Recently came across an amazing talk by Rahul Vohra on how to incorporate game design principles in any software product (Superhuman has, of course, nailed this). Sharing my notes from it below:
#1 Similar to how games have levels & rewards that create instant gratification, create in-product goals for the user that are concrete, achievable & rewarding. For instance, the #inboxZero goal that Superhuman sets for users. Goals take any product beyond just utility & make it fun đŻ
#2 Design for nuanced emotion. Product value needs to be defined beyond just tangible jobs-to-be-done, to include âhow it makes the user feelâ. Emotions like joy, pride, achievement, trust, fun! Eg. showing a serene pic đ to the user on achieving the in-product goal.
#3 Similar to how games have complex control sequences that are fun to master and expand the gameâs potential, software products too, can have rapid & robust controls that match the userâs context of multi-tasking & expecting instant gratification. Eg. smart keyboard shortcuts đŽ
#4 Introduce toys that increase the fun quotient and incent users to spend more time with the product, while also strongly gelling with core features and enhancing value delivery. Eg. fun universal search bar with surprising auto-suggest elements đ
#5 Help the user get zoned into the product experience to create extraordinary engagement (almost a âflowâ stateđť) by making each next step obvious and minimizing energyto be spent in any sort of decision-making. Eg on archiving, moving the user to the next message in milliseconds đ´đźââď¸
#6 Continuing the objective of creating an in-product âflowâ state for users, giving clear and immediate feedback to users with no distraction âˇ
#7 Final strategy for creating a âflowâ state within the product is to introduce certain challenging skills and make it a little hard for users to master them. Overcoming challenges create dopamine, a feeling of achievement within the user. That feeling will stick with users for a long, long time đ§đ˝ââď¸
Finally, these game design principles need to be executed within the wrapper of your productâs core design language. This includes design principles that you have specifically chosen like say, minimalism, full screen to minimize distractions, there when you need & away when you donât, etc.
If I have to summarize my overall takeawayâââin this era where any software is cheap to replicate, products can stand out by designing for what emotions your target users will feel as they use the product. And making it fun!
PS: Suhas Motwani, great job in organizing this session!
Note: this article first appeared on the Workomo blog here.
I was a VC in the really early part of my career, then became an operator+angel investor for several years, before founding Workomo. Hereâs how my lens for looking at company-building has evolved from an investor then vs. founder now:
#1 Doing 0-to-1 is really hardâââas an investor, I never truly realized how hard it is to âmake something people wantâ from scratch & have someone care enough to try using what you have built. The struggles of building from 0 can only be truly understood when experienced first-hand.
#2 Appreciation for engineering talentâââas an investor, while one understands the importance of quality developers, the focus tends to be more high-level in terms of looking at leadership (CTO/VPs). As a founder, I now feel gratitude when I work with top-tier functional engineers.
I have seen how a solid iOS engineer can save weeks of extra cash burn while delivering excellent output. Or how quality backend engineers are so hard to find. Or in a small engineering team, a developer with 20% better output can really move the needle via effort-compounding.
#3 Importance of iterationsâââas an investor, I donât remember ever asking founders: âhow many iterations did it take you to get here? And what did you learn?â. Perhaps, âcos I had never been a 0-to-1 founder, I focused more on âoutcomesâ and never on the âprocessâ.
Now as a founder, my core operating philosophy revolves around 1) âleanâ iterations, 2) systems-thinking & 3) agile dev. (hypothesize-build-get users-learn-iterate-repeat). When facing high failure rates & random outcomes, the only thing you can truly control is the process.
#4 Re-orienting from âspeedâ to âvelocityââââa piece of frequent advice I gave as an investor was âdo things at even more speedâ or âhow can we ship even quicker?â or âcan we fundraise even sooner?â. It was missing one thing: âare we moving quickly enough IN the right direction?â.
Investors want quick results, whereas as a founder, you know building outstanding products takes time & thoughtfulness. Even if you ship quickly, building the wrong thing without pausing to learn, analyze & re-orient will result in no one using it.
#5 Design is not just UI/ UX, itâs end-to-end product experienceâââas an investor, my view of a portfolio companyâs product was just limited to what âI could seeâ and what âI could useâ. As a founder, I now think about âwhat the user will FEELâ, right from the landing page, down to repeat usage.
