Michelle Sun

Lessons learned so far from our transition to growth at Buffer

Thu, 16 May 2013 03:32:00 -0700

Sean Ellis detailed at the Growth Hackers Conference on three key stages of growth(1). With his experience working with various startups including Dropbox and Eventbrite, he coined a concept “Growth Pyramid”, from product market fit, then transition to growth, and eventually, growth.

At Buffer, in recent months, we have been focused on the transition to growth. This post intends to share some key lessons learned so far. I hope it will be useful for other startups at a similar stage.

“Growth hacking is what you do only after you have growth. You need to prove out that you have a core value prop, an asset that people like and use. ”

- Keith Rabois, former COO at Square

(1) Define and refine product goals

“What is the core value that the product delivers? What is the wow experience (or “aha” moment) that we want the user to experience?”

The foundation of growth is delivering real value. Hopefully these are obvious questions that you can readily answer. In all, it goes back to what and whose problem are you solving. The answers should be short and simple, and can be explained to someone that is not in the domain / industry. I find it helpful to go talk to a few friends who are not in startups, and refine after each pitch until they understand right away in one description.

(2) Understand existing behavior

“How are people using our product right now? How are previous level of engagement leading to subsequent usage?”

Before starting to actively track metrics, you need to know what metrics should you be tracking. That is something we come across when we were about to make a dashboard for internal reference.

Exploratory analysis is useful in uncovering usage patterns, similar to Facebook’s 7 Friends in 10 Days. Andrew Chen has written up a great blog post on how to get those insights for your own startup.

At Buffer what helped us got up to speed was whipping up a simple excel spreadsheet. Choose any tool that is handiest for you at this stage; the goal is to make sense of the numbers quickly. At the end of this step, you should know your company’s funnel metrics and current trends for each off top of your mind.

(3) Segment and implement user analytics

“Which users are most active? Eg, for users that signed up on iPhone or Android, how is their behavior different?”

Once you have a fundamental idea of how the macro level product usage looks like, it is time to look beyond aggregate data. Segment data to answer more specific questions. For example, when segmenting the activation rate of signups from different channels, we discovered that activation rate on our web dashboard almost halved with the re-design back in December (while iPhone activation shot up!).

This is also a good time to implement user analytics. Storing events for each user systematically is an investment that pays off. For example, if you’d like to answer whether users who have received a certain email newsletter are more likely to upgrade or not, user analytics provide a straightforward way to query against an existing, nicely structured database.

(4) Start running experiments

Velocity and data can change the company culture. You don’t have to finish all these analysis to start running experiments. It is a virtuous cycle where experiments can drive more understanding on the existing data as well. We have seen speed of rolling out experiments picking up since we started to have at least one experiment running at a given point in time.

Other things to watch out

Keep track of all questions and experiments. Exploratory analysis involves looking into user behavior and running different types of analysis. By definition, some of these analyses may yield interesting insights and most do not. Don’t despair; keep a log of questions the team asked and the results for each analysis. Often, hypotheses change in a product, user behavior can evolve and it is useful to reference back past analyses and experiments.

Set a deadline for exploratory analysis. There is always another way to slice the data. There is always a better way to build a churn prediction model. Start running experiments anyway! When transitioning to growth, think of these analyses more of hypotheses that should be revisited regularly.

Is your startup also at the stage of transition to growth? What are some of the key lessons from your transition?

(1) For more extensive notes on Growth Hacker Conference and on Sean Ellis’ presentation on Growth Pyramid, check out this blog post by Sandi Macpherson on Quibb.

Special thanks to Joel Gascoigne for reading through earlier versions of the draft.

Background to Sean Ellis’ “stages of growth” chart, credit to Thundermark.

Making Improvement the Centerpiece

Fri, 03 May 2013 22:17:00 -0700

WIth summer just around the corner, wedding season is kicking into full gear. My best friend, busy preparing for her sister’s wedding, was telling me about the exquisite centerpiece in great enthusiasm. A centerpiece, I quickly learned, is the most important item in the middle of the dining table.

On the table, a centerpiece is a large central object which serves a decorative purpose. Centerpieces set the theme of the decorations and bring extra decorations to the room […] However, centrepieces should not be too large, to avoid difficulty with visibility around the table and to allow for the easier serving of dishes.” - Wikipedia

That reminded me of a word cloud last week that was circulated within our team - in the prominent center, it was not the company name, but one of the values that have been top of mind for most of us.

