Building Thryve: My Product Thinking in Action!
Marina Radovanovic
Product Thinker | Disruptive Technology Geek | Back in the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem
Read along to find out how I applied my product thinking in 10 weeks to build Thryve!
Product Description - Thryve Web App
Thryve is a web- app designed to connect moms with certified motherhood experts, offering personalized, accessible, and judgment-free support.
Product Link
Check out our live product here
Thryve Presentation
About Me
My name is Marina Radovanovic, and I am a PMDojo 2024 Industry Track Fellow.
Three years ago, I faced a significant challenge when my first entrepreneurial venture failed. Despite launching our Minimal Viable Product (MVP), onboarding the top three charities and non-profits in Canada, and bootstrapping the startup by raising $95,000 in non-dilutive funding, our startup ultimately did not achieve long-term viability at the start of COVID-19. However, this experience was pivotal, as it allowed me to wear multiple hats and learn many invaluable skills, particularly in Product Thinking.
During this challenging period, I set myself a goal to become a Product Manager within one year.?
This goal was important because it provided me with a clear direction and purpose, motivating me to leverage the skills I had developed through my entrepreneurial journey. I realized that the failure of my venture was not a setback but an opportunity to pivot into a role where I could apply my skills differently.
After graduating from the Master of Management, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship program at Queen’s University, I was hired as a Product Manager at FigBytes, a startup focused on helping Fortune 500 companies manage their sustainability programs. At FigBytes, I launched a Philanthropy & DEI product to help Sustainability Managers report on the “S” of ESG and helped integrate AI/ML capabilities to enable sustainability managers to meet their NetZero goals more efficiently.
I then joined OpenTable as an Associate Product Manager, where I led a slice of a deprecation project to modernize our CRM system by replacing an outdated platform. This initiative saved OpenTable a considerable amount of money annually and improved the experience for their restaurant clients.
After experiencing unemployment twice in two years, my “why” for being at PMDojo is to create meaningful opportunities for myself by applying my skills while I job search.?
Fun Facts:? I am ambidextrous with chopsticks, I am a rescue dog fur-mom, and play hockey, run half-marathons, and train in CrossFit!
About Team Mom Power?
Team Mom Power
Jennifer Ashiru , Jaylah Clark , Meenakshi Mazumdar
From teammates to good friends, I couldn’t have completed this program without my team!
Aligned with the mission of PMDojo, We come from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and time zones, yet we worked diligently to drive outcomes.
The unique aspect of our team is that two teammates are working mothers. This dynamic was valuable as it helped us empathize and learn about the unique challenges working moms face.
A testament to our teamwork occurred during week 6 when we sadly lost a cherished team member who had to drop out of the program. Without hesitation, the entire team stepped up and put in extra hours to ensure we stayed on track.?
Our Mentor, Mace Cheng, PhD
Mace was integral to our team’s success. We treated Mace as our manager would be in the real world with a weekly sync to ask burning questions to assist us with our decision-making.?
Our Developer, Hari Prasad
Hari joined our team in Week 7. Hari only had a few weeks to develop our MVP. Hari is self-directed, knowledgeable in his domain, and works quickly without sacrificing quality!
Our Founder & Certified Matrescence Specialist,? Loni Brown
Loni Brown is a Matrescence Specialist and Motherhood Coach, dedicated to supporting modern, working mothers through the transformative journey of motherhood, known as Matrescence. This transition encompasses significant hormonal, physical, emotional, psychological, economic, social, and relational changes that women experience when becoming mothers.
Understanding the challenges many mothers face, such as chaos, overwhelm, burnout, and guilt, Loni offers expert guidance to help moms navigate this critical phase of their lives. She focuses particularly on working mothers, who often sacrifice their well-being for their careers and families. Loni’s approach empowers these women to reclaim their self-identity and purpose, fostering a balanced and fulfilling life as both professionals and mothers.?
Problem Space
Motherhood is a demanding role, often marked by the challenges of balancing work, parenting, and other commitments. Many moms identify that no book, resource, or friend can explain how difficult and life-changing it is to become a mother. Not only are moms learning how to be a mom, but motherhood can become overwhelming, leading to limited personal time and a lack of support from those they thought would be there for them the most.