#6 Effective teams arenât just about assembling the most talentedâââas an investor, one primarily looks for signals of talent (track record, pedigree, intelligence, expertise). As a founder, I now include commitment & fit in the hiring matrix. Sometimes even as a filter.
While âhow can we hire an engineer from Google or FBâ is a good question to discuss with investors, other high-impact questions that need focus include âhow is the team morale?â, âhow can we better reinforce the vision.â or âhow is trust being built as a remote team?â.
#7 Limited value of startup playbooksâââa common technique investors use to try and add value to the portfolio is sharing what other companies/ founders are doing, their approach, what seems to be working for them etc. I have been guilty of this as well.
While there is some merit to having market intel & learning from other foundersâ experiences, you quickly realize as a founder that all so-called playbooks are biased, post-facto analysis & polished versions of reality. You gotta figure out your own unique way.
#8 Who is a co-founder?âââwhen looking at co-founders in a team, the top things I would primarily evaluate as an investor: 1) do they have complementary skill sets (engg+product+biz)? and 2) will this team look good enough on a deck, to be able to raise the next round?
Now with the perspective of a founder, I evaluate many other facets in founding teams: 1) does this person have the same level of passion, desire & commitment to building this company?, 2) when sh*t hits the fan, will this person be last-person-standing, 3) how much can this person sacrifice to see things through till the end?
#9 âClosingâ with no logos behind you is damn hardâââwith IDG Ventures or Alibaba behind me, all doors were open. I could reach anyone, get quick responses, and easily attract people to my projects. Made it easy for me to say to founders: âletâs close this dealâ or âletâs hire this personâ.
As a founder, I have now felt how hard it truly is to hire, close deals or close any opportunity for that matter, when you are trying to build an unproven company, on a vision thatâs new & hard to visualize, with a product that keeps frequently changing & has no scale yet.
#10 Guarding your mental state is everythingâââstartups are a mental game. All the awesome founder qualities that people talk aboutâââgrit, perseverance, belief, conviction, are all internal. Perhaps the biggest miss I had as an investor is not observing the mental state of founders.
This becomes especially challenging as founders like to put up a brave face in front of their investors. I now strongly believe that itâs the job of investors to look past this veil of confidence and help unshackle their true mental state. I regret not doing this the most.
Ultimately, investors become successful when they back the best founders, who then get lucky :). Similarly, founders improve their odds by having the best investors in their corner. Personally, it has been incredible to experience both worlds & realize how different they are.
PS: if you are curious about what I am building, Workomo is a Chrome extension that shows you everything important about people, just before you meet, right inside the browser. We are already in private betaâââdo check us out and sign-up to request access. #peopleinsights
Note: this article first appeared on the Workomo blog.
Recently came across this awesome podcast by Hiten Shah wherein he shares really practical and execution-oriented insights on building products from 0-to-1. Here are my top 10 takeaways:
Framework for evaluating whether the âproblem to be solvedâ is worth solvingâââis it 1) frequent enough, 2) painful enough and 3) urgent enough?
An upfront filter he used to evaluate potential startup ideasâââbuilding a product that âevery human being thatâs connected to the Internet would need to useâ.
âIdeas are just solutions to problemsâ. As most founders start with an idea, itâs important to figure out whatâs the underlying customer problem that this idea is trying to solve.
A great method to evaluate a product ideaâââas every product idea has an existing alternative out there, try and figure out what users think of current alternatives. Essentially, itâs important to quickly understand the market landscape BUT from a customerâs standpoint.
a) Every new product is a derivative of something that has already existed. b) Itâs very hard to find a brand new problem. Problems remain the same, just that their nature keeps evolving, which in turn, creates opportunities for new products to be built. Ultimately, most software is a replacement for some sort of an excel sheet.
a) Two ways to build startup products from scratch: 1) COPY-BUILD-ITERATE-GET TO UNIQUE. Copy fast, launch, then discover & find new things to innovate on. 2) RESEARCH-LEARN-BE UNIQUE FROM DAY 0. Learn how to be different first, but without shipping. Make something 10x better. b) If you are good at building teams and executing, go for Option a. If you are good at user research and patiently innovating, go for Option b. Choose the option that aligns most with your strengths.
