A16z Podcast: Building Products for Power Users
Metadata
- Author: David Ulevitch and Rahul Vohra
- Full Title: A16z Podcast: Building Products for Power Users
- URL: https://a16z.com/2020/06/23/a16z-podcast-building-products-for-power-users/
Highlights
I would argue that, actually, companies like Salesforce and Atlassian with Jira were catering to power users. It’s just that the complexity and the configurability were so strong that the companies almost lost sight of the fact that it should be enjoyable to use. (View Highlight)
Configurability can come at the cost of being enjoyable to use
The challenge with tools like Salesforce and JIRA as well as really any other piece of enterprise software, or more generally, any piece of power user software, is that they often end up looking inelegant and becoming visually cluttered. (View Highlight) - Note: How to manage giving users power while staying elegant
You simply hit one master keyboard shortcut, in Superhuman that happens to be command K, and then you just type in the thing you’re looking for. At that point, you can hit “Enter,” and it will do it. But not only that, it will also teach you the keyboard shortcut for next time. So, you start up this mastery curve. (View Highlight) Look for opportunities to teach users how to do their common actions faster
So, in game design, we have this notion of a lean-back or a lean-forward experience. And TV is a lean-back experience. Now, with console gaming, it really does depend on the game. You’re probably not going to play “Call of Duty” leaning back. But you might play “Animal Crossing” that way. And so as a product designer, I think there’s just a set of questions you have to answer. Are you building a lean-back versus a lean-forward experience? How do you want people to feel? What is the primary thing you’re optimizing for? Is it the feeling of power? Well, then, you’re going to want to let customers remap their keys and run things their own way. (View Highlight) Lean-back vs lean-forward experiences
Hey, Elliot, please teach me everything that you know about virality.” And he said, “Well, lesson number one is that there isn’t such a thing as true virality. No feature or product has ever really had a viral loop of greater than one for any meaningful period of time. Even at LinkedIn the address book import has had a viral factor of 0.4. And even at Facebook, the most viral company of all time, they were not able to sustain 0.7 for more than about seven months.” At the end of the day, it always comes down to word-of-mouth organic spread, it comes down to brand, it comes down to building a product that people love. (View Highlight) - Note: No magic bullet. Care about your users and focus on making them great.
Word of Mouth Word of mouth is the closest thing to true repeatable virality
Every quarter, we also identify one massive rock and a few medium sized stones and a large number of small pebbles. We know roughly what order we’re going to do them, but what the small pebbles give us is the opportunity to be flexible with the plan in the face of unknown unknowns. (View Highlight)
So we ask ourselves, do we think we can reach hundreds of thousands of prosumers? And our answer is, absolutely, yes, we can. So, if something is working, I now believe that it is almost always better to double down and do more of that thing than to spin up something new (View Highlight)
Double down on existing success instead of trying something else
So, we started with this article by Arielle Jackson who, for folks who don’t know her, she actually happened to be the first product marketing manager on Gmail. She wrote this article called “Positioning Your Startup is Vital – Here’s How to Nail It.” She advises using a formula – and it’s a little bit of a Mad Libs game for a target customer who has a need or an opportunity. [Your product] is in a [product category] that provides [some key benefits], and unlike [competitors], [your product] has these [differentiators]. (View Highlight)
In late 2015, we asked 100 of our earliest users these questions. Number one, at what price would you consider Superhuman to be so expensive that you just wouldn’t buy it? Number two, what price would you consider Superhuman to be priced so low that you would feel the quality wouldn’t be very good, and that would be concerning? Number three, at what price would you consider Superhuman to be starting to get expensive so that it is not out of the question, but you would have to give some thought to buying it and you still would? And number four, at what price would you consider Superhuman to be a bargain, a great buy for the money? Now, most Silicon Valley companies orient around question number four, the bargain question. And that’s because most tend to be selling into a new market or a new buyer in an existing market. But for us, it made sense to adopt that premium position. And the price points that most directly supports the premium position comes out of the third question, when does it feel expensive, but you’d still buy it anyway? For us, the median answer to that third question was $30 a month, and that’s how we picked our price. Once (View Highlight)
