building a product

Building a Product

Meraj Faheem@Merajf

fb.com/merajismerajmeraj@thehackingschool.com

India’s First Coding Bootcamp(2014)

World’s fastest and easiest website builder. (2015)

Patent Pending FX trading tool(2011)

Product = Business

Idea Validation: Type 2

Examples of most abused

user acquisition models:

● Free rides

● Free food delivery

● Free home services

● Free blah blah blah

Basically, on-demand

business models - popularly

known as ‘Uber for X’ model.

Idea Validation: Type 1

● So basically build nothing

and then try to sell it.

● Set up just a landing page

with your product specs.

See how many it excites.

● Go ahead and build your

product if at least 50

people pay for it.

● Friends, family, relatives,

in-laws - they don’t count.

Building the product

● Decide upon the bare minimum features that you can ship you product with.

● Have a product roadmap with milestones:

○ 1-100 Users: Feature A-C.○ 101-500 Users: Features C-M○ 501-999 Users: Features N-Q

● Test the efficiency of the existing features before adding new.

● Prioritization (Bugs/New Ideas/Big Ideas)

● Build > Release> Test> Repeat

User Experience:

Build at least ONEremarkable,extraordinary feature inyour product that yourcustomers would want tocome back for, or talkabout it to their friends.

User Experience

● Do not ever think youcan predict the userbehaviour. You justcan’t. No one can.

● Optimize the useronboarding experienceby simplifying the path.

User Experience: A/B Test

Analytics

● Thumb rule: Do notlaunch withoutimplementingAnalytics*.

● Analytics is the way you’llget to know how your useractually uses yourproduct.

● Use these insights torefine, tune up andoptimize your product andconversions.

*not sure how to implement? Ask me!

Growth.

There is only metric in

this world that’s

important. And that is

your Growth metric.

If your product* needs

a sales guy to explain

people why they

should consider using

it - You’ve already lost.

How many users you

had yesterday? How

many you’ve today?

Tomorrow? You should

be green every day.

Automate the Hell

out!

User retention is more important

than User Acquisition. *Valid in case of

web/internet

consumer products

Taking the leap

Thank you!!!