Revisiting the Feature Factory argument
Matthew Zammit
Head of Product at Binderr / Advisor to Tech Startups / Helping Startups build, grow and scale
Hey there! And welcome to the 4th edition of the "It Depends" newsletter.
If you're new here, every week we explore topics around Product, Growth and Startups.
This week we go deeper into a previous post about the Feature Factory and build on your feedback. And then we revisit the posts from this week.
let's go ??
Revisiting the Feature Factory argument
A few days ago a wrote a post saying "Early-stage startups need to be Feature Factories."
The hook was controversial on purpose.
And as expected, it triggered many people resulting in a heated debate in the comments section .
Included a comment from John Cutler himself.
John is the one who coined the term "Feature Factory", in his post from 2016 .
Those working in early-stage startups pre-PMF resonated with this argument and saw the reality of their daily life. What you read in books does not translate fully to this early-stage reality. The first few months/years are messy. Data is limited. Knowledge is vague. You are still trying to understand the market and see how you can provide real value for them. All while trying to survive and not run out of money.
I love what Jeson Duthie said, that this seems obvious...
But many others argued that you cannot just build blindly without getting feedback, or without research, or without doing any studies.
And they are also correct.
My lesson from this is that "it depends".
Frameworks are great in the context in which they are created.
Ways of working depend on the culture, the stage, the competition, and the wider market reality.
So where's the balance between being a Feature Factory and Continuous Discovery?
The discovery process takes many forms and the balance between building by instinct vs building on feedback changes with it too.
You're always waiting for customer learning, and maybe even validation.
And until you have enough customers for the data to make sense, you have to just build stuff.
But you're still measuring and speaking to customers along the way.
Just not spending a lot of effort on it and it's not your guiding force.
That data is somewhat useless in the beginning.
Eventually, you'll start seeing a shift, common themes start to emerge and that's what then becomes the discovery part.
That's when you move from building blindly, to building based on feedback.
The move between the two phases is continuously ongoing and not 0 or 100.
It's a balance.
But until you have enough data and the data you have makes some sense, you should focus more on building.
...
PS: as I'm about to send this newsletter out, John Cutler wrote a new post which adds to this and clarifies some questions we've been raising. Here's what he said:
In 2016, I wrote a post called?12 Signs You Are Working in a Feature Factory. The uncomfortable truth I did not cover in that post is that some businesses do just fine as feature factories (for some time, at least). This is especially common in situations where the solution space is fairly known, and there is a premium placed on "catching up" to legacy competitors while adding a new twist like mobile, cloud-based, new technology, new business models (SaaS, for example), better UX, etc.
Read that post for more context and for some questions to consider if you're in this situation.
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This week's content recap
No one cares about your product as much as you do
Reminder that no user cares about your product as much as you do. All they care about is what problems your product can solve for them.
Growth Mentor
If you're on Growth Mentor, I'm a mentor there too
Your questions?
If I came and worked with you for a day what would you have me work on? Which questions would you want me to answer?
Revenue and Active Users
Those are the only two numbers that matter. Tracking a million KPIs is a waste of time if they don't link back to Revenue and Active Users.
8 reasons why your users are not upgrading to a paid plan (carousel)
Freemium is a great acquisition model but eventually, you'll need to convert them to paid users.
Here are 8 reasons why your users are not upgrading to paid
Just for fun and some stuff to click on
?? Perfect concentration soundtrack: Ludovico Einaudi, live from the Steve Jobs Theatre 2019
?? Book summary: How to Measure Anything
Work with me
Whenever you're ready, here are 4 ways I can help you:
That's all for this week. My inbox is open if I can help you.
speak soon ??
Matthew