Understated Hyperbole
Kapi Pe Charcha #005 – Venture Highway “What do users care about? What do they need?” In our previous posts, we talked about speaking to users and validating our ideas (https://lnkd.in/dHdft3x7 and https://lnkd.in/dc2vVnBk). The Hierarchy of User Needs by Aarron Walter is a model that explains the needs users have when using products or services. This hierarchy…
Kapi Pe Charcha #004 – Venture Highway “Do I need to set up a team, raise money and build a fully functional product to validate my ideas?” Building a product is costly. One can spend months setting up a team, raising money and creating a product that has a high chance of failure. One needs…
Kapi Pe Charcha #003 – Venture Highway “Would I need to speak to people/ users/ customers?” In our last two posts, we have discussed ways of coming up with new ideas and then creating a shortlist out of them: 1. https://lnkd.in/gXHstMvM2. https://lnkd.in/gngtAunA A skill that will help you throughout your entrepreneurial journey is user research. It’s a…
Kapi Pe Charcha #002 – Venture Highway “OK – so I have a set of ideas now. How do I check if they are any good?” In our last post, we came up with a set of methods to help us constantly come up with new ideas. We weren’t worried about originality, quality, feasibility or the…
Kapi Pe Charcha #001 – Venture Highway I am often asked: “How do I constantly come up with new ideas?” While coming up with ideas, do not worry about their originality, quality, feasibility or the opportunity size that they represent. Forget all that. Focus on idea generation. Keep reminding yourself – there are no bad…
Product roadmaps typically need to have three important categories of initiatives: Work that helps to Keep the Lights On (KTLO) – tech debt, keeping existing features and functionalities up and running, fixing bugs, etc fall under this category. This is the bread and butter part of your roadmap. Short term investments – incremental improvements in…
The MVP is dead. The Minimum Viable Product philosophy has become corrupted. We have misunderstood its intent and diluted its core elements over the years. What we are left with is a superficial term, often thrown around in conversations around product building, with little to no understanding of the underlying principles. Sometimes the way to…
One of the most significant problems that the next generation will have to deal with is one created by extremely long life spans: People who live longer will have to work longer Staying in the same career over 60-70 years won’t be possible Many types of jobs will get wiped out Decisions made at a…
A young girl wakes up in a daze. “Where is everyone?” She walks out of her room and searches her house. Her family is missing. She can hear some noise outside. She can also smell smoke. She picks up her dada’s old wooden sword and walks out of her house. The entire village is burning….
A lot has been written about defensibility and moats in businesses. Strategists talk about barriers to entry (resources, patentable technology and processes, expertise, capital) in certain businesses and why it is usually difficult for new entrants to disrupt incumbents. But one of the lesser-explored areas of defensibility is building products which have a high exit…
Over a meeting, someone recently asked me to describe the archetype of a product leader. While I answered the question, a broader thought stayed with me. What are the various archetypes of product managers? An archetype is a powerful storytelling device – making it easier for readers to identify and understand a concept. And PMs…
I recently shared the Possession-Awareness Quadrant framework with a hall full of PMs in the form of a 20-minutes-long talk followed by a quick Q&A session. A format like this forces you to crystalize your thoughts in a more concise (brevity of thought) and precise (sharp, to the point examples) way. The process of putting…