Our 5 interviews revealed that most mothers feel uncomfortable seeking support, fearing judgment from other moms, friends, and family. We aim to address these issues through the following objectives:
Problem Statement
Over 6 weeks, our problem statement evolved significantly as we refined our understanding through research and feedback loops. We received two key areas of feedback on our problem statement from mentors in each weekly presentation until Week 6:
By keeping our target users in mind, identifying a gap in our competitive research in week 6, and remembering the business objectives and existing capabilities of our founder, our problem space became clear:
Working moms with children under 5 endure a fear of judgment from their most accessible support system: friends and family. With limited resources to seek professional help for their own needs, they remain stuck in a silent struggle as they transition into motherhood.
Why does this Matter?
Our founder, Loni Brown, created a private Facebook group to help moms with children under 5. However, with 5,400+ members and an engagement rate of just 0.3%. Our secondary findings identify that 55% of moms feel most judged by their families, and 21% feel judged by friends (Oath, 2019). We noticed a correlation between our founder’s low engagement rate and our secondary research.
Is their fear of judgment correlated with low engagement on existing platforms?
Research Process
We conducted research through surveys and interviews with our target users, working moms with children under 5 years old to explore further.
We launched our survey on LinkedIn and Facebook for 24 hours and received 62 responses. Our main insight indicated that 82% of moms don’t seek resources when seeking help, despite needing them.
Check out our survey here
We ended our survey with the question, "Would you be available for a more detailed interview next week?" This helped us quickly schedule user interviews for the next week, as 23 moms were eager to speak with us.
Next, we conducted 6 Zoom interviews
Going into these interviews, we knew it was going to be tough to get mothers to open up about their stories and share the true emotion motherhood brings.
I asked myself “how might we make mothers feel comfortable sharing their story, while getting the insights we need?”
So we set an intention, making sure the 45 minutes would be a safe space for them, woman to woman. We emphasized that the space would be judgment-free, suggestion-free, and solution-free. We are only here to LISTEN with a cup of mom juice (coffee or wine, of course)!
Setting this intention was key. During these interviews, tears were flowing, virtual hugs were being sent, and true feelings were being shared.
6/6 of our interview participants opened up, explaining that they fear judgment when reaching out for support.
This was our aha! moment, and the pinnacle of our findings.
Remember: The market problem indicated that 21% of moms feel judged by their friends, and 55% feel judged by their own family. Do these moms have an avenue to seek support without being subjected to judgment?
This is where our main persona, Working Wanda, was born. Wanda is a full-time worker and first-time mom. Working remotely, Wanda juggles her job and her 6-month-old baby. Wanda often feels isolated and hesitates to seek help, fearing judgment from distant family and friends.
Our user journey map tells Wanda's story. In the user journey, Phase 2&3 reveals the most significant pain point, where our solution can provide the greatest value.
Design Process
Using a lightning demo activity on Miro, we brainstormed solutions and landed on two main ideas: a Bumble BFF for moms and an anonymous journal entry mood tracker.?
We went to the drawing board, and our concept sketches highlighted similar themes, like mood tracking, AI sentiment analysis, and journaling.
Although our team had common themes in our drawings, we lacked alignment in addressing the solution to the problem identified from the points in Phases 2 & 3 of Wanda’s journey.
We needed to go back to the drawing board!
How Might We?
We introduced the "How Might We" activity to gain alignment.
We asked, "How might we alleviate the fear of judgment and make help accessible to working moms like Wanda?"
The activity assisted our team in a cordial direction. We decided to do more exploration.
We initiated our first feedback loop, going back to our interviewees and asked what they currently use to address their problems.?
Our survey results revealed that 73%?of our target users rely on Google or Social Media for help. However, when talking to moms, our research identified that these platforms were actually the only options available and did not fully support their needs.?
Recognizing an opportunity, we delved deeper into the strengths and weaknesses of how moms seek help in the market currently:
Two opportunities that stood out to us were Journaling, Mood Tracking, and Digital Therapy. We were getting closer to a solution, but again, did these options solve a problem?
