
How to build great products (2013) - prawn
https://www.defmacro.org/2013/09/26/products.html
======
gps372
\- First figure out if the market needs it. This is the biggest reason why
products fail [https://www.getautopsy.com/](https://www.getautopsy.com/)

\- Asset economic viability i.e. you must be able to recover the cost.

\- Ability to build and nurture a solid team that can deliver a product of
reasonable quality and robustness.

\- Find who your end-customer and paying customer is and whether this problem
is light or hard in their head. Accordingly curate the right messaging for the
product for marketing purpose.

\- Ensure that there are no legal challenges.

------
ChrisMarshallNY
The “Three Bucket Model” is something that I learned by reading Scott Jenson’s
excellent _The Simplicity Shift_ [0]. This was a book about mobile UX design,
written before the advent of smartphones.

It is all about prioritizing features, as the real estate back then was _bad_.

I call it “Front of the Box/Back of the Box.”

The Front of a box on the shelf has two or three major eye-catchers, in huge
text.

The Back of the box has four or five more, in slightly smaller text, and the
sides of the box have the rest of the features, in even smaller type.

This drives my development priorities, as well as UX.

Engineers always want to do the most difficult thing first, just to get a
feasibility study done, and the most challenging part out of the way, which
makes a lot of sense (engineers tend to be quite sensible and practical).

The problem is, is if the _most important_ feature is easy, it can be left to
last, and can be jettisoned, if work on the most difficult (but less
important) feature borks the schedule.

So you get a technically marvelous app that does what no one wants.

I’ve done exactly that. Repeatedly (I’m a slow learner). It sucks.

[0] [https://jenson.org/The-Simplicity-Shift.pdf](https://jenson.org/The-
Simplicity-Shift.pdf)

~~~
__alexs
> The problem is, is if the most important feature is easy, it can be left to
> last, and can be jettisoned, if work on the most difficult (but less
> important) feature borks the schedule.

This sounds similar to principle of WSJF and Cost of Delay that I learnt from
"Principles of Product Development Flow". TL;DR. Ship the easy but valuable
stuff first so that your users can get value out of it while you work on the
hard things.

The mistake I've seen happen applying this in practice is that you end up
cutting all the hard things which leaves you with a product made up entirely
of easily copyable stuff and not much differentiation.

~~~
ChrisMarshallNY
Good point. I never _plan_ to skip the difficult parts, and one of the things
that I have learned, is to not ship too early, even if it means a delay.

In fact, I am dealing with that right now, on a low-level Bluetooth SDK[0] I’m
developing. It works great on iOS (and I even have a shipped app, based on
it[1]), but I can’t consider it “shippable,” until I have test harnesses
written for the other three systems (I’m just finishing up the Mac one, now).

[0]
[https://github.com/RiftValleySoftware/RVS_BlueThoth](https://github.com/RiftValleySoftware/RVS_BlueThoth)

[1] [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/blue-van-
clef/id1511428132](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/blue-van-clef/id1511428132)

------
munificent
I like the three bucket model. I work on a programming language and we talk
about it in terms of:

1\. Differentiators. ("Gamechangers" in the article.)

2\. Tablestakes. ("Showstoppers".)

3\. Niceties.

I like "tablestakes" because it describes the _presence_ of the feature and
not its absence. Also, a betting metaphor implies that this is a moving
target. The tablestakes can be raised on you if all your competition adds some
beloved feature. When Dart first launched, non-nullable types would have been
a differentiator. Now it's tablestakes.

Languages are interesting because you have a very limited budget for
differentiators. Users have a finite appetite for novelty in programming
languages, so you have to spend that wisely on a small number of very
compelling features.

The third "niceties" category is interesting. Those are features that please
existing users but are not compelling enough to attract new ones. There is an
argument that you should _not_ focus on those if you are trying to grow your
userbase since by definition they aren't compelling enough to attract new
users.

But I believe they can be important for growth. Shipping features that bring
joy to existing users can help turn those people into your product's
evangelists and, especially in programming languages, you _really_ need that.

