How To Build Product As A Small Startup - Michael Seibel
by Parker · 46 things on Twos
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzVvjKLdAbk&ab_channel=YCombinator
- Have a process to get product out the door
- One of the first processes good startups have
- Decide on a release schedule
- They released every two weeks. 2 week product development cycle
- Put someone in charge of product
- That was Michael
- They don't decide what is built, they are responsible for the team meeting the goals of their development cycle and that they got product out the door
- Establish KPIs
- They'res were:
- New content created
- New users
- Retained users
- Create a theme for the product cycle based on a KPI
- Ex: How do you retain users?
- Product meeting
- Bring all people together and have a brainstorming session
- Only formal meeting, but goes as long as it takes to come to a conclusion on what they will build
- Brainstorm:
- New features
- Bugs
- Tests we want to run
- Go around the circle and everyone comes up with ideas to move the KPI
- Every idea written on the board, no idea debated
- Not the time to shoot ideas down
- Okay to ask questions for clarification
- Sort each into: easy, medium, or hard
- Hard for people to understand how hard it is to actually build an idea
- Headed by tech lead
- Easy = couple hours
- Medium = half a day
- Hard = multiple days
- Everyone feels included, you get to see and understand other people's ideas, and see the cost of implementing some ideas
- Pick the hards first
- Then medium, then easy
- Spec the ideas out and assign tasks
- Write them into a list
- Write out exactly what you want to build and who is responsible for what part
- Shut up and get to work
- If your idea isn't getting built, that is fine, there will be another product meeting in a week or two
- Go into analytics and find more evidence for why your idea should be built
- Testing
- Testing is a full team job
- Long list of things to test and add new things to that list every time we release
- "Everyone tests"
- Everyone tests everything on the list, writes down bugs and how to reproduce them