We track Product so you don't have to. Top Podcasts summarised, the latest AI tools, plus research and news in a 5 min digest.
Hey Product fans!
Welcome back to this week’s edition of 🌮 Product Tapas —your weekly snippet of the freshest, most exciting developments in the product world. A special welcome to all our new subscribers. If you’re new here or you’ve been forwarded this from a friend, you can sign up and catch up on past editions here.
What’s on the menu this week? 🧑🍳
📰 Not Boring: Dive into an action-packed week with highlights including Ikea's gamer-friendly furniture line, Adobe's venture into generative video, and TikTok's new in-app ticket purchasing feature. Don't miss out on the latest from companies like Anthropic, predicting an AI breakthrough, and the exciting, meme-generating capabilities of Viggle. Plus much more!
⌚ Time-Saving Tools & GPTs: Check out Goptimise for effortless AI-driven backend construction, Gigabrain for automating Reddit research, and Lummi for top-notch free stock photos. NewSpace also makes its debut as a super-quick sharing solution for just about anything.
🍔 Blog Bites: Grab bite-sized insights from Peter Ramsay’s UX Bites and explore the fascinating strategy behind Attio’s CRM innovation. Learn how Eventbrite turned the tables on monetisation and how to apply the ‘Traffic Light Strategy’ to your product roadmap.
🎙️ Pod Shots: Catch Vickie Peng on the 20VC Podcast discussing the art of building impactful products with less and mastering customer-centric strategies for sustainable growth.
Ready to dive in? Let’s go! 🚀👇
📰 Not boring
Ikea launches a new line of furniture for gamers that will fit in better to more homes
In no surprise to anyone, Adobe’s working on generative video, too
The Humane AI Pin seems to be pretty bad in its current guise ☹. But whilst it’s easy to call it a failure my take is give it some time. It’s early and GenAI will get a lot better very very quickly. So wouldn’t be surprised to see this evolve and still be relevant in the future
TikTok gives users more in-app ways to buy event tickets
YouTube is cracking down on third-party apps that block ads
The founder of Anthropic (Dario Amodei) says something like AGI is 3-24 months away
Viral AI news:
Snap plans to add watermarks to images created with its AI-powered tools
Klarna credit card launches in the US as Swedish fintech grows its market presence [Users can earn up to 10% cash back on selected merchants when using the card in its app]
X/Twitter will charge new users to post, Elon Musk says, in a bid to stop bots taking over the platform
Instagram is working on a feature to allow. you to chat to a Chatbot version of your favourite influencers
Nothing announces new earbuds with ChatGPT inbuilt
Figma launched their Library Analytics API in beta for Enterprise customers, allowing design systems teams to store and analyse their library data outside of Figma
Dumphone (i.e. non-smartphones) sales are booming
📰 Time-Saving Tools & GPTs
This week’s curated time-savers and useful tools from across the web:
Goptimise - No-Code AI-powered scaleable backend builder
Gigabrain - does Reddit research for you automatically - potentially great for ideation and validation of ideas for early-stage product teams
Lummi - “The best free stock photos and royalty-free images. Powered by robots everywhere”. Does what it says 😉
NewSpace let’s you share anything in seconds (no account needed). Easy way to share files, documents, videos, web pages etc…
🍔 Blog Bites - Essential Reads for Product Teams
UX: Latest UX Bites from Peter Ramsay
Peter’s back with his 500th bite. As he puts it he’s “now confident that almost anyone could find a handful of quick wins within the library” and he isn’t wrong. I’d be hard-pressed to find a handful of anything that doesn’t resonate.
This post has the 5 most bookmarked Bites from the least 2 weeks and is well worth 2 minutes of your time.
Strategy (and bonus app review): How Attio built a shapeshifting product
This edition of Strategy Breakdowns started off feeling like a bit of an advert. But then after reading a few sections A) the CRM product Attio (which I’d never heard of) started to sound pretty damn incredible and B) The strategy combo of fastest time to value, flexible data model and growing the product with customers as they mature is interesting.
The powerful and intuitive CRM.
Everyone needs one. No one has one.
As a company choosing a CRM, you either:
1. Choose a legacy platform that’s slow and expensive to manage, but will meet your complex needs as you scale, or
2. Choose a challenger platform that’s simple and intuitive to get started, but you will inevitably outgrow its capabilities.
Simple enough for solo founders
+ powerful enough for enterprises
= the holy grail of CRM.
For Attio, this isn’t just a dream.
It’s their unique value proposition.
Strategy Playbook: Be simple for simple customers, and sophisticated for sophisticated customers.
Strategy: How Does Your Traffic Light Strategy Look
Interesting take from Tim Herbig on how to RAG categorise your Product strategy in terms of how proven or otherwise each element is.
Here’s the good news: Your Product Strategy doesn’t have to be 100% proven and watertight based on evidence before you can start sharing and working on it. Instead of trying to hide the assumptions present in your strategy, embrace them by using what I like to call the “Traffic Light Strategy.”
This ties in with the idea that your Strategy consists of individual but coherent components that fill universal strategy patterns with life. Once articulated, you can color-code the individual components according to their degree of “unprovenness.”
HOW TO PUT THIS THEORY INTO PRACTICE
Check your Strategy Components. Be explicit about what is a proven fact vs. the wild guesses that have landed in your Strategy articulations.