User research tips for startup Day 0: a) Usually, about 12 interviews are enough to develop a pattern. b) 2 questions to ask users (i) whatâs your #1 pain point in doing X and (ii) walk me through a real story of the last time you experienced this pain point.
a) Tip to avoid product over-specâing/ scope creep: for any feature that needs to be built, first figure out the exact âStep 1â to be built for it, and keep a constraint of âit should be shippable with 1 week/ 40 hours of engineering. effortâ. b) This Step 1 should be crude enough that it gets built quickly, but just sufficiently specâd so that it can drive the user validation exercise. Eg., before building a full sharing capability, just put a dummy sharing button that on clicking, asks the user âwhat are you looking to do here?â.
For effective product road-mapping, always ask the question âwhat part of this product is getting the most usage?â. Thatâs the area that will drive adoption and where you should be doubling down on.
Build a highly customer-centric product team. Everything you are doing needs to be solving a problem for the customer. Keep that focus and discipline.
I have learned many of these points first-hand while building Workomo from scratch over the last year or so, so I can attest to how useful these product heuristics are. Would love to hear some of your own learnings as a founder/ early-stage PM, so we can keep adding on to this cheat sheet.
Recently came across a great conversation between Keith Rabois and AngelList, back from Augâ18. So many tactical insights for operators, founders, big co./ startup teams, or anyone who is interested in understanding how leaders should operate on-the-ground. My key takeaways below:
Talent can be classified into âBarrelsâ (can independently execute end-to-end, from idea to product-in-market) and âAmmunitionâ (require supervision, execute only specific elements well). The number of Barrels in your team governs how many parallel things you can do.
Every business can be ultimately distilled into an âequationâ, with key revenue & cost variables that ultimately drive profit. Founders need to understand their businessâs equation really well, which is what drives strategic insights that lead to better decisions.
A key job of a founder or CXO is to compress âtimeâ for the business, via a communication strategy of âsimplifyâ and âclarifyâ.
In the majority of cases, larger engineering teams tend to slow execution down. Paraphrasing a quote by Eric Schmidtââââone of the most powerful things is 2 engineers working togetherâ.
Put your best people on the most challenging problems, irrespective of what it does to your org. chart.
The more transparency around data and information that the CEO can create, the better everyone else can make day-to-day operating decisions that align with the company goals and strategy.
There is a saying in sports that a particular team has been âcoached to play fastâ. This is what startup leaders need to do to increase the speed of executionâââcoach their teams in a way that they can take fast decisions & react instantly, and in high fidelity to company goals.
As a leader, itâs important to speak in âWhys?â, and not âWhat we are doing?â.
As a leader, itâs important to change your management style as per the kind of individuals or teams you are working with at a particular point in time.
The CEO is the âChief Editorâ of the company. You arenât actually doing a lot of the functional work yourself but your key job is to a) simplify things for others, 2) create consistency across teams, and 3) create a coherent narrative & voice, internally & externally.
As a founder, itâs important to understand the difference between a âbadâ team and an âincompleteâ team. Both require very different strategies.
Best way to onboard talent (from intern to exec) -> start with as narrow a scope as possible, let them succeed at it, and then keep expanding their scope & pushing their range.
Hiring is a muscleâââyou get stronger as you do more of it.
An important question to answer while hiring: are you hiring for upside creation (is there a spark?) or downside protection (rigorous value creation role)?
A simple best practice to improve hiring is to borrow your network to vet candidates and do comprehensive reference checks.
I already started implementing a bunch of these at my startup Workomo. Would love to know if you have used some of these tenets in the past, and your experience/ key learnings from it.
At Workomo, we operate on an extremely agile & iterative execution cadence. Since launching the first sign-up landing page in Juneâ19-end, we have iterated quickly & decisively. Workomoâs first MVP was released in Augâ19âââa simple web app that was nothing but an âautomated spreadsheet++â, something I built for myself. We immediately started moving towards a much more âcontextualâ product, releasing Workomo Chrome extension v1 in Octâ19 and v2 in Decâ19. Again, based on user feedback, we realized that Workomo needed to be mobile-first. We again did a fast cross-platform iteration, releasing the iOS app v1 in private beta last month and are now, on track to release a significantly upgraded v2 in Febâ20-end.
The key to executing at this pace has been intense customer development. Especially in this new year, user research has been a P0 for us, with specific monthly goals being set on what we want to achieve on this front.
Personally, for me, this has been a steep learning curve on how to speak to users. Based on the last several months of iterating on Workomo, I am sharing my top 10 field techniques that hopefully, will be helpful for your own user research process.