Yes, improvement is the centerpiece in Buffer’s ‘dining table’.

“The most important item, in the middle of the dining table.”

“Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.” - Benjamin Franklin

Everyday at the end of the work day, our team writes down a ‘done’ list of the day using and share it on IDoneThis. In addition to tasks, we include a section of improvement. Writing the improvement segment often requires a moment of pause and reflection.

If there was one theme in Ben Franklin’s life, it is probably the focus on self improvement. His daily routine has been a huge inspiration to me; it involves early rising, learning and most importantly, beginning and ending with two questions: “What good shall I do this day?” and “What good have I done today?”

Writing out improvement items each day has helped me focus on both the learning aspect and the ‘good’ I wanted to do.

Keep it small

“A centerpiece should not obstruct the serving of dishes and visibility among guests.” Similarly, daily improvement has worked best for me when it is bite-sized. It is easier to focus on no more than two improvements at any given day. Being too ambitious can run into the risk of disappointing oneself.

Setting the theme and bringing extra goodness to everyday routine

Like a centerpiece does to the party, improvements set the tone of the day. Like anything related to building or changing a habit, it takes time to solidify. Setting a theme for each week allows time for experimentation and failing.

At the end of each week, think of one thing that can be carried over to the subsequent week. That helps moving from actively working on an improvement, to going onto maintenance mode and working on another area of improvement. Two weeks ago, I began the week with the intention to improve my focus. Then throughout the week, I became aware of bad habits like keeping too many tabs open. Wrapping up the week, I installed Fluid and Chrome Extension that limit my tabs automatically. By the middle of the following week, even though I was not actively trying to improve on my focus, the times I hit the limit have gradually decreased to 1-2 times each day.

Ask for help

There is something incredibly powerful in being open about improvements. Showing imperfection requires humility and confidence. Once I broadcast the intention to improve within the team, the accountability helps propel me to follow through with it.

Being vulnerable and asking for help can also open up others and build trust. When one of our teammates brought up an improvement about stopping nail-biting, it spurred a series of confession among a few other coworkers about the same bad habit! In the same vein, my two amazing coworkers Carolyn and Andy have suggested the two apps mentioned above that limit multiple browser tabs.

Being good vs. getting better

Everybody likes to do stuff they’re good at. When we’re doing the types of tasks and projects we’ve already mastered, we feel in control and confident. But settling into our sweet spots – and avoiding new experiences that require us to “stretch” – comes with consequences.

- Getting Better vs. Being Good

Being good involves proving you have ability and showing you know and are good at something, while getting better emphasizes on developing ability and learning to master a new skill.

In a hectic startup life, it is easy to be lost in the hustle and get consumed by work. Finding improvement as the centerpiece has helped me set a tone and stay mindful in a busy schedule. What is your centerpiece?

Photo Credit : Centerpiece from MarthaStewart.com, Benjamin Franklin routine from DailyRoutines

Connecting the Dots

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 06:46:00 -0700

‘You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.’ - Steve Jobs

As the topic of career transitions came up in a conversation, a friend from college asked, “How do you think your experience in finance is being applied to what you do now?” His question was spot on; truth is, my years of financial modeling, various methodologies of valuation, stock market analysis couldn’t seem further away from what I have been doing in the past two years in technology.

With Buffer since earlier this year, my work has been around building out metrics from ground up. That includes a broad range of analytics work from company level model on monthly revenue growth and cost projections, to funnel metrics and per user economics. After putting away my excel fingers for years, I suddenly found them handy and almost second nature when I pick it back up. Looking back, I’m starting to see the dots connecting.

To my surprise, the years in investment banking had been silently preparing me for this role.

A data driven mindset

Graduating with a degree in Economics from UChicago, I went into banking with a theoretical, liberal arts educational background. The junior year internship and the first few months full time was an immersion to the mindset of thinking in data. Eventually, on top of the excel shortcut keys ingrained into muscle memory, I also became fluent with both macro (market and industry) and micro (building company, operational models) analysis. As we first started modeling growth at Buffer, I am thankful to have had the training of being detail-oriented and questioning assumptions with each analysis.

Thrive in fast-paced, changing environment with a can-do spirit.

At banking, I started off in the Tech and New Media team. During the financial crisis with a halved headcount, I took up an additional role in the Telecoms team. Often, projects come in seemingly impossible deadlines and each team member takes on additional tasks to meet clients’ expectations.

