Transcript

[00:00:00] Much of the advice that I come across every day out there on the internet, tends to focus on how to better operate with existing teams on an existing project, in an existing company. But how do you get started when you have nothing, but the inkling of an idea? How do you start up?

[00:00:34] Hello and welcome to product nuggets. I'm Thomas Essel. And in the next few episodes, I want to focus on how to start on a new project from scratch, starting with principles for the initial phases, starting up on your own or inside your organization. It can be incredibly exciting, but also daunting.

[00:00:51] Overwhelming. Even when I start on something new, my feelings are generally a mix of energy and excitement and insecurity and confusion. [00:01:00] Come to think of it. The entire product development experience is kind of a rollercoaster ride between those two sides. To varying degrees, but especially at the start, I started on a new project recently.

[00:01:12] And so I thought this would be a good time to reflect on and share with you how I actually go about doing so together with the people around me. Of course, this will be different depending on the kind of area you're exploring. But I do think that there are a lot of common truths that can be shared across different types of projects.

[00:01:32] So let's take a look first. Why start with principals and what are they? Even to me, principals are a set of guidelines or things that I want to adhere to in a given project. No matter what specifically I'm actually working on and what am I actually doing? They help evaluate what to do next at any given point in time.

[00:01:54] Every day, there are so many decisions that you need to make about product or strategy or people. [00:02:00] And if you have a set of guiding principles that you've set up yourself, that, you know, you want to stick to no matter what, that can really help accelerate those decisions and give you faith that your choices are the right ones.

[00:02:13] And they also make your actions more consistent. They also keep you efficient and focused on solving the right problem. If you have a set of guidelines that you have developed yourself, or you can start with the ones that I'm presenting to you now, and principles also keep you efficient and focused on solving the right problem and make sure that you don't veer off track just to.

[00:02:35] Explore some random Avenue that you've kind of fallen in love with at the moment. No, you want to stick to what you set out right at the start and principles are really powerful tool to help you do that. All right. So there are a few principles. I find advisable were helpful as a starting point. This list contains seven of them.

[00:02:55] And I actually recommend to settle on fewer that the fewer and the [00:03:00] clearer your principles are the more easier time you're going to have using them in your day to day, printing them out, sticking them around and having them as evaluation criteria for the decisions that you're making. So, yeah, as I said, just use them as a, as a starting point, feel free to change them and to augment your own, but just keep in mind that these are supposed to be overarching principles.

[00:03:23] And what I mean with that at the very core is that there are things that you want to hold on to, regardless of what specifically you're doing. So try to formulate them, not around the particular project that you're working on or a domain that you're exploring in any given point in time, because. Then it's kind of futile.

[00:03:41] If you, if you do end up having to change direction, then. You kind of giving up on those principles again, you're having to reformulate them. It, you know, they kind of lose their point. So the art in it really is to have them as generic as necessary, but as specific as possible to always [00:04:00] be true, but also give you the guidance that you need.

[00:04:03] So let's start. The first principle I want to talk about is being curious and hypothesis driven. This is about not just doing random stuff and kind of falling in love with certain technologies or problem areas, and then creating a task list for yourselves without clear outcomes. It's about adopting a sort of scientific approach that starts with a hypothesis or a question or an assumption that you want a question.

[00:04:26] And your actions will help you find any answer to those questions. This will keep you from doing things just because they are cool and fun and help you keep your eye on the ball. It laws a help. You avoid the common problem of creating solutions for yourself. Assuming that everyone will want them, but remember that you are not the user of your solutions.

[00:04:46] And so your ideas and experiences should only be brought into. The equation is testable assumptions and questions never certainties or requirements. It doesn't matter how experienced you are in a space. People are different and [00:05:00] building things that have scale requires you to gather information at scale and not with an N of one.

[00:05:06] This principle is. Particularly helpful when you are looking about doing research in the very early days when you're not really completely understanding the problem space that you're operating in, and you're still mapping out the stakeholders. It's very easy to get lost in trying to understand everything, becoming an expert in an area all at once, but you don't really need to, if you are working on a project, you'll become an expert in the necessarily things just naturally.

[00:05:31] If you haven't listened to my episode on competitor research, you can go back later and listen to that episode as well. I go in a little bit more depth on this issue there as well. Up next is default to action. It's always easy and safe to stay behind your desk, convincing yourself making progress, but building products is risky and the social exercise as well.

[00:05:50] When you put up a hypothesis or questions, try to first ask yourself who could I talk to about this and how could I test this assumption rather than delving into the [00:06:00] internet, looking for announcer, you get much richer and more useful information out this way. And you'll probably save a ton of time in the process.

[00:06:07] You're also likely to get better information out of it this way, because if you are implementing actions relevant to specifically your product and that information is going to be higher quality than something more generic that you can find from other sources. My next two principles are about yourself.

[00:06:24] Really as product development is as much about you as it is about any externalities. So one focus on your unfair advantage. If you're diving into a new problem area, chances are you're going to find an absolute ton of problems and opportunities you could possibly work on. But out of all of these, which ones are almost made for you.