Maximize in-person interviewsâââin Q4 of last year, we did many user interviews over the phone & zoom calls. Starting Janâ20, we have doubled-down only on in-person interviews in the Bay Area. And what a difference it makes! The ability to connect with users and read their body languageâââwhen they are pausing, thinking hard or feeling uncomfortable, these are invaluable signals for conducting effective user research. So, get over your inertia of stepping out of the building, log the required miles and go where users are.
Choose a comfortable meeting ambianceâââin my experience, relaxed coffee shops with spread-out seating arrangements & less background noise, make it easier to connect, listen and share. User research needs to happen with âintentâ, so food, drinks & music are usually distractions that are best avoided.
Voice-record with permissionâââtaking physical notes during user research is incredibly distracting for both sides, and very often, important moments in the conversation that require an immediate âWhy?â counter-question, fall through the cracks. I highly recommend taking explicit permission from the user, and then, doing a voice memo recording of the discussion. Having an audio file also makes it easier to evangelize within the larger product & engineering team, as well as for your own later reference for analysis.
Understand userâs life through open-ended questionsâââlet users drive the conversation flow, and in turn, immerse yourself in understanding aspects they are organically inclined to talk about. As founders, we have a tendency to execute user research as a âfilling the gapsâ exercise. However, this is often not a useful approach for in-person interviews (might work for surveys). Rather, I recommend the âhear their storyâ approach, driven by genuine interest & curiosity. How do they approach things? What do they care about? Why they do what they do? What do they find easyâŚand hard? Your job is to collect enough of these stories, synthesize them and then do an aggregated gap analysis. Think of it like connecting the dots; even better if each dot is unique and different from the other one.
Donât bias usersâââasking leading questions like âwill you use this feature?â or âis this feature good?â will always lead to biased answers. Avoid putting things in the heads of users, so feature-centric questions are usually best avoided. Something I recently learned from my founding team is to always keep demo of the actual product towards the latter half of the meeting, once users have already answered your persona-based questions. This will ensure their answers in the first half remain unbiased.
The 5 âWhysâ techniqueâââI had read a while back about how Toyota pioneered this technique to get to the root of any problem. I have found this technique to be immensely valuable for user research. A mistake I made many times earlier was trying to go âwideâ by asking one new question after another. User interviews give better return-on-effort if you go âdeepâ by asking multiple Whys on each question and let that guide the overall research flow. Each interview then becomes valuable to understand one aspect of the problem deeply, and by putting many such deep interviews together, hopefully, the overall picture starts to unravel.
Use tag-teamsâââI always felt handicapped in doing user research alone, as itâs impossible for one person to simultaneously listen, analyze, ask a âwhyâ, process the flow and decide on a new question. I have found tag-teaming to be a better approach, where 2 people take turns to ask questions & engage with the user, while the other listens, absorbs and decides on what new set of questions are emerging. It also helps in making the process less monotonous.
Mentally plot each user on the âadoption curveââââpost each interview, as you debrief with your tag-team partner to analyze responses, do 2 thingsâââa) map the user to either an existing or emerging âpersonaâ in your head and b) place the user (& persona) on a specific part of the adoption curve. This will help you in TAM & GTM planning. As a corollary, try and speak to people at âextremesâ of this adoption curve, so you start putting boundary conditions and your productâs specific adoption curve starts emerging.
9. Talk to âtargetâ users, as opposed to âconvenientâ usersâââuser research can be an incredibly grueling process end-to-end, from identifying users, getting intros or conducting cold outreach, to coordinating logistics, commute times etc. This creates a tendency to speak with users that require less effort, even though they may not be relevant for your product. Keep your research process honest & aligned with company goals, to avoid capturing signals that are just plain wrong.
10. Embrace the âI just donât have this problemâ responseâââconsciously talk to users who arenât normally your target audience and arenât even using comparable or competing products. Sometimes, they will give you ideas that can help you increase your TAM.
Before I sign-off, I strongly recommend these 2 YC talks on user researchâââHow to run a user interview by Emmett Shear (Founder & CEO of Justin.tv and Twitch); and How to talk to users by Eric Migicovsky (YC Partner). Eric, in particular, highlights the following first-principles way of framing questions that applies to almost all contexts:
â What is the hardest thing aboutâŚ?
â Tell me the last time you faced this hard challenge?
â Why do you think itâs so hard?
â What, if anything, have you tried to do to solve the problem?
â What donât you love about the solutions you have tried?
Would love to hear any user research best practices that have worked for you over the years.