Eric Schmidt once gave Sheryl Sandberg the advice, ‘Get on a rocket ship’. In a fast growing startup, it is not uncommon that there are more job titles than people. One of our back-end engineers, Colin, while helping out in the support inbox, came across a user who could not install Buffer’s browser extension. In response, he sent over a customized extension to the user. Wow.

Building metrics at Buffer feels a lot like building a new product in that, the team is treading a lot of unchartered waters. It is both crucial and rewarding to think outside of the box (and job description) to get things done.

Do the right thing

My first project at banking was the IPO of Alibaba.com, a large ecommerce site in China. It was Goldman’s milestone deal that year, at the peak of the market. After the company went public, my team were mandated to issue an investment recommendation for the stock. The stock had tripled on the first day of trading, and had reached a P/E of over 100x (compared to around 30X for a growth staged internet company). My then manager stayed true to his analysis and issued a Sell rating, advising the market against buying the stock, even though our bank was paid by Alibaba.com to run the IPO process.

One of the things I admire about the culture at Buffer is the commitment to openness even to a point where it means to be vulnerable. After a big mistake in my second week, I learned that our team adopts the 5 Whys methodology to learn from each other’s mistakes. In addition, with an overall focus on customer happiness, on a busy day of important announcement, everyone on the team, including the engineers and the founders, would jump into the inbox to answer users’ questions.

Making a career transition from finance to technology has not been a smooth path for me. When I made the leap of faith, I definitely did not have the foresight that the dots will align like this. One of the demons I continue to face was the economist in me, who makes decisions based out of maximizing utility functions (making an optimal choice given a set of possible options and constraints). Over the years, I realize intuition and passion can be hard to quantify, but they helped me be resilient and persistent when times get tough.

In closing, I would like to share another quote by Steve Jobs that never ceased to resonate in me.

“For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something…almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.”

Are you in the middle of a career transition? Or have you made a career change, and what was your experience in connecting the dots by looking back? I’d love to hear your stories.

Rethinking Our Diet

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 15:04:00 -0700

So, Google reader is closing down. It feels as if a familiar restaurant in the neighborhood is going out of business, one that I have grown to like and frequent for convenience. I am one of those people that likes to go the same restaurant around my neighborhood and orders the same food that I know I like. When a restaurant closes, it abruptly ends the cycle and it is uncomfortable. On the bright side, it presents a chance to reconsider a habit, rethink my diet.

There are three types of readers that have been feeding my information diet. A few years ago when I started following tech blogs, I relied on Google Reader, a “source-based reader” and subscribed to a long list of blogs, such as Techcrunch, Fred Wilson etc.

Later, the rise of social readers, such as Twitter or Facebook feed, provided a new, relevant set of articles endorsed by my personal and professional contacts.

Then since late last year, I started using topic-based readers. Prismatic, which algorithmically recommends articles based on my viewing history, has allowed me to discover new sources of interesting articles that my friends, or my existing list of subscribed blogs did not cover. Quora and Quibb, which present an interesting mix of topical and social link-sharing and discussion, also have became an growing part of my diet.

In an age where we are bombarded with information, Clay Johnson, author of Information Diet, pointed out an interesting statistic at his presentation at SXSW (his slides embedded below). Online media sites that take a more polarized view have been attracting more audience than those that present a balanced stance. Given a main business model on advertising, these sites in pursuit of more viewership, are becoming even more opinionated.

We as consumers of information, sometimes read to seek affirmation rather than the truth. This, combined with the economic force of driving advertising revenue, is leading to a polarized landscape in media. Hence, Clay believes that, consumption of information can sometimes lead us to be more close-minded rather than more informed.

I am not sure the solution to this, but this is an alarming thought to me.

One thing I’m seeking to do more, is to read from individual bloggers, balancing my intake of information from large, advertising-driven media businesses. Without the motive of winning advertising dollars, non-advertising driven content can be considered as the “organic food” of our information diet. Seek out and share articles or blog posts written by people that are presenting opposing views. Welcome differing views, and challenge the loud, mainstream voices with their assumptions.

On the same thread, I believe encouraging more people to participate in the dialogue would also help. Blogging is not only a great way to build an audience and share a viewpoint, but more importantly, becoming a creator of content has allowed me to be more conscious of what I consume. Getting into a habit of creating helps also to shift time from consuming to creating. And every small step counts. When it comes to consumption, perhaps less is more.

It’d also be cool to have a tool that analyzes and reports the weekly information diet, something akin to RescueTime but for browsing history. Just like going on a real diet, the first and most effective step is to know what we eat.