We connected this back to additional user pain points from our interviews and survey and identified that moms also suffer from limited resources (time and money), lack of support, and fear of judgment. These additional findings helped evolve our problem statement to what it is today.
We were getting closer to our solution with the exploration of therapy. However, therapy apps are targeted at everyone. Moms could access these apps for help, but it is unlikely they would receive help tailored to their individual needs as a mom.
Therapy is also expensive. A majority of moms identified that money is a problem for them, and their work benefits don’t offer this kind of coverage. Yes, digital therapy options have evolved, making help more accessible monetarily, but moms expressed that there is also a fear of being judged explaining to a partner or loved one that they are seeking support through therapy.
This narrowed our focus. We went back to our founder, a certified Matrescence expert to discuss our findings.
Our founder mentioned that she was connected to a network of similarly certified professionals capable of helping our target market.?
We decided to use a competitor matrix to understand the market holistically and identify a market gap.
We had the opportunity to provide moms like Wanda accessible help by connecting her to a certified motherhood expert, trained to help answer her questions and solve her problem when she needs it the most.
We had the opportunity to create supportive, safe, and expert-backed environment.
We conducted additional research to see if any solutions existed in this space, and found "The Matrescence,".? We did not see this as a bad thing, as a market competitor proves market viability, feasibility, and desirability.?
Our unique advantage is that “The Matrescence” does not provide direct access to Matrescence experts, their offerings are expensive, and their services are not specifically tailored to the pain points of our niche, working moms with children under 5!
With this opportunity, we developed wireframes illustrating the experience of working moms connecting with certified Matrescence experts and receiving personalized support.
Drawing inspiration from other apps that provide tailored and personalized support, such as astrology apps that connect users with psychics and therapy apps that connect users with professionals, we created Figma wireframes featuring three main user experiences:?
Key learnings from our research process were that although we were aware of Loni’s Matresence certification from the beginning of the program, we didn’t consider Matresence as a solution until our research and findings validated an opportunity.
As a Product Manager, when thinking critically of business objectives and product capabilities, it is critical to perform research and use the data available to make informed decisions. I am proud of our team for not cutting corners during the research process, iterating, and using feedback loops to make informed decisions.
Value Proposition
Thryve is a web app that provides working moms with children under 5 the opportunity to connect with certified motherhood experts for personalized, judgment-free support tailored for THEM.
The our two key features include:
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User Testing
We conducted user testing sessions with 5 working moms with children under 5, asking participants to perform three key tasks within the app:
Our primary metrics to evaluate were engagement and stickiness, specifically, Daily Active Users (DAUs) asking questions and booking experts.?
100% of our test users navigated to each task with success.
Some key Feedback from User Testing:
North Star for MVP
Our MVP goal was to validate that Thryve would alleviate the fear of judgment and make moms more comfortable seeking support with our solution.
Our primary North Star metrics during user testing were engagement and stickiness, specifically Daily Active Users (DAUs).
However, based on feedback in week 8 from a mom and PMDojo Mentor, we broadened our North Star Metric from DAUs to Weekly Active Users (WAUs).
Considering our target users are busy moms, WAUs would be a better measure of overall engagement. This adjustment allows us to understand if our platform is providing value and encouraging moms to return.
MVP Launch Metrics
For our MVP launch, we focused on two main metrics:
Use Cases
For our MVP release, we are creating a two-sided marketplace connecting moms to experts.
Our founder, Loni Brown, who is a certified Matrescence specialist and motherhood coach, will be the primary expert for our beta launch until more experts are onboarded.
Starting with one expert ensures focused feedback for validating our product concept before scaling up. We prioritized a lean approach to create a basic experience for our founder to answer questions and chat with moms.?
While the “chicken and egg” dilemma is a risk for the future, we wrote a go-to-market plan with suggestions to scale with this in mind.
Prioritized to Achieve Value Proposition for MVP:
Feature 1: Q&A
Feature 2: Chat
These features are prioritized to enable our users to experience the value of our platform, aligning with our North Star metric.