About us: Workomo is a âSystem of Intelligenceâ for professional relationships, targeted at global power professionals or âprosumersâ. Our iOS app is currently in private beta. If you would like to give it a spin & provide early adopter feedback, do leave a comment on this post and we will get in touch with you directly.
Recently saw an amazing SaaStr talk by Michael Seibel (YC Partner) on a decade of learnings from YC (or to put it in another way, top mistakes startups make post demo day). These have been framed as learnings mainly for the post-seed stage (once a company has raised $1â2Mn), but in my view, are broadly applicable to any startup. As we close out 2019, I thought I will recap the top 10 highlights from this talk, just so all of us have this sober perspective heading into 2020.
Assuming that just because you have raised a seed round, you have achieved PMFââââDonât let investors convince you that you are further along than you actually are.â
Hiring too quicklyâââper Michael, the standard startup model is, post a ~$1Mn seed round, grow to 8â10 people. Once this happens, the primary job of a CEO becomes âmanagementâ whereas it should be driving the company to PMF. Side notes (2a) Trying to take on too many problems or products at the same time. (2b) You want employees who are excited to drive the company to PMF, and not be under the impression that they are joining a company that already has PMF. (2c) An early stage, pre-PMF company should be minimizing # of non-essential employees. (2d) If an employee isnât becoming an essential employee in first 3 months, itâs unlikely they will ever become one.
Not understanding their business modelâââânot just pursuing the business model strategy that interests you, but one that is commensurate with what your product needs.â
Not understanding whatâs the right time to sell your product to founders/ tech startups as early customersâââthere are both pros and cons of this strategy. It really depends on what you are selling.
Assuming investors will be a large differentiatorââââAn A grade investor is someone who signs the paperwork, wires the money on time, and then doesnât bother you.â
Not establishing best practices around hiringââââdo simple things like setting up an intelligent interview process that candidates will enjoy going through, having an open communication process around equity & clearly talking about the candidateâs roles & responsibilities.â
Not establishing best practices around managementââââeg. consistent 1:1 meetings between employees and managers, some type of all-hands meeting, getting employee buy-in on direction & strategy.â
Not clearly defining roles & responsibilities between foundersââââavoid each startup decision going into a founder committee for resolution.â
Not having level 3 conversations within founding teams to resolve conflictâââcreating an environment of resolution, not attacking. Not bottling-up conflict issues.
Assuming Series A will be as easy to raise as an angel roundââââimportant to get into Series A discussions with adequate leverageâ. Side notes (10a) Donât get impacted by TechCrunch articles on some Joe raising a $10Mn round for a business that will clearly fail. You donât know the background circumstances behind that deal. (10b) People who had trouble raising money in their 20s, were finding it significantly easier to raise money in their 30sâââthis is because 1) investors are considerably more inclined to invest in 2nd-time founders, and 2) if you have been in the Bay Area for 10 years, you are most likely pitching people you already know.
Closing thought: as per Michael, the struggle with most companies is not that their thesis was off. Itâs that either their timing was off OR they couldnât iterate enough on the product to get to the solution that actually solves the problem statement. So, if you keep the team small, iterate quickly and ignore the hype, you can actually spend the time required to solve the problem. You might end up taking 1 yr or 3 yrs to get to PMFâââstay lean till then and go to Series A once you have PMF, which gives you significant leverage.
PS: I loved this final quote from himââââIn the startup journey, be prepared that both good times and bad times will feel bad.â
Am excited to share a new investment by Operators Studioâââwelcome BIS Research to the global OS portfolio. BIS provides a full knowledge services stack on deep tech, which includes off-the-shelf reports, custom research engagements & on-demand, subject-matter expert consultations, to global enterprises. While traditional research firms such as Gartner & Forrester widely cover popular technologies such as SaaS, Enterprise Mobility, Consumer Internet etc., âfrontierâ technologies like precision medicine, advanced materials, space tech etc. are largely uncovered & therefore, wide open from a business research & market intelligence perspective.
Over last few years, Operators Studio has backed cutting-edge product/ platform companies such as Dharma (crypto lending protocol), MyAlly (AI recruiting solution), TravelX (AI-powered travel retail platform), Tydy (employee onboarding automation) and Trailze (multi-modal navigation for micro-mobility). We have also backed online-offline infrastructure plays such as Yulu (urban micro-mobility) and 91Springboard (co-working), as well as venture ecosystem plays like LetsVenture (angel investing & startup fundraising platform).