Adjust your Discovery Priorities. Are your Discovery efforts focused on derisking the red (and maybe yellow) components?
Watch the Traffic Lights Change. How does the color change over the weeks and months of executing your Strategy?
Case Study: The Monetisation Playbook Used at Eventbrite
Even though Eventbrite had great scale when Casey Winters joined they weren’t making material profits. Here, he digs into the playbook he built and some of the process it took to get there - a great read and mental model for figuring out pricing mechanics.
If featrue drives virality, give it away
If feature drives activation, give it away until activated, then charge
If feature doesn't drive retention, but people value it, charge extra for it.
If feature drives lifetime value, compare to what they’re willing to pay, to decide whether to charge or give it away.
🎙 Pod Shots
In the fast-paced world of startups, creating a successful product strategy is crucial for achieving growth and market success. On a recent edition of the 20VC Podcast, Vickie Peng, a product planner at Sequoia, shared valuable insights on different customer mindsets and how they impact product development. Let's delve into her advice and explore practical tips for building a winning product strategy.
⚒ Vickie Peng: Why the Best Product People Actually Build Less Product?
20VC with Vickie Peng
🎥 Watch the full episode here
📆 Published: April 18th, 2024
🕒 Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes. Time saved: 50 minutes🔥
🎯 Establishing a North Star Metric
Key Advice: Customer-Centric Metrics Over NPS
Vickie emphasizes the importance of selecting a North Star metric that directly reflects customer satisfaction and product engagement, suggesting that startups should avoid traditional metrics like NPS. Instead, she recommends actionable metrics directly linked to product use—such as API calls or dashboard interactions—which she believes more accurately signal customer happiness.
Practical Tip: Use Product-Specific Actions
Identify actions within your product that customers frequently engage with, indicating strong product utility. This approach not only measures success more accurately but also aligns product development directly with user satisfaction, leading to more targeted improvements.
🔄 The Cycle of Conviction and Action
From Early Career Insights to Execution
Reflecting on her experience at TrialPay, Vickie discusses the cycle of building conviction and taking action. This cycle involves developing a hypothesis based on market needs, creating a product to test this hypothesis, and using the results to strengthen belief in the product's value.
Practical Tip: Minimize to Optimize
Startups should focus on creating minimum viable products that allow them to test hypotheses quickly and efficiently without overbuilding. This approach saves resources and enables quicker pivoting based on feedback and learning.
📈 Internal and External Belief in Products
The Challenge of Belief
Vickie shares that one of the greatest challenges in product management is building belief—not just among potential customers but within the organisation. This internal advocacy is crucial, especially when resources are diverted from core products to support new initiatives.
Practical Tip: Advocate Passionately
Product managers should actively work to foster belief in the product's potential both inside and outside the company. This involves clear communication of the product's benefits and strategic demonstrations of its potential impact.
🗣️ The Art of Storytelling in Product Marketing
Customer-Centric Narratives
A common mistake Vickie identifies is that startups often frame their product's value proposition from their own perspective rather than the customer's. She advises reversing this by emphasising how the product changes the customer’s life, focusing on solving their problems and enhancing their experiences.
Practical Tip: Problem Before Solution
When communicating with potential users, focus first on understanding and addressing their problems before promoting the product's features. This approach ensures that the product aligns with actual user needs and builds a stronger case for its adoption.
🚀 Scaling with Non-scalable Actions
Embracing Unscalability
Addressing a common startup axiom, Vickie agrees that to scale, sometimes you need to embrace actions that aren't scalable in the short term. [Speaking from experience this is incredibly important!!] This includes manual interventions or personalised customer interactions, which can provide invaluable insights and foster customer loyalty.
Practical Tip: Wizard of Oz Techniques
Employ behind-the-scenes manual processes to simulate product features or services before they are fully automated. This can help validate concepts without full-scale development.
🌟 Conclusion: Building Less to Achieve More
Vickie Peng’s insights remind us that effective product management is not about the quantity of features or products built but about the precision and impact of those features. For tech startups and scaleup leadership, focusing on strategic, customer-centric actions can lead to more meaningful engagement and sustainable growth.
Final Tip: Keep Learning and Iterating
The tech landscape is continuously evolving, and so should product strategies. Stay adaptable, always be ready to learn from real-world feedback, and refine your approach to product development and management accordingly.
Want to know more quickly? Just ask the episode below [web only]👇 🤯
or if you prefer, 🎥 Watch the full episode here
📅 Timestamps:
[00:02:09] The cycle of conviction and action.
[00:06:04] The power of storytelling.
[00:07:01] Differentiation in storytelling and marketing.
[00:09:46] Running performance marketing on a spreadsheet.
[00:13:22] The power of reframing problems.
[00:18:33] A great product mission.
[00:19:36] Customer Happiness Metrics.
[00:24:54] Product Mistakes and Lessons.
[00:26:23] Product-market fit as a journey.
[00:29:27] Differentiation in product marketing.
[00:34:29] It is what it is.
[00:38:07] Future vision.
[00:40:47] Challenges of "Hair on Fire"
[00:44:30] Distribution trumps all.
[00:48:00] The biggest product marketing mistake.
[00:50:58] Impressive product strategy.
[00:52:25] Building products for different roles.
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That’s a wrap.
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Alastair & the Product Tapas Team 🍽️.