------
johnnujler
Seriously, who are these people who believe that sales alone can fix
everything or building a great product alone can change their life? Everyone,
and I mean literally every human being I have interacted with on this topic
have assured me of the difficulty, complexity, and multifaceted-ness, of what
it takes to get something going from ideation to profit, either through their
fear of stepping into this territory of entrepreneurship or through their
experience. And anyone who has been an entrepreneur or at least has tested the
water will definitely have some sort of intuition for what it takes. If people
still rely on a single factor, either they are one of those fraudulent aholes
or the asocial nerds who should improve their sales skills(or hire someone who
has the required skills). Never understood people taking about the
multivariate and complex nature of life. It is complex and multivariate; and
everyone knows it.

~~~
e1g
"Sales fix everything" is a shortcut for "There are many experienced people
who can help fix most problems your company is currently struggling with, and
if you give them lots of money they will help you win.". You can throw money
at most issues in HR, retention, brand, marketing, government issues, customer
support, engineering speed, infrastructure. Of course, it is possible to hire
stupid people who will hurt you, but we can assume basic competence on behalf
of the successful entrepreneur and that she can find competent helpers.

In business, if you have a product nobody wants, you generally fail. If you
have no means of capitalizing your company, you generally fail. But if you
turn the product into a money-printing machine, you will resolve other
problems with enough iterations. Sales momentum does not make your startup
immortal but sets the company on a better trajectory than another startup with
amazing culture, great passion, but no customers/revenue.

~~~
6510
I've also seen companies that are such a complete mess and have such terrible
product that they should just die fix everything with sales.

I worked for one that (on average) spend 950 euro to sell a 1000 euro product
that isn't worth 5 euro. (It was extra "funny" since I just gave up trying to
"sell" a similar vastly superior product for free. "Suspiciously cheap" was my
potential clients verdict 99% of the time. After all, from all angles, every
day of the week, they were offered the same product for 1000 euro!) I never
sold anything working there but that was perfectly normal.

------
kavir
I believe market validation is more important than having a great product that
no one wants to use. The combination of product and distribution goes hand in
hand to building a great product. So don’t obsess over UI and tech stack in
the first version, until you have demonstrated customer demand.

------
catchmeifyoucan
One fourth category to consider is "quick wins" (papercuts). The smallest
things you can do that make customers feel delighted. Not everything will be
game changing. These are the items that are easy to build, and still provide
minimal value. These often don't qualify as "features", but do make life
easier. For example, a simple "copy url" button or keyboard shortcut might
fall into this category.

Good example from the Github Team: [https://github.blog/2018-08-28-announcing-
paper-cuts/](https://github.blog/2018-08-28-announcing-paper-cuts/)

------
polote
Building a great product should almost never be the goal, people don't buy a
product because it is great, people don't use a product because it is great.

People buy a product because they are forced to buy it and people use a
product because they love it.

This is the biggest mistake people make in product management, is to forget
the customer

> it follows that most startups fail because they don’t ship a great product

this is so wrong

edit : funny that the guy behind the article created only one company
(rethinkdb) which failed because they didn't find a business model

~~~
auganov
> People buy a product because they are forced to buy it

That's the best situation to be in, but people certainly often buy stuff just
because they _think_ it will benefit them in some way.

It's worthwhile to think about the sheer marketability of a product beyond its
strict usefulness. Some things are easier to sell regardless of the actual
functionality.

------
Wandfarbe
Whatever you do, make sure to get the basics right:

\- Good UI \- Fast UI \- Good performance and if this is not possible, keep
the UI responsive and give Feedback to the user

------
sova
"Showstopper" to me means something quite different, but reading your
description made sense. It's a wordsmash noveau

------
bonoboTP
Analogous advice applies to academic research, career/resume building and
perhaps even dating!

------
shreyas-satish
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6457801](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6457801)

------
vinteruggla
Community is also key. it will either make it or break it.

~~~
varjag
Thousands of successful commercial products have no communities to speak of.

~~~
monkeydust
Yea, community is relatively new phenomenon in software at least the way it is
down now. Traditionally its something curated and orchestrated via sales and
product managers, events,seminars, 1:1 meetings or sometimes small coherts of
similar clients. There is still value in this versus newer forms of community.

~~~
varjag
With a bit more cynical view, "community advocates" and "product evangelists"
are still marketing and sales people. Only that community (i.e. users) is now
shaped to bear additional function of first level support on the Internet.

------
DNied
The iPhone example is frankly laughable. Try selling a smartphone without
copy/paste and with subpar vocal quality _if you 're not Apple_. People will
throw it in your face.

~~~
6510
If it is also a razor, a piratebox and a sex toy you can get away with crappy
voice q.