Investing approach across all these investments has been consistentâââidentifying & backing:
Gritty founders that areâŚ
Building or leveraging technology toâŚ
Solve ârealâ operating problems for the world, andâŚ
Build sustainable businesses over the long-term.
Doesnât matter if the space is considered âunsexyâ by financial investors or media. We get more excited by operating problems & warrior founders, rather than buzzwords, hype, trends or moonshots.
So, what got me excited about BIS Research? I have been spending time with Faisal Ahmad, Co-founder & CEO, over last year or so. Over multiple brainstorming discussions, it was clear to me that BIS was demonstrating all elements of the OS investing approach:
Open market segmentâ within knowledge services, deep tech is a relatively open segment and uncovered as yet by the likes of Gartner & Forrester. Knowledge capabilities required to serve this space are high, so significant entry barriers are there and also, customer retention tends to be solid given this isnât a commoditized service. Having earlier invested in another startup (which shut down) that was solving a similar problem but using pop-up expert teams (which, in hindsight, wasnât the right solution for the customer problem), my confidence on the thesis of âenterprises need actionable knowledge on deep technologies, in order to make smarter business decisionsâ is high. BIS has built what customers want, and there are enough proof points for that.
Attractive economicsâââhaving started my career at Evalueserve, and later on as a venture investor, observed companies such as Mu Sigma, Fractal & Inductis, I have been a believer in high-end knowledge services as an attractive business opportunity that doesnât require huge amounts of external capital to scale and isnât a âwinner-takes-allâ market. I know most investors tend to gravitate towards âproductâ plays but thatâs where Operators Studio is different. We care more about solving real operating problems, whether through products and/ or services, and building sustainable businesses around them.
Gritty teamâ as a young, first time founder, Faisal & team have bootstrapped the company to >500 large enterprise customers, including >200 Fortune 2000 companies, spread across US, EU & Japan. BIS has built a lean, capital-efficient & profitable knowledge services engine, led by a team that is committed to building it for the long term.
At Operators Studio, we believe in the Howard Marks quote âlook where others arenât lookingâ.
And this approach has led us to BIS Research! The company is strongly poised to become the âGartner for Deeptechâ, offering a full knowledge stack that leverages a combination of technology & human expertise. Operators Studio is excited to support BIS in this journey.
[Update on Feb 26, 2020] Rahul Vohra has recently published a super cool interactive tool so people can use Superhumanâs PMF framework for themselves. Check it out here.
As I am building-out my startup Workomo (helping knowledge professionals supercharge their professional relationships), have already used so many ideas from this method. My detailed take in this article below.
One of the best articles I have read in recent times is How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product/Market Fit by Founder-CEO Rahul Vohra. As I have been building Workomo over last few months, the overarching goal for me as a founder continues to beâââhow to achieve PMF while minimizing time spent & capital utilized? Having read Marc Andreessenâs legendary essay on defining PMF (âProduct/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that marketâ), as well as all YC stuff on the topic, I had developed a playbook for it in my head:
Eventually âdelightâ & consequently, âretainâ early adopters
Test how much will they pay
Get to 10, then 100, then 1000 âretained & payingâ users
Scale-up from there
As a founder dealing with so many unknowns, one is always looking for actionable insights, more than theoretical advice. Reading about the Superhuman experience just gave me so much execution color on this PMF playbook. I think every founder (and even venture investor!) should absorb these valuable insights so sharing my notes & key takeaways from this article.
Summary of Superhumanâs deconstructed product-market fit playbook:
#1 PMF takes time
#2 Quantify PMF via a single, North Star metric
#3 Structure & execute the user survey process well
#4 Create a highly detailed user persona of the High-Expectation Customer
#5 Focus on delighting a small number of users first
#6 To convert users that are âone-the-fenceâ, focus on what your fanatic users love the most about your product
#7 Two-pronged product planning approach to move towards PMFâââfocus on core strengths + address core concerns
#8 For feature prioritization, stack-rank to get to âlowest cost, highest impactâ features
#9 Rinse, and repeatâŚ
Letâs dive into these elements in detail.
PMF takes time
Superhuman team first started coding in 2015 and itâs only in last few months that they have attained a critical mass of vocal adopters, who are in-turn, making the product viral. A reality check for all of us in terms of how much time it truly takes to make something people want, and therefore, the value of patience in founding teams (& investors).
