8 Steps to Product Thinking

Everything looks messy until it's not. The journey to getting in the 8% bracket of SaaS startups that make to cut to success within three years revolves around product thinking.

As a start-up founder, the luxury to afford a veteran Product Manager is not on the table for at least one year, unless you got VC money at your disposal on the go.

Quick confession, in the age of narrow+niche specialization, am a huge believer start-up founders have no choice but to ' Be good enough to be dangerous' in the key areas that will increase their odds of succeeding.

In fact, it's the whole premise of this newsletter is - Arm ( technical) founders with skills to launch, grow and scale their start-ups from marketing lenses.

Now, let's talk product thinking today.

What is Product Thinking?

The?skill of knowing what makes a product useful — and loved — by people

Product thinking is critical for this very reason, as Marc Andreessen would put it;

"the only thing that matters for a new startup is getting to a product-market fit”

Resources; Product-market fit & Product Positioning

According to Future by a16z, product thinking is about mindest,

Product thinker as the following questions;

• Critique Product X — which decisions seem the most responsible for its success? Why??
• How would you help Product X win over Audience Y if you were its leader?
• Take Problem Z … What would you design to solve it?

Additionally, A product thinking mindset might lead one to study?what makes TikTok so popular, what?leads to Figma’s growth?within an organization, or what the characteristics of?popular marketplaces are.

Product Thinking Framework - Video

It's more of an open book, but there are key questions you need to answer to get product thinking right.

1. Users

• Who are the direct users?
• Who are the impacted users?
• What are the users trying to achieve?

2. Market

• How are the use cases being met today?
• Do you see any gaps?
• Are those gaps big enough worth solving?

3. Solution

• Does our solution address the gaps in providing value to the users?
• Can we sufficiently monetize the value so that our solution is sustainable?
• Have we uncovered any 10X innovations?

4. Build

• How can we test our solution quickly and cheaply?
• How can we anticipate issues and unblock the team?
• How can we ensure a smooth landing?

5. Team

• Do we have the right skills and motivations?
• Are the incentives aligned?
• Do we have funding/sponsorship to see this through?

6. Measure

• What are the metrics to tell us if we are headed in the right direction?
• Have we built the instrumentation to continuously track?
• When things fail, do we have enough granularity to know what is failing?

7. Research

• Are we tracking external factors?
• Are we able to generate insights?
• Are the insights making it to the right forums?

8. Iterate

• Have we fostered a culture of experimentation?
• Are we making data-driven decisions?
• How fast can we adapt?

If you looked at the template keenly, you will notice the last four are set lateral to indicate they are constants in building a start-up.

Product thinking book + Product School

Product Thinking Podcast

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Happy Thursday

Learn and Grow

Okerosi Davis