Humility

The topic of the importance of the customer has been stressed time and time again, but I feel I should offer my own take colored by my personal experiences.

I’ll begin by saying that yes, product management (and by extension, startups) is about ideation, about validation, about execution. But at its root, it is about humility.

Let’s start with a little moral from personal experience. When my friends and I were building our startup back in 2008, we were young, headstrong, and excited to carve our own future and create our own product. We were bursting with ideas about features, about design and interface, and about our core value proposition.  Many times these ideas were based in solid fact. We did our market research. We were exhaustive about competitor analysis. We searched for user feedback about our competitors – what they did well, where they were lacking. But sometimes, our ideas were based on opinion, and this is when you would hear sentences that started like:

“I think that we should build this feature because I feel that…”
“This incentive system would work great because I believe that…”
“We should prioritize this aspect because I think that…”

Months later, we launched our product, entered our pilot phase and struggled with user traction and activity. We had made assumptions on what our users would like as if our singular voices spoke for thousands.

Best lesson ever. In my current job, I build internal analytics tools used by 30+ colleagues – essentially internal products. Even before I begin to build a single feature, I sit down with my users and understand exactly what they need and how they behave. I prototype quickly and put it in front of them to gauge their reactions. I ask them to track the product’s failure modes and alert me when and why they go back to the “old way” of doing things. I don’t make decisions based on assumptions – I prove or disprove assumptions, then make decisions. What this means is that when I launch a product, I know it hits the spot.

Granted, it is easier to create products for a finite, defined userbase than the consumer masses, but the philosophy and approach is the same. It is the same strain of thought that underlies Steve Blank’s customer development framework, the oft-mentioned Minimum Viable Product strategy, and the natural instincts of successful product managers everywhere.

Now with the advent of technology that allows us to code and deploy web applications in months if not weeks, I think it is easy to fall into the trap of saying “I’ll just put my head down, hack this together, and see if it floats. Ten years ago this would have taken X times longer anyways.” Whether you spend 1 year or 2 weeks on a product, it is still a waste of time if you are completely blind to what customers may want. Make the extra effort.

I’ll leave with a great story I heard yesterday night at a Meetup group where a co-founder of Meetup, Matt Meeker, was holding a Q&A session. One of his early startup ventures, through some amazing connections, had been funded by individual investors to the tune of $15mm. Flush with cash, they had hired a literal Who’s Who of financial services executives – group CEO of this bank, CMO of that institution. This incredible collection of minds then proceeded to debate and brainstorm amongst themselves and create what Matt termed “the best Powerpoints you had ever seen”. As the months went by, the conversations continued, these brilliant minds clashed and reassessed, and ultimately the tech requirements given to the contractor changed every week. The timelines extended and eventually the company folded without launching a single product.

Opinions about your product, regardless if they belong to a Regular Joe or to a proven CEO, are still just opinions. You can debate them until you are blue in the face. You can build them with logic, support them with analysis, strengthen them with market research – but they are still opinions, educated guesses at best. Validate your opinions with customers, and then and only then do you have fact. You may be brilliant (or you may think you are), but never ever forget who you serve. And that is the customer.