Malcolm Ong - Product Development

7/27/2019 Malcolm Ong - Product Development

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/malcolm-ong-product-development 1/29

PRODUCT

DEVELOPMENT

Founder Institute

Summer 2013

Malcolm Ong | Co-founder, Skillshare | @malcolmcasey



How do we get from idea to product tobusiness?

1. Leadership & Team2. Vision & Focus

3. Product-centric Culture

Agenda



1. Product Leadership



“Product Management is not babysitting. It’s a

leadership role. It’s about driving a product by taking

ownership and making decisions. ”

Josh Viney Director Product Development and UX, Eastmedia

1. Product Leadership



“While it has no problem hiring brilliant

engineers out of top schools like Harvard and

Stanford, [Facebook] found it di ffi cult tofind product people who can be ‘mini-CEOs’ and

get things done.”

- Business Insider



1. Setting the Product Vision

2. Instilling a Product-centric Culture

- Deliver simple and creative solutions, despite

complex problems.- Getting things done and shipping product with

focus.

Head of Product



2. Product Vision



“It doesn’t matter

how good your

engineering team is if

they are not given

something worthwhile

to build.”

- Marty Cagan



“Getting a bunch of smart people together only

gets you so far. As a product grows, more and

more possible directions will present themselves. A

strong product vision is what will allow the team to

properly prioritize and focus on the right things.”

Alex Rainert

Head of Product, foursquare

2. Product Vision & Focus



What problem are you solving?

(e.g. “Education” provides little value for allowing people to learn

what they want at an aff ordable price)

MLP = viable + desirable* w/ personality

- viable: minimum product to build in order to learn

- desirable: “providing an insanely great product experience and

creating value for the end user”

- personality: a voice, a mission, stand for something

Define your Minimum Lovable Product



“This can be as simple as going to a meetup for dog

lovers if you're building out a dog application or

visiting the doctor 3x in one month to talk to them

about how they file share and send x-rays out online.

I won’t ever be an MD, but I can use my computerlike one.”

Soraya Darabi

Co-Founder, FoodspottingFormer Product Lead, drop.io

Get out of the building



Goal: Validate the problem you’re trying to solve

Is your product a must-have?

- what % of people would be very disappointed if they could no

longer use it? (40%*)* Sean Ellis

Is your product a 0-to-1 or a 1-to-2?

- diff erence between a product and a business

Why won’t your idea work?(e.g. only “teachers” can teach; you have to have a degree to

“teach”)

What are 3 solutions to address these problems?

(e.g. work with people with no teacher training and teach them)

Get Feedback & Iterate on Solutions



The biggest cost to a startup

is time, not money.

Most start-ups fail because

they create the wrong

product for the wrong market.



3. Product Culture



PayPal Mafia



1. Extreme focus & bias to action.

2. Dedication to individual accomplishment.

3. Refusal to accept constraints, external or internal.

4. Radical transparency on metrics.

5. Meritocratic opportunity & opposition to traditionalgeneral management.

6. Vigorous debate.

PayPal Culture (from Keith Rabois)



“It’s not about ideas.

It’s about making ideas happen.”

- Extreme focus & simplicity

- Action oriented (e.g. Action Meetings)- Done is better than perfect

- Solutions, not problems

- Startups within startups (mini CEO’s)

- Over-communicate (transparency)- Set audacious goals

Fine Tune the Culture



“Much more important than working hard is knowing

how to find the right thing to work on. Paying

attention to what is going on in the world.”

Caterina FakeCo-Founder, Flickr & Hunch

Extreme Focus



"People think focus means saying yes to the

thing you've got to focus on. But that's not

what it means at all. It means saying no to

the 100 other good ideas that there are."

- Steve Jobs, Apple



“Oftentimes, the bounty of information and insight

garnered from launching (or “going public”) is greater

than the cost of early adopters finding a few bugs —

and bringing them to your attention.”

Scott Belsky

Founder, Behance

Done is better than perfect



1. Align Product VisionGoal: get everyone on the same page

This can be done through a strategic brief, sitemap, brainstorming session

Annually, Quarterly, Monthly

2. Product SprintGoal: define 1-2 things that need to get done w/ measures of success

Identify owners and milestones. Don’t micro-manage.

3. Horizon ListGoal: features, ideas, etc that will be implemented in the future

(Repeat)

Skillshare Product Process



Skillshare Product Sprint

1. Sketch 2. Wireframe 3. User Flows

4. UI Design 5. Test 6. Repeat

5 / 3 / 1



Sketching (Twitter & Square)



User flows (37 Signals)



Resources



Resources

Lean Startup (Eric Ries):startuplessonslearned.com

MDP (Andrew Chen):andrewchen.co/2009/12/07/minimum-desirable-product

Culture @ Netflixslideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664



Conclusion



1. Leadership & Team

2. Vision & Focus

3. Product-centric Culture

How do we go from idea to product to business?



Q&A

Malcolm Ong

@malcolmcasey

Malcolm Ong - Product Development

Documents

Transcript of Malcolm Ong - Product Development