Feature 3: Homepage
Prioritized as a “Need to Have” to Get to Value Proposition for MVP:
Feature 3: Signup
Feature 4: Notifications
Our other features are ways for users to get to value, but not necessarily experience value.
Without a signup feature, it would be difficult to track how many of our beta users signed up.
Notifications encourage moms to return to the app after their initial usage. For instance, if a mom asks a question and receives a notification that an expert has answered it, she is likely to return to read the expert's response, thus supporting our stickiness and engagement metrics.
User Stories
Feature 1: Q&A
Feature 2: Chat
Feature 3: Notifications
Note: We created a basic user experience on the experts side for MVP testing. User stories were written out for each for development purposes, but will not be shown here.
Beta Launch
We launched our product website to begin attracting signups from our target audience. In our second iteration, we introduced:
Check it out here
Within a week of these updates, we saw a significant increase in signups, with 45 moms signing up from our target user group.
We adopted a scrappy approach, working with our developer outside of agile methodology, focusing on clear communication with just one weekly sync to stay on track for our Beta launch date.?
Our “Product Stack” included Figma, Bubble, Slack, and a simple Excel sheet. With two team members experienced in UX/UI, we completed wireframes, and added branding to align with our founder's vision.
We then received feedback from our founder that she was looking for more of a softer look with warmer colours. We iterated the design once more to accomplish this.
I introduced the “Bug Bash” concept to the team, something that I learned as an Associate Product Manager at OpenTable. The Bug Bash was crucial for our “Go/No Go” launch decision in Week 8. We compiled all user stories and acceptance criteria into a spreadsheet, had each team member review them async, and labelled each as a bug or done.
Midway through Week 8, after receiving the handoff from Hari, our acceptance was only 60%, making us initially hesitant to launch.
On the morning of presentation day of Week 8, we retested our product and saw a 20% increase in acceptance, reaching 80% completion. This prompted our decision to proceed with our beta launch.
The bug bash was essential for rapid progress and meeting our acceptance criteria, providing solid data to support our launch decision.
We emailed all moms explaining the steps to test our product for 2 weeks.
To track our main MVP launch Metrics, we monitored signups and launched a feedback survey for moms to complete after interacting with the app, using an NPS scale from 1-5. Our survey questions included:
Check out our feedback survey here
Beta Launch Feedback & Key Outcomes
For our beta launch, we tracked several key metrics and gathered user feedback to refine our product.
15 moms signed up, with 4 moms completing our feedback survey.
1. Overall Experience
The average user satisfaction rating was 3.75 out of 5, 75%.
2. Would you Recommend the App?
When it came to recommending the app, 75% of users were willing to recommend it, while 25% were not.
3. How beneficial did you find asking a question anonymously?
The option to ask questions anonymously was very well-received, with 75% rating it as very beneficial (rating of 5) and 25% as somewhat beneficial (rating of 4).
4. How beneficial did you find the option to chat with an expert?
The "Chat with an Expert" feature received mixed reviews: 25% rated it as excellent (rating of 5), 50% as good (rating of 4), and 25% as poor (rating of 2).
5. Is there any feedback you would like to share?
Positive feedback included comments such as, "I love this concept of connecting moms with helpful resources for navigating motherhood! I feel it is so needed!" and "I believe this app is a fantastic idea”. “Being a new mom can feel very isolating, and having someone to talk to without judgment greatly helps in regaining a positive mental state."?
Constructive feedback highlighted areas for improvement, including the need for an about section for experts, more articles and activities on motherhood topics, less intimidating question prompts, and a comment section on previously asked questions to foster community interaction.
Discussion
We identified the need to improve the chat with expert functionality. Since our founder was the only expert helping moms for our MVP, we decided to deprioritize an "about us" or "profile page" to explain more about the expert.
How would moms trust talking 1on1 with experts for more personalized support if they don't know more about the expert they are chatting with?
We saw a lower satisfaction with chat with experts in comparison to our questions feature, with feedback that moms are looking for more information on them.
From these insights, we can conclude that our MVP goal was met. However, to better align with our value proposition, improvements are needed.
