How to efficiently build great products in a startup
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There are many ways to build a software product, but it’s quite hard to find the balance between a sustainable technical foundation, product innovation, implementation speed and prioritization of features. While having thousands of customers in a SaaS market, a start-up might soon have enterprise customers with special needs to take care of. This involves a lot of potential challenges – a tough journey. In this workshop, you’ll learn about Frontify’s tactics on software product management, pitfalls and learnings as well as practical advice on tools, recruiting and more. Your business-related and technical questions will be answered by the Founder & CTO of Frontify, a fast-growing St. Gallen-based start-up.
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How to efficiently build great products in a startup
- 1. Howtoefficiently buildgreatproducts inastartup START Summit Friday, March 24, 2017 Roger Dudler, Founder & CTO @ Frontify
- 3. Ramp-Up The essential foundation of a product companyThe essential foundation of a product company
- 4. KeyRolesinaProductTeam The following roles will be essential in your product team, at some point you’ll need all of them (multiple times). Product Manager / VP Product System Engineer Back-End Developer Front-End Developer UX Designer Visual Designer Ramp-Up
- 5. ProductManager/VPProduct Decides what is being built and when Key Skills Can say No! Ability to think 3 steps ahead Needs to know the company & product vision by heart Strong people management skills Strong in gathering feedback & requirements Ramp-Up
- 6. SystemEngineer Makes sure your product is always up and scales smoothly. Key Skills Strong in system engineering (Linux, etc.) Knows cloud environments and virtualisation Knows about databases, storage and performance Knows about security Ramp-Up
- 7. Back-EndEngineer Builds the logic into your application. Provides the API for your front-end applications (e.g. Browser UI, App, etc.). Key Skills Strong in coding logic Passion for performance Knows how to build an application from scratch Ramp-Up
- 8. Front-EndEngineer Builds the front-end experience of your application. In many cases this is a browser front-end. Could also be an iOS/Android engineer (but e.g. we don’t have a native app yet). Key Skills (Web) Passion for design and user interactions Outstanding JavaScript skills HTML/CSS Ramp-Up
- 10. UXDesigner Makes sure your product is usable. Key Skills Strong in understanding your user’s behaviour Concept and strategy skills (e.g. Wireframing) Creativity Ramp-Up
- 11. VisualDesigner Makes sure your product is beautiful. Key Skills Strong in creating visual beauty Experienced in designing for digital Knows about making all user interactions visually appealing Creativity Ramp-Up
- 13. Front-End Developer Back-End Developer Product Manager UX/Visual Designer System Engineer ?? 5
- 14. Real-LifeScenario Ramp-Up All-in-One Full-Stack Developer System Engineer Visual / UX Designer Product Manager Full-Stack Developer System Engineer Full-Stack Developer Visual / UX Designer Product Manager Full-Stack Developer Full-Stack Developer Focus: Back-End System Engineer Full-Stack Developer Product Manager Full-Stack Developer Full-Stack Developer Focus: Back-End Full-Stack Developer Focus: Front-End Visual / UX Designer 1 2 3 5
- 16. ?? 35% 20% Initial Product Before Product Market Fit After Product Market Fit 50%
- 17. Ramp-Up Things that are important when making decisions Focus on speed and stability (you are building for years, not days) Make sure there are enough recruiting options At least one very experienced guy on board for the chosen technology Let developers play with new technologies TechnologyStack
- 19. Well, that’s overall. Looking only at web or mobile development it would be different. ?? Java,C,C++
- 20. Ramp-Up 1. Java 2. C 3. C++ 4. C# 5. Python 6. VisualBasic 7. PHP 8. JavaScript 9. Delphi/Pascal 10. Swift 11. Perl 12. Ruby Ranking from TIOBE Index for March 2017 Expensive People, Infrastructure, Many people Expensive People, Embedded, etc. Expensive People, Embedded, etc. Web, Windows Scripting, Server-Side Processing, Not that many people (CH) Document Scripting, Legacy Many People, Mature Essential for Web / Front-End, Needed for Node Legacy Native Apps Legacy Modern, Not that much big production systems ProgrammingLanguages
- 21. YourChoice Ramp-Up Choose between Stable Mature New Modern More experienced developers, but less attractive and “old-schooly” low risk Less experienced developers, but more attractive and feature-rich mid to high risk
- 23. CloudHosting Ramp-Up Choose between Amazon WebServices Own Infrastructure Grows with you, bound to the provided features, not so powerful performance, Low maintenance efforts Bare metal, high performance, Expensive, High maintenance efforts
- 24. OurChoice Ramp-Up Amazon WebServices because it’s awesome (efficient and cheap)
- 26. You are normally setting up On-Demand Instances which are not meant to be used 100%. Which normally is the case for you. Use reserved instances wherever you can, for your EC2 instances, DB instances, etc. It cuts cost about 60%. ?? ReservedInstances!
