

Faster Horses - Salmaun

I recently wrote a blog post sharing my analysis of products whose trajectory &#x2F; go-to-market strategy I&#x27;ve studied. Would appreciate comments&#x2F;feedback. Special thx to AbbasMehdi for encouraging me to share on HN!  You can see the post at www.humbledagain.com
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Salmaun
Pasting it here as well:

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
- Henry Ford

Lately I find myself thinking about products I admire and the foresight they
represent. I come back again and again to elegant execution that creates
simplistic and obvious value creation that delights users. Thats really all it
is and its the crux of great products. I have a running list in my evernote
now of products I study and what I perceive the atomic unit of their value
creation to be. One criticism of this approach could be that I fail to see the
larger opportunity, what teams can do with the data blah blah blah…but I’m not
terribly concerned w/ that for the purposes of this exercise. I stepped
outside of my wheelhouse 2 years ago and threw myself into a position where I
had to own products. It was sink or swim. Making conscious observations on
what users did before a product existed helps me identify points of friction,
or workarounds that users currently resort to to achieve their aims.
Workarounds signal friction and inefficiency. Friction and inefficiency are
itches that users will delight you for scratching. Watch what people do and
not what they say. Below are a few examples:

MessageMe — What users did before: people want to share rich media but current
messaging apps do a poor job (either due to performance or lack of features)
in letting users seamlessly share rich media like videos, pictures, drawings,
voice memos. Users will copy URLs of videos or pictures and paste them into
their messaging app. The solution: A super zippy messaging app that lets you
share rich media inside the app with one click of a button.

Clearslide — What users did before: Salespeople had to manually enter
subjective notes in CRM systems after every interaction with a customer. This
was 1) time consuming and 2) the onus was on the salesperson to communicate
the relevant parts of the conversation that could impact the probability of
the deal being closed. What does this mean? Clues about what part of the
proposal they were most interested in. Questions the prospect asked. Who else
they roped in into the conversation or shared the proposal with. The solution:
Cloud based repository for sales presentations with analytics that track time
spent on slides, who the presentation was shared with, when it was opened and
such. All this allows for subjective notes to be replaced with data that helps
prioritize leads, time follow-ups and guide conversations.

When you study products with this lense…you start to naturally isolate product
value into silos of faster / cheaper / more efficient.

Don’t ask users what they want. Watch what users do and think deeply about
their motivations and goals and build a solution that helps them arrive to
their desired outcome faster. I’m not saying its easy…but its the best
insurance you have at getting traction. Let me save you the growing pains and
learn from my mistakes!

"If I had asked people what they wanted they would have said faster horses."
\- Henry Ford.