Product Roadmap
We decided to build our roadmap off of critical areas we had to deprioritize. Some areas worth noting on our roadmap are:
Experts Experience: With only one expert (Loni, our founder) during beta testing, we believed a full profile page was unnecessary for MVP. As a workaround for MVP, we identified that she can introduce herself via chat. However, as we learned from our CSAT score for this feature, as well as our feedback, moms need an about us or profile page to learn more about the expert to trust them with more personalized needs. This feature will become essential as we scale and onboard more experts so users can find an expert that suits their needs. As a key insight from testing, ensuring personalized support remains a key value proposition.
Monetization: Our founder also has a goal of 5% conversion from free to paid on her platform. With this goal in mind, Taking the video call/expert chat functionality we deprioritized for MVP, There is potential to monetize these features post-launch, treating it as an add-on or premium service. Additionally,? we suggest a hosting fee when more experts are onboarded to the platform. This is based on the assumption that experts are willing to use Thryve to host their service. Additional research is needed to validate this.
Innovation and Community Connection: Beta insights revealed that moms still seek articles, resources, and ways to connect with other moms. However, we deprioritized the homepage for MVP. To maintain the "safe and judgment-free" value, we recommend our founders research, “How might we create a safe, non-judgmental community feature for moms?”
We identified that our founder has a wealth of resources from her existing offerings, which can be curated for moms if there is enough data to analyze trends to tailor content to moms based on what they are searching for, what type of questions they ask, and what type of help they need.
By phase three, with a better understanding of user trends, our founder could train a GPT model to predict popular topics for moms on Thryve.
Given the assumption that the higher volume of moms on the platform will cause experts to spend more time answering questions. Further user research is needed on the expert’s side to validate if AI could reduce their time answering questions.
I am excited to see how Thryve evolves post-launch.
Individual Learnings:
Data Informs the "Why’s"
Coming from Product Management at startups, I had to make many product decisions based on qualitative data and intuition. I had theoretical knowledge of product metrics but limited practical experience. In this 10-week journey, my goal was to make data-informed decisions at every step of the product lifecycle. For example, by leveraging engagement data from the Founder’s existing offerings, I validated the “why” behind our problem in a holistic, three-pronged way. This experience taught me to understand data and use it to guide product decisions.
Don’t Forget Your Persona
Creating our main persona, Working Wanda, helped me advocate for solving the right problem. Repeating Wanda's story kept the team aligned and empathetic. As a Product Manager, storytelling from a first-person perspective simplifies complex issues, making them accessible even to the most challenging stakeholders.
Questions - Quality Over Quantity
Initially, I was advised to “ask a lot of questions” in new PM roles but often didn't get the desired responses. During these 10 weeks, I focused on the quality of my questions, using the right framing techniques. For example, when drafting survey and interview questions, I put myself in our target users' shoes to ensure we’d get meaningful insights. This taught me the importance of being intentional about the purpose and objective behind each question.
Conclusion
Completing the PMDojo 2024 Industry Track allowed me to delve deep into the intricacies of product building, emphasizing the importance of understanding user needs and iterative design. My journey with Thryve, aimed at alleviating the struggles of working moms, underscored the power of empathy and data in crafting meaningful solutions.
Having been unemployed twice in two years, PMDojo provided a much-needed network effect. Writing each week about my accomplishments and progress not only kept me motivated but also helped me build a strong portfolio, enhancing my visibility and credibility in the job market. This program has opened new doors and expanded my professional network, bringing me closer to landing my next job.
To anyone considering a similar path, I highly recommend immersing yourself in such hands-on programs to future-proof your skills. A heartfelt thank you to my incredible team and mentors for their unwavering support. Let's stay connected and keep the conversation going on LinkedIn: Marina A. Radovanovic.
Founder & CEO @ PMDojo | Technology & Product Leadership Advisor | Ex-Atlassian | Fractional CPTO | Keynote Speaker | Community Builder | Mom ??????
8 个月Congratulations Marina Radovanovic - this is so exciting and such an important milestone. Can't wait to see you tomorrow at PMDojo Demo Day and you know that I will always support you, no matter what. Always here for you. To all the amazing things that will come your way this year and always. To you Marina.