As Google Reader closes, I want to take this opportunity to rethink my information diet, and strive to become a more conscious consumer of information.

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How is your information diet like? Are you aware of what you consume as information? I’m curious to hear about it in the comments!

Clay Johnson’s Information Diet Slides from SXSW from Clay Johnson

Photo Credit: Stadshem

High leverage opportunities

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 11:42:00 -0800

Recently I caught up with a former coworker from the investment bank where I spend my first three years of my professional life at. Speaking with her about decisions at cross-roads, now 5 years into her finance career, it reminded me of a lot on my journey so far. What Chris Dixon recently said really resonated in me:

Great institutions can prepare you for great things. Credentials can open doors. But don’t let them become an end in themselves.

This was a mindset that had trapped me for longer than I’d like to admit. Little did I know, small steps that started two years ago gradually freed me, as a rewarding career unfolds in front of me.

My Story

As early as my first year in college, I was told to start getting internships to “build up my resume”. I started sending out cold emails to banks, consulting firms, government agencies like my peers, hoping for the best that I get a good internship. I envied over peers’ whose parents’ connections got them into the top investment banks. Even years later when I worked at a top investment bank, I continued to wonder how my next opportunity can make my LinkedIn profile look better.

Unexpected twists and turns in life, started with my then employer, a VC firm, closing down five months after I started working, provided me with an opportunity to experiment. Instead of plunging myself into another round of job interview, I decided to take a 6 month contract with a startup in Beijing. While I had enjoyed the fast-paced environment of the finance industry, but had always longed for something more.

Fast forward two years, today I’m happily working in a fast-growing startup with an incredible group of people. It is an equally, if not more fast-paced environment than that in finance, yet with so much more. Often I pondered upon how my past decisions led to where I am, I realize my journey in the past two years was defined by seemingly random episodes that turned out to be high-leverage opportunities.

The mindset of life as an experiment

Instead of the highly sought-after paths, such as going to business school, lesser-known choices seem to reap unexpected reward. Little did I know, my venture to Beijing was a first step. From it, I gained a good taste of how a startup life can be, and became hooked on the idea of starting a software business. Because it was intended to be a 6-month commitment, I felt free to experiment without rushing into a decision to make a career shift. When first breaking out of the “credentials trap”, making small, reversible baby steps helped propel me ahead.

Think of life as a prototype. We can conduct experiments, make discoveries, and change our perspectives.

- Tim Brown, Change by Design

Believe in the abundance of the world

Shortly after my gig in Beijing, I had coffee with an entrepreneur who later became one of my business partners. Together as a team of three, we built a product from scratch; a hardware and software solution for mom-and-pop shops. I conducted direct sales and sealed partnerships with multinational advertising agencies. Jumping in head first, working without a salary, falling flat on my face, I learned more about the business world in that year than 3 years in finance.

When seeking out the less-trodden paths, often times I found myself exploring in the dark. Yet, when you stumble and fall, usually the ground is less hard than you think. I’ve found that, when we pursue something whole-heartedly, the world opens up and people are in general more willing to help than I’d expect. Brene Brown, a social researcher specialized in vulnerability and couarge, discussed in her amazing TED talk that, when we become vulnerable, we make strong connections to other people. It is this experience that ingrained in me an “abundance mindset”, rather than a scarcity mindset.

Many breakout opportunities are not immediately obvious

After failing at my startup, I took a trip to the Bay Area, where I met David and Christian, the founders of Hackbright Academy. It was two weeks before the first batch was starting, and after meeting them, I could not shake off the thoughts of joining the program. The rational side of me yelled, “Hey! It’s a new program, there is no proven track record, there are not enough information about the founders on Google search results!” As you probably guessed, the irrational side of me won.

Breakout opportunities are what accelerates your career.

- Reid Hoffman, The Startup of You

Programming has been one of the highest-leverage skill I’ve picked up since college, and thanks to an immersive, intensive three month foundation, my career has taken on a whole new trajectory. We are trained biologically to perceive risk as higher than we think. It is a protective mechanism to tell us to avoid danger at all costs. However, good things can happen when we learn to embrace risk.

Seeking out high-leverage opportunities in our personal lives

One of my highest return experiences was a 10-week, 200-hour intensive yoga teacher training course. Having practiced yoga for 6 years, I was able to, through the training, strengthen my practice and deepen my understanding in the philosophies behind the 4,000 year old tradition. It revitalized my body after working 90-hour week in my former life in banking, and provided me with new techniques in handling stress and tension in daily lives. When pursuing a fast-paced career, I continue to find my daily time on the yoga mat a magical, cherished moment of restoration.