A16z Podcast: Building Products for Power Users
Metadata
- Author: David Ulevitch and Rahul Vohra
- Full Title: A16z Podcast: Building Products for Power Users
- URL: https://a16z.com/2020/06/23/a16z-podcast-building-products-for-power-users/
Highlights
I would argue that, actually, companies like Salesforce and Atlassian with Jira were catering to power users. It’s just that the complexity and the configurability were so strong that the companies almost lost sight of the fact that it should be enjoyable to use. (View Highlight)review
The challenge with tools like Salesforce and JIRA as well as really any other piece of enterprise software, or more generally, any piece of power user software, is that they often end up looking inelegant and becoming visually cluttered. (View Highlight)review - Note: How to manage giving users power while staying elegant
You simply hit one master keyboard shortcut, in Superhuman that happens to be command K, and then you just type in the thing you’re looking for. At that point, you can hit “Enter,” and it will do it. But not only that, it will also teach you the keyboard shortcut for next time. So, you start up this mastery curve. (View Highlight)review
So, in game design, we have this notion of a lean-back or a lean-forward experience. And TV is a lean-back experience. Now, with console gaming, it really does depend on the game. You’re probably not going to play “Call of Duty” leaning back. But you might play “Animal Crossing” that way. And so as a product designer, I think there’s just a set of questions you have to answer. Are you building a lean-back versus a lean-forward experience? How do you want people to feel? What is the primary thing you’re optimizing for? Is it the feeling of power? Well, then, you’re going to want to let customers remap their keys and run things their own way. (View Highlight)review
Hey, Elliot, please teach me everything that you know about virality.” And he said, “Well, lesson number one is that there isn’t such a thing as true virality. No feature or product has ever really had a viral loop of greater than one for any meaningful period of time. Even at LinkedIn the address book import has had a viral factor of 0.4. And even at Facebook, the most viral company of all time, they were not able to sustain 0.7 for more than about seven months.” At the end of the day, it always comes down to word-of-mouth organic spread, it comes down to brand, it comes down to building a product that people love. (View Highlight)review - Note: No magic bullet. Care about your users and focus on making them great.
Every quarter, we also identify one massive rock and a few medium sized stones and a large number of small pebbles. We know roughly what order we’re going to do them, but what the small pebbles give us is the opportunity to be flexible with the plan in the face of unknown unknowns. (View Highlight)review
So we ask ourselves, do we think we can reach hundreds of thousands of prosumers? And our answer is, absolutely, yes, we can. So, if something is working, I now believe that it is almost always better to double down and do more of that thing than to spin up something new (View Highlight)review
So, we started with this article by Arielle Jackson who, for folks who don’t know her, she actually happened to be the first product marketing manager on Gmail. She wrote this article called “Positioning Your Startup is Vital – Here’s How to Nail It.” She advises using a formula – and it’s a little bit of a Mad Libs game for a target customer who has a need or an opportunity. [Your product] is in a [product category] that provides [some key benefits], and unlike [competitors], [your product] has these [differentiators]. (View Highlight)review
In late 2015, we asked 100 of our earliest users these questions. Number one, at what price would you consider Superhuman to be so expensive that you just wouldn’t buy it? Number two, what price would you consider Superhuman to be priced so low that you would feel the quality wouldn’t be very good, and that would be concerning? Number three, at what price would you consider Superhuman to be starting to get expensive so that it is not out of the question, but you would have to give some thought to buying it and you still would? And number four, at what price would you consider Superhuman to be a bargain, a great buy for the money? Now, most Silicon Valley companies orient around question number four, the bargain question. And that’s because most tend to be selling into a new market or a new buyer in an existing market. But for us, it made sense to adopt that premium position. And the price points that most directly supports the premium position comes out of the third question, when does it feel expensive, but you’d still buy it anyway? For us, the median answer to that third question was $30 a month, and that’s how we picked our price. Once (View Highlight)review