SaaS unicorns and Ponzi schemes
What do these terms mean and how do they work?
Is your ‘product’ ready for tech?
Building a SaaS (software-as-a-service) platform is enticing…if it’s successful. Unfortunately, most are not. The failure rate for product companies is rumored to be greater than 90%. That’s an incredibly high failure rate. However, I feel the more important point is to study why these failures occur so frequently. One BIG problem in this space is…
I’ve got a great idea for an app
We’ve all been there. An idea pops into our head and we start counting our dollars immediately as we think about how successful our new “app” is going to be. Then we proceed to get feedback from all the wrong places or find out we’re too late because there’s already an ‘app for that’. Don’t…
What features do we include?
Often when people are thinking about designing features for their new product they have a tendency to let their imagination run wild and get overly excited. What if the software reads your mind about what you want for lunch then makes the meal for you! At least at the time of writing this email that…
The power of positioning
Positioning is powerful. Done well, it makes you think of only that product or service to solve a specific problem. Ever needed something to tie some wires together? Are you thinking Ziptie or maybe Velcro? Ever needed a bag to store some almonds or chips? Are you thinking Ziplock bag? What about storing food you cooked in…
Poor usability is Expensive
Usability is a big deal when it comes to software products. The company Pendo produces and annual report on the topic that tells us why it’s so important. “Pendo determined that 80 percent of features in the average software product are rarely or never used.” That’s right 4 out of 5 features that are built are…
Build the process before the product
Back in college one of my software engineering professors drove home that computers aren’t smarter than human, they are faster. This is still largely true to this day and most importantly for the context of what I want to share with you. I know how exciting building a product can seem. The allure of something that…
Never stop meeting people
Arguably the most attractive element of building a product is the ‘set it and forget it’ nature of running it. It doesn’t exactly work like that, but that is the appeal – a product can scale seemingly indefinitely. The problem here is this allure causes people trying to build product businesses to think that they…
I guess I need a podcast now?
If you don’t know me personally, I’m obsessed with efficiency. It drives everyone around me in my personal life crazy because nothing is ever fast enough. If somethings takes two steps, my thought process is always – “Why can’t it be done in one?” Good news is this drive often leads to strategies that have…
Are you doing random acts of marketing?
I’ve gone through a few iterations of investing in marketing for the companies I’ve built. I fell victim to the shiny object syndrome a few times as I hopped from writing blogs to emails to recording videos and messing around with social media. Ultimately I came realize that marketing is less about hopping on the…