By freeing from the mindset of the credentials trap and seeking out high leverage opportunities, I have embarked upon a rewarding journey. Would you take a baby step today?

Have you ever experienced the ‘credentials trap’, or are you facing a crossroad in life, which you feel pulled by different expectations of the world and your own passion? I’d love to hear from you.

Photo Credit: Jon Neal

Key Takeaways from the Marketing and Getting Traction Panel at Startup Product Summit 2013

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 11:53:00 -0800

Here are the notes for the Marketing and Getting Traction Section at Startup Product Summit 2013. Omissions and errors are mine (please let me know if you find any, thank you!), credit for the wisdom is entirely the speakers’.

“Your Product is your Marketing, and You are Your Product” - Eric Kim, Co-Founder & CEO, Twylah

Essential foundations of a personal brand:
- Thought leadership by expressing yourself around themes you want to be recognized for.
- Story-telling: Personal brand comes from not just conveying facts but weaving a story.
- Content-marketing: Convey something of value to your audience. Your content should be educating, inspiring or calling to action. Identify a segment of audience and project content that’s valuable to that segment.
How to cultivate personal brand:
- Engagement. Have a conversation around the topics you are interested in.
- Community. Allow and encourage interaction and discussion amongst your audience.
- Custserv: Show the love by being responsive to customer / audience feedback. Quoted Buffer as a good example of incorporating customer happiness as a core of the product.
How to leverage the brand to help or make a business
- Ask: call to action.
- Upsell: selling premium content or related services.
- Downsell: lower barrier by decreasing the length of commitment.
Building a brand is about developing relationship. By consistently laying the foundations, it enables the individual to deliver authority, credibility and familiarity
How to get content to right people when first starting out.
- Content/audience fit. Publish content and people have something to respond to
- #hashtag on Twitter is a great way to reach out to audience, outside of the followers count
- Brainstorm by asking questions. What are the three things that define you, that you’re passionate about, that you can create or curate
Trustworthiness springs from familiarity and human touch. An individual’s brand identity is something that builds up and follows him over the course of his life and career.

“Make Your Numbers Go Up: How to Optimize for Conversion & Retention on Mobile” - Mariya Yao, Founder & Product Strategist, Xanadu Mobile

When thinking about optimizing metrics in a product, there is a dichotomy of:
- Local maxima: am I building the product right? What should we A/B test? What platform? How to improve retention?
- Global maxima: am I building the right product? Am I in right market?
Two strategies in evaluating a global maxima:
- Benchmarking. Top down approach that starts with the overall industry landscape.
  - How do mobile users spend their time? What are the fastest growing app categories? What apps have most loyal users? Why do certain apps retain well and how do I use that into my app? What are the most profitable apps segment? Where in the world are smartphones adopted the fastest?
  - What are the trends/opportunities?
  - Where are the danger zones? Why have companies failed there?
  - What can people do on mobile they weren’t able to do before?
  - Why are people loyal to these apps?
- Behavior. Bottom up approach.
  - Apps are either creating or replacing behavior: A case study on Foursquare and Instagram.
  - Foursquare was creating a new behavior (check-in) that has no prior parallel, which explains the pivot from check-in in 2009 to explore in 2012. When creating a behavior, focus on delivering value or providing strong incentives such as saved money, time or exclusive/perks.
  - In pre-Instagram era, 76% of people were using their phones to take photos. Mariya examined a detailed flow of taking a photo and sharing on facebook, and contrasted it with how Instagram made the process significantly shorter and easier.
Are you solving a problem or a nuisance? A common pitfall in startups is that they are building a company that is solving a nuisance instead of a problem. When solving a nuisance, in order for such product to succeed, the product needs to be better than the existing solution by magnitudes (eg, everyone complains about Craigslist but in the end tolerates it). A good way to distinguish between problem and nuisance is: Have they [the users] paid for a solution before, or spent a lot of time finding a solution or making a solution themselves]?
Mariya’s presentation is available here.