- 28. Feedback provide easy ways of giving feedback (no hurdles) carefully decide, what is important and what isn’t when launching something, monitor behaviour (e.g. Hotjar, etc.) When you feel the speed/pace of devs lowers down, hire support Categorise incoming feedback (e.g. Help & Support, Bugs, Pricing & Billing, Enterprise, Feature Requests) Plan&Build
- 29. FeedbackTool Plan&Build working with it since the beginning, one of our most important tools
- 30. Track&Measure know how people are using your product when you release something, track how people are using it Plan&Build
- 31. ProductPlanning Find a balance between the different demand groups - Wanted by team (because people believe in the impact) - Wanted by strategy (because it’s part of your master plan) - Wanted by users (because people requested it) - Wanted by market (because the trend or market demands it) Find a balance between investments in - Wow - Usability - Revenue $ Link feedbacks to features, bugs, etc. to quantify the demand Plan&Build
- 33. We’re not really following the scrum methodology closely, but use parts of it. We’re planning in weekly sprints and use points to quantify efforts, but don’t do standup, nor do we use comprehensive user stories. We focus on very close collaboration, also we’re still all next to each other (currently). ?? Kinda’
- 34. ProductPlanningTool Plan&Build interesting especially for lean startups who are gathering feedback, having drivers, using initiatives
- 35. Shipping Try to release as fast as possible, but always with quality in mind Continuously release small chunks, not huge packages Ideally, release every day (make sure the process is super-fast) Try to not think in v1, v2, v3, v2017 or similar Plan&Build
- 37. Just make sure your team is aligned to the goal. If you strive for 100%, think about doubling your team or double your time to market, also add QA engineers early. ?? Whoknows
- 39. BuildahealthyProductTeam Make sure your team know the company goals Be empathic, developers need care and sometimes need to be handled completely different, from person to person Know strengths and weaknesses, find the perfect combo Try to understand what people build and stay on top of the game Plan and build in very small (trackable) chunks (<1d) Insights
- 41. It’s a tough decision, we’re always re-validating. As long as it doesn’t slow down your product development and doesn’t impact the whole company (e.g. marketing) too much, you can try both. ?? Wedoboth.
- 42. SMBvs.EnterpriseCustomers Focus on one is easier in terms of marketing, features, etc. If you manage to do both, it’s great. Keep it one software, no individual versions Be restrictive with feature requests (they need to match your plan) Insights
- 44. And it’s still worth it and less expensive than building and maintaining something by ourselves. ?? Weactuallypay$1k/m
- 45. Self-Madevs.Third-PartyServices You have to decide, whether you want to build something essential by yourself into your own software or just use a service to reach your goal. Keep in mind that self-made normally seems less expensive, but on the long run it’s nearly always more expensive (and also not as good) as external services. They might become expensive at some point, but then you’ll have the money and resources to build something by yourself. Insights
- 47. ThankYou! Visit us on www.frontify.com Questions? [email protected]