Less than two months before the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, the Ukrainian Minister of Power proclaimed that odds of such an event happening were 1 in 10,000. Experts believed that such an event wasn’t possible. Clearly they were wrong. To build a successful product business, you must become an expert in all things industry related.…

Do any of these sound like your product company? In the world of building SaaS businesses, it’s actually quite easy to find yourself in one of these situations. When the requests for new functionality start pouring in, it can be hard to say no. However, if you don’t, your backlog will quickly become an unmanageable mess.  …

That’s not a feature request, that’s a bug! Your support team thinks it’s a bug.  Your engineering team thinks it’s a feature request.  Who’s right? Well ultimately the customer, but the point is that this dialogue happens at a lot of product companies and it’s a symptom of a larger problem. This in-fighting happens due…

Whenever we are working on building a new product business there is always risk.  The two most common categories are technology risk and market risk. Technology risk refers to whether or not is it possible to build our solution.  Market risk depends on whether or not anyone wants to buy what we’ve built.   I’ve said…

Is my product in the alpha or beta stage?  I get this question often and my answer is always the same – neither.  Your product is always in production. I want to share a few reasons with you as to why I feel this is so important.  A beta will slow you down Stop slowing…

There’s a lot to get excited about when starting a new product business.  Many people get excited about all the amazing features they are going to build into their new awesome product.  Unfortunately, this hype is really just a distraction from the goal we should be focusing on – finding product-market fit.  I want to…

Pivot is a frightening word in my line of work and from at least one angle it’s easy to understand why. Building a software product business is not just hard it can be incredibly expensive. It can cost a tremendous amount of time, money, energy, etc. This is why when the topic comes up, founders…

Every business owner has goals for their company.  Defining and quantifying goals for your business can be the difference between success and failure. Before you act, the best approach to create and adhere to objectives is by having KPIs. What are KPIs? A Key Performance Indicator is a measurable value that indicates how well a…

A value proposition is a statement that explains how your product solves problems.  These problems affect a specific market and user. Your solution (your product) needs to be uniquely differentiated in this market.  This is why we’re always talking about your product solving an obvious unmet need.  What’s lesser known by those looking to achieve…

If you are approaching product development correctly, you are first trying to find a market with an obvious unmet need. After that determination you are better equipped to design the product that fills that need. The greater the need, and the more your product satisfies it, the more successful your product is likely to be.…