17 Product Lessons I’ve Learned from Working with 100 Startups

In the last few years, I’ve had the opportunity to design over 100 digital products in a variety of industries. It’s been an amazing professional journey and an exciting learning curve - every product is unique and comes with its UX and UI challenges, objectives and product mission. Not everyone is trying to save the world, but surely every startup founder is aiming for the stars. And I love it! Working with ambitious people is what’s pushing the industry forward - designers, engineers, and marketers get better, SaaS tools get more sophisticated, etc

The more interesting part is that opportunities and lessons are limitless, but the challenges I face when working with startup founders are actually very similar. I learned very early on in my career that founders usually slip up in similar situations when it comes to building their product, especially if they don’t come from a dev or design background.

Below are some common mistakes founders make that I think are worth learning from. Just for the record, I’ve done almost all of them. 

1. Building Too Many Features

I see this over and over again. It all starts with a simple product idea solving a real problem. Then we start building the product, but the core proposition feels weak and unconvincing for investors. Then, in order to make the product seem more powerful, founders add on more features, without proving that the initial concept actually worked. 

You then end up with such a complex product that it’s hard to track back what’s not working - is it the core idea or the final execution? Plus - building too many features ends up very costly and delays the user testing process. The product is often clunky and full of bugs, which is excused with “This is just an MVP”. Well, an MVP is a version of the product that could be market-tested and it requires brilliant execution to allow you to get meaningful results. It shouldn’t be an excuse for poor quality.

It’s like trying to build a spaceship without knowing how paper airplanes work. 

Over the years, I’ve developed a simple strategy how to evaluate if a feature is worth building that I use with most of my clients. You can have a look at what it is here.

Below is also a famous graph developed by Andrew Chen (designed by us ??) which summarises why building too many features might be a dangerous situation. 

2. Delegate key product decisions to new hires

That’s a tricky one. We all have to learn how to delegate efficiently, as only this way we can free up our minds for more important business decisions. However, before a proper product/market fit is achieved, delegating key product decisions to someone who recently joined the team might lead to catastrophic results. Sadly, I’ve seen this many times…

3. Too focused on the product idea rather than on the user pain points

Recently at Pony, we started using the Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) theory, developing our own framework how to effectively identify customer’s pain points. It’s a powerful methodology that allows you to detach yourself and your user from the product and focus on the real needs your target audience is having and what’s their motivation for using a certain group of products. As JTBD practitioners put it - people “hire” products to get a job done. 

Sometimes founders get so obsessed with the perfect product idea, that they miss the fact that that product is not addressing a real pain point. Nice-to-have products rarely take off.

4. Getting too defensive about the product's weaknesses

The job of a UX designer is to come and dissect your product, identify its weaknesses, then suggest and execute a solution that will fix them. Makes sense, right? If a designer you work with is challenging some of your product decision, it means they’re doing their best to help. They’re not an investor or someone you have to convince in your brilliance. Being critical when it comes to your product performance is only boosting its growth.

5. Spending on acquisition without building a proper funnel first

I often see founders pushing PPC and other paid ads without properly tracking conversions. Not having the right tracking in place and tons of poorly targeted traffic makes it more challenging for growth designers to work on the user flow and identify product flaws.

6. Underestimating the power of branding

Spending seed money on fancy branding is definitely a mistake, but so is the opposite - not thinking about branding at all. As mentioned above, “this is just an MVP” is not an excuse anymore, most industries have become crazily competitive so you need to break the noise with recognisable branding early on. Strong branding will surely impact your CAC, which is crucial in the early months.

7. Not trusting the designer 

“Move this button to the left, make the logo bigger…” All those memes amongst the designers' community are there for a reason. The best thing you can do when hiring a design agency or a freelance designer is to find someone you can trust and knows how to make the most out of your product vision. You need to be a good match to make this work, micromanaging the designer never ends well. This leads me to my next point.

8. Hiring a junior designer, but having too high expectations from them

Just like in any other industry, design work can be priced very differently. You can find a talented, fast-learning designer in his early career years, but obviously you have to be prepared that you’ll be part of his learning journey and results won’t be the same as someone who’s spent a decade in the industry. Not understanding the difference between the outcomes you’ll get leads to disappointment, project delays, and more money spent on redoing the design

9. Starting a design project without clear objectives

This is a bit of a no-brainer, but you’ll be surprised how often I start a project that needs to be “redesigned.” What does that mean? Why would you need a new design? Is it just because you feel your product looks outdated? Well, have a look at ebay and Craigslist. Not that pretty, right? You’d be much better off if you prepare a structured design brief with clearly listed objectives and outcomes, even include targeted metrics, so you’ll know exactly what has been the value of the design work done for you.

10. Investing too much in fancy interactions

You don’t need a fancy video or breathtaking motion effects if you’re just starting off. They cost a lot and have little impact on conversions for unestablished brands. Investing time and money to nail those is a distraction from more substantial product improvements. 

11. Overlooking the marketing site

I’ve been involved in a number of projects where after working months on the product, the marketing site comes as an afterthought, a nuisance that has to be fixed quickly. Mistake. Especially for new products, your marketing site is like the facade of your house, it’s the first impression that will determine if the user will give you a chance. It's very often an essential part of the sales machine. Why risk it after working so hard on your product?!

12. Not having a design system

There’re plenty of solid, data-backed articles that prove why you need a design system. It speeds up delivery, it improves the quality of the final design work, it saves money, it improves collaboration between designers, just to name a few. So even if you’ve just done the first version of your product, it’s a good idea to create a good design system and make sure that people working on your product use it. 

13. Saving from premium fonts

Here’s a designer’s secret. Quality typography is a very key component of the UI and a huge part of the branding. A good font can amplify the value of your design efforts tremendously. It’ll also be used on your deck, social media channels, business cards, prints, marketing materials, videos etc, so don’t save a few bucks from one of the most important design asset you’ll be using for years to come.

14. Not enough user testing

In 2020, it’s not wise to start testing your product with users after it’s launched. There’re plenty of effective tools and methods that allow us to test a product on the wireframe stage, which would have a positive impact on its initial traction. Early testing with users is often seen as an unnecessary step, but in my opinion it saves time and money in the long run.

15. Over-hiring

High fixed costs and overheads might eat up a huge part of your budget that could be spent on more strategic product moves. In my experience, getting external help and expertise in the early months (marketing, growth, dev, UX) is much wiser than hiring a full-time person that will add to your fixed costs and will most likely have less experience. For example, if you want to run an acquisition campaign on Facebook, it’s much better to test if it delivers for you with an agency that specialises in Facebook advertising and have done this for hundreds of other clients, rather than hiring a marketing executive to do it in-house for you. Once you’re past the seed stage, it’s essential to start building the core team of course, but when you’re walking on ice you’d better spend your limited budget on experienced people who’re more likely to deliver positive outcomes.

16. UX never ends

Once a product is live, opportunities for improvement are limitless, so everyone on the team should operate in experimentation mode. When you launch a new product, the real UX work starts and that’s when you can see how design impacts growth. It’s a matter of switching your mindset that even the results are ok, this is a sign they can become even better.

17. Not ready to let it go

I was one of those founders. I so passionately believed in the value of the product we were building that I wasn’t able to accept that it will never take off. And after working with over 100 founders, I can reassure you, the problem very often is not in the missing hook or the urgent need of a redesign (though these could be major factors, of course). Knowing when to let it go and jump on the next venture is a sign of entrepreneurial maturity.