[00:06:44] Maybe you have a particular knack for data, or you have some deep experience in B2C digital experiences, or you worked in healthcare or finance in a previous life. So looking at all the opportunities that you discover, which ones mapped to unique skills and [00:07:00] abilities that you hold there will give you, what's called an unfair advantage over say, anybody else trying to solve the same problem.

[00:07:08] This is why you find that older founders of companies tend to be more successful it's because. They often use the knowledge that they've acquired during their sort of more regular careers. And then dive deep into that when founding their own company with a big headstart, it doesn't mean that you have to wait until you're 40 or 50 to start a company, but just think about which experiences have shaped you that make you uniquely able and qualify it to address a specific issue.

[00:08:00] [00:08:01] My next principle is choosing the issues that you are personally passionate about. There is no such thing as a quickly developed product, especially if you are starting from scratch and especially if you're doing so with the intention of creating a company, you'll be in it for the long haul. So depending on your work arrangements, ask yourself, is this something I'd be curious or passionate about to work on for the next months or years?

[00:08:24] If you're finding a startup. Several years or decade to me, this is the hardest part. As I get very curious about many different things and the temptation to start something completely new is always great from time to time, because I just love learning about new things. But if you are starting something with greater ambition than a hobby, it's really important that you can see yourself seeing it through for longer than just the next casual side project.

[00:08:53] The next principle, this one, I see a lot on other company's websites in one shape [00:09:00] or other it's often termed something else, but really it always comes down to customer focus, relentless customer focus, and the focus on the value that you're providing for these customers. You want to make sure that you solve just a few or even just one problem for your customers really, really well and choose a problem where you're confident that the solution can be monetized, who will pay for your solution and why they should always be on your mind as it will help focus on the value you're creating for your customers and not get sidetracked.

[00:09:30] It's actually very common in particularly in the tech world. To delve into something that is either hot or cool, or it's never been done before, et cetera, any of those things, but all those reasons are more or less egocentric vanity objectives. So always stay focused on your customer value. One example I can think of is don't just think that somehow, sometime ads are going to pay for your work either.

[00:09:56] That may be the case. But even if you do monetize your [00:10:00] idea through advertisement, you need to understand who those advertisers are, specifically, how ads get traded and what unique value your product will provide to those advertisers over any other place to host ads. Embracing competition. Now this is something I've talked about before on this podcast.

[00:10:19] The notion of not shying away from an idea, just because it's been done before some amount of competition services validation. If you're operating in a space without any competition whatsoever, you should seriously consider why that is. It may be that you are truly the first one to think about this problem area.

[00:10:37] But it is much more likely that there are more or less obvious reasons why no one else has done this before in term, the sweet spot for you might be a space that has some competition and existing solutions to the problem you're working on, but a market that hasn't yet been fully saturated with those solutions, or in other words, were those.

[00:10:57] Customers that are available. [00:11:00] Haven't been matched with the existing solutions yet. That can be a great space for opportunity for you. One example I can think of is drone insurance sometime ago, there were a few companies, but there are still new companies coming about that serve this problem in a slightly different way.

[00:11:15] They all take a slightly different angle or they operate in different geographies or do they have co-founders with different skills to take them into slightly different directions. But the point is that just because the idea has been done before, that's not a deterrent, actually it can help to sensitize.

[00:11:33] The market to the need for the solution as well, and basically do the advertisement for you, which can be really hard if you are. In fact, the first person, a company with a certain idea, so embrace competition, but make sure that market isn't fully saturated yet. Most of the time, it's the, how that is really more important than the what.

[00:11:52] So trust yourself. And don't shy away from competition. Talking of having faith. Try to be open-minded but steady, be open [00:12:00] to changing your mind as new information comes in, but don't change it all the time. Either. If you change your mind too quickly, you won't actually do anything. But if you don't change it often enough, you end up investing your time in the wrong place.

[00:12:11] I try to stick with it's an idea or hypothesis for a little while or until it's disproven, but not this way. My opinions or views just on the spot based on having thought about it somewhere, unless there's new information coming in, if that is the case, and I'm unsure, then I try to get more information, more data by defaulting to action by setting experiments, talking to people and getting that information this way.

[00:12:49] This list of principles, just so happen to count seven items. You know what else does my weekly newsletter seven things where I shared a top interesting things I make or find ready for [00:13:00] your Saturday morning reading ritual, sign up at seven things. Thomas sl.com. You can also find this address in the show notes.

[00:13:07] I hope you enjoyed this episode as always. I'd love it. If you could give it a rating wherever you listen to it, and I'd also love your feedback. You can reach me on Twitter at Thomas underscore SL or email me to hello. Ed Thomas sr com. This show was produced by myself and the theme song was Aeronaut by blue dot sessions and your opinions expressed on my own.

[00:13:25] Thank you so much for listening till next time.