.
Knotd has the key ideas from 250+ non-fiction books, each in a few minutes, in plain words. Inspired comes with a Your Move story to make it stick.
Get the whole book on KnotdOpen in the appWhy do so many products flop? Marty Cagan worked on products at HP, Netscape and eBay before advising tech companies. In Inspired he asks why so many teams ship features customers don't want, and what the best product companies do differently when they decide what to build.
Two inconvenient truths; Discovery and delivery; Four big risks; Prototypes do the testing; Missionaries, not mercenaries.
Pick one feature your team plans to build next. Before anyone writes code, mock it up in an afternoon and show it to five real users. Watch where they get stuck, and ask for something real, like signing up for early access, to see if they value it.
Yes. Knotd has the key ideas from Inspired in a few minutes, in plain words, plus a Your Move story to test them. It's one of 250+ non-fiction books in the app.