2. Quantify PMF via a single, North Star metric
A big challenge in working towards PMF is that it appears âfluffyâ, especially when as a founder, you are trying to align your engineering & product teams around it and even more so, when you are trying to set an actionable & trackable process roadmap for it.
The best way recommended is to quantify PMF in terms of a North Star âleadingâ metric.
The Superhuman team used the following leading metric to quantify PMF (originally articulated by Sean Ellis in this article)âââjust ask users âhow would you feel if you could no longer use the product?â and measure the percent who answer âvery disappointedâ. The threshold for having achieved PMF is 40%.
3. Structure & execute the user survey process well
Perhaps the most refreshing info in this article are the details Rahul shares about the user survey process they ran, to gather data on the PMF North Star metric:
a) Identify users who used the product at least twice in the last two weeks
b) Exact survey that was sent out given below (just the minimum number of critical questions were included, amazingly succinct yet effective!)
PS: I loved the 2nd question, where existing users are prompted in a way, to describe their own persona. Makes it so much easier to clearly identify who your real early adopters are. More on this later.
c) Classified the responses into 3 bucketsâââ1) Very Disappointed, 2) Somewhat Disappointed, and 3) Not Disappointed.
d) Assigned a persona to each bucket, to identify the âVery Disappointedâ user persona (the actual early adopter)
To me, this entire user survey process is the core of the PMF playbook, and something I found exceptionally insightful.
As has been my learning doing Workomoâs customer development process, at this really early stage of the company, the number of respondents matter much less than you think. Some data is better than no data, especially coming from actual, retained users. Superhuman mentions anything more than 40 responses as an adequate sample size (at the time, their universal sample set was only ~100â200 users that could be polled!!)
I think the most clever trick in the above user survey structure is Q #2ââââwhat type of people do you think would benefit most from Superhuman?â âCos, people tend to describe their own personas as a response. Analyze responses to this question only for the âVery Disappointedâ bucket, and you end up with detailed personas that users themselves have pretty much self-created for you!
Going from this 1st level user personaâŚ
1st Level User Persona
âŚto the 2nd level user persona.
2nd Level User Persona
PS: have been searching for what an optimally-sized user persona should be like for a really early stage startup. This is a great exampleâââ~200 words, 2 paras; captures both professional & personal behavior, motivations, quantified behavioral characteristics, relevant life goals and desired outcomes/ end-state.
5. Focus on delighting a small number of users first
Paul Graham always says it; Superhuman case study just confirms itâââdefine a narrow market, delight, dominate & then grow out from there.
Reproducing this quote by PG, just to drive home this point:
âWhen a startup launches, there have to be at least some users who really need what theyâre makingââânot just people who could see themselves using it one day, but who want it urgently. Usually this initial group of users is small, for the simple reason that if there were something that large numbers of people urgently needed and that could be built with the amount of effort a startup usually puts into a version one, it would probably already exist. Which means you have to compromise on one dimension: you can either build something a large number of people want a small amount, or something a small number of people want a large amount. Choose the latter. Not all ideas of that type are good startup ideas, but nearly all good startup ideas are of that type.â
6. To convert users that are âone-the-fenceâ, focus on what your fanatic users love the most about your product
Key to converting more on-the-fence users into fanatic users is first identifying the core 1â2 strengths of your product. The reason being, non-fanatic users that fundamentally care about these strengths, are the ones most likely to convert into fanatics. However, this requires addressing their top 1â2 product concerns.
% of âSomewhat Disappointedâ bucket users, who care about âSpeedâ as the main benefitâââ30%
For these 30% of âSomewhat Disappointedâ users, what are their primary concerns (as told by them in the survey)â lack of mobile app (MAIN) + integrations, calendaring, better search etc.
7. Two-pronged product planning approach to move towards PMFâââfocus on core strengths + address core concerns
Boom! Post the above 6 steps, now you have a clear roadmap of features needed to convert on-the-fence users to fanatic users, and inch closer towards that elusive 40% PMF benchmark.
Your PMF product plan needs just the following 2 strategiesâââ1) doubling-down on core strengths that are loved by fanatic users+ 2) working to allay concerns & feature requests from on-the-fence users.
8. For feature prioritization, stack-rank to get to âlowest cost, highest impactâ features
Use a combination of survey data and your qualitative product instinct to arrive at the low-hanging features (low cost + high impact) that can start delivering immediate value to users.