“Reach Escape Velocity through Lean Content Marketing” - Guillaume Decugis, Co-Founder & CEO, Scoop.it

”Content marketing is practice of creating content relevant to your brand to gain greater visibility in search results and in social channels” - JD Lasica, Social Meida Biz
4 strategies that lean content has worked for Scoop.it
- Leverage SlideShare’s natural distribution to share your vision: Despite having a relatively small followers count, Scoop.it’s content on SlideShare has gathered significant views.
- Guest post to get distribution for your idea. Identify blogs in your niche and segment which are interesting.
- Answer Quora questions that related to your field. Answering on Quora is like blogging for a known, existing and savvy audience, who already have questions.
- Content curation. Starting point, leverage what you already do (read), express your expertise & develop it, helps you identify original topics for content creation. If you don’t know what content to create, start with curation.

“Monetization: How Buffer went from Idea to Revenue in 7 weeks & 50K users in 8 months”

Leo shared three key stories/lessons from building Buffer so far.
- Validate first, code later. The story of Joel, cofounder of Buffer, validated his idea of Buffer before writing a line of backend code, by putting up a landing page and testing clicks on sign up and pricing. See more here.
- Working with percentages. When doing business development and getting press, Leo suggests anchoring expectations with percentages (out of 10 emails, expect ~20-40% response rate), to avoid frustration and improve resilience in mindset. He talked about the mindset helped him write 350 guest posts in the first 9 months of running Buffer, and getting press every 3 weeks.
- Experiment with pricing. He encourages the audience to test frequently pricing plans and points what works for the product, while always be great to existing users.

“Launching and Getting Users” - Jameson Detweiler, Co-Founder & CEO, LaunchRock

Jameson told his journey of first 42 days of running LaunchRock, from StartupWeekend to launching on Day 5, getting on TechCrunch on Day 7 and campaign at SXSW on Day 42.
How to effectively launch and get users:
- Be sexy [ beautifully designed product ], flirtatious [ LaunchRock’s traction is in part thanks to the wait between users’ signing up and the product is ready ], exotic [ build something new and unique ].
- Be targeted and specific in the value proposition; that makes it easy for people to talk about your brand.
- Be nice to press: do the related research, and make it easy for the press to write about you.
- Launch and listen to customer feedback.
- Be authentic when telling your story.

Notes on other panels:

Key Takeaways from the Roadmapping and Execution Panel at Startup Product Summit 2013

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 10:49:00 -0800

Here are the notes for the Roadmapping and Execution Lightning Talks and Panel at Startup Product Summit 2013. Omissions and errors are mine (please let me know if you find any, thank you!), credit for the wisdom is entirely the speakers’.

“Building a Great Product Through Communication” - Joe Stump, Co-Founder, Sprint.ly

Product manager’s role is to capture, communicate and distill product ideas, and mediate between business stakeholders and makers.
When building a product, pick two out of the three: quickly, correctly, cheaply. Joe later mentioned on Twitter that he would pick quickly and correctly, as paying for quality is no brainer.
“Want to increase innovation? Lower the cost of failure” - Joi Ito
Empower every developer to commit things to the product through non-blocking development (NBD).
Advocate the move to 100% asynchronous communication because current approach is broken (needs human input to track reality) and remote teams are becoming more common.

“Raw Agile: Eating Your Own Dog Food” - Nick Muldoon, Agile Program Manager, Twitter

Twitter does dog-fooding by allowing developers deploy to internal server. Dog-fooding allows:
- gathering real data from real (though internal) users.
- increases incentive to produce quality shipped code.
- better feedback. He found that feedback in dog-fooding environment is generally more constructive.
- keeps momentum through a positive reinforcing loop of continuous deployment and feedback. The team gets 50-100 feedback from internal users each day.
How to decipher and sift through the volume of feedback. Look at only the “love” feedback, then all the “hate”, then discard the middle, categorize and show to the whole team.
Other important aspects in dog-fooding:
1. Automation. Allow deploy more frequently especially internally. ”On any commit, deploy internally.” Avoid accumulating technical debt.
2. Visibility. Record progress and share on a wiki.
3. Speed. Minimize cycle time (from to do to in progress, to done).

Best Practices for Architecting Your App to Ship Fast and Scale Rapidly” - Solomon Hykes, Founder & CEO, dotCloud

3 things to aim for in architecting your app: speed (continuous deployment), scale, future-proofing (be prepared for things moving very fast, avoid bottleneck and need to refactor when adding every new feature).
What are the patterns/strategies in getting to these three goals?
1. Be aware of trade-offs. There is no silver bullet; always trade-offs and prioritization.
2. Trade-offs evolve over time. Priorities change. Be aware of assumptions and revisit them from time to time