9. Rinse, and repeatâŚ
âŚuntil you get to PMF!
Hope you find this deconstruction useful for your own journey towards PMF. Would love to hear any specific strategies that have worked for you.
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Living costs are increasing rapidly across major economic cities globally, be it SF, NY, Sydney, Shanghai, Bangalore or London. A key reason is concentration of knowledge opportunities in specific centers in each country, with other cities lagging behind in new job creation and salary growth.
At the same time, professionals in these geos are also searching for more flexibility compared to previous generationsâââthings like remote work, ability to travel frequently, taking sabbaticals to work on a personal mission, more involved parenting etc.
In order to reconcile higher living costs with more life flexibility, I think an under-rated superpower is keeping your household cash burn low. It means proactively living below your means & cutting unnecessary expenditure, essentially as a trade-off for more freedom. Itâs very similar to a low burn startup, which always seems to have much more runway & options of building the business in an agile way, compared to its extravagant peers.
With all our careers exposed to so many external risks that are frankly, uncontrollable, having a âlow burnâ life provides the necessary resilience to manage uncertainty, tide over tough times and still live with the freedom you want.
As one grows older, one realizes that true success is actually freedom to make your own choices. So the next time you are about to take on an expense that increases those monthly payments, think about it as a trade-off with your overall freedom to make life choices.
To be capital-efficient as a founder (also applicable to life, in general), when evaluating various cost line items or taking on a new cost, have a clear understanding of âFixedâ vs âVariableâ. Variable Costs are driven by your intended âvelocityâ and therefore, can be controlled during tough times via a frugal approach (cut variable marketing spend, let go of expensive contractors etc.). Fixed Costs donât care about your velocity and will keep eating you up (housing rent/mortgage, office space, full-time salaries etc.). They are much harder to control, given they reflect a certain baseline you have up-leveled your startup (or life) to. Paring down Fixed Costs will require more drastic down-leveling, including completely letting go of certain assets or experiences.
The issue with Bay Area startup environment today is extremely high Fixed Costs (housing, child-care, salaries etc.). These are uncorrelated to the actual state or momentum in your startup so founders have no choice but to live with them. You canât be frugal with Fixed Costs beyond a point, as they are driven by the external environment, not the choices you make. This, in a nutshell, is the real challenge facing Silicon Valley founders.
Here are some ways to proactively manage your startupâs Fixed Costs at early stages of the Company:
Explore building a non-Bay Area distributed teamâââto balance output with salary costs, at least until you see the business momentum required to support Bay Area salaries.
Be generous with equity, (relatively) tight with cashâââI know this is a hard one, especially while hiring engineers in todayâs market. But as founders, we need to be disciplined about this. I would rather wait out for the right candidate who believes in aligning incentives with the real situation of the startup. For instance, if someone is asking for high cash compensation in a pre-PMF startup, this means they are not the right fit for this stage. I am all for doubling-down on higher equity, even higher than market standards, for early risk-taking hires. But every $ of cash being paid out needs to have a solid justification. Anyone who seriously wants to join a really early stage startup, needs to understand and appreciate this viewpoint.
Try converting Fixed Costs into Variable Costsâââsome ideas could be paying sales people more on % of sales commissions and less on fixed; going for an âon-demandâ co-working space with elasticity to quickly scale up/ down; keeping specific functions eg. designers, content writers etc. (these functions need to be chosen really carefully) on contract per âas-neededâ basis, instead of full-time etc.
Be frugal on G&Aâââoptimize costs on office space, service providers, vendors, food etc. In particular, Bay Area startups have a tendency to splurge beyond their means on fancy office spaces, lavish off-sites, dinners at marquee restaurants, expensive swag etc. These non-core costs tend to add up and hit your budget more than you might realize.
Leverage free ways of brand-buildingâââinstead of spending tons of $$ on brand marketing to drive early awareness (eg. conference sponsorships, which are essentially Fixed Costs), leverage free channels such as blogging, building a community on social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, Quora etc.), podcasts, creating a compelling website, white-papers, research articles, invited speaker slots etc. Early stages of a startup are all about cost-efficient marketing. This can only happen when founders focus on the above channels to build their startupâs brand, their personal brands as well as communities around their product. Austen Allred, Co-founder and CEO of Lambda School, is doing this very smartly.
Would love to hear what ways of Fixed Cost management have worked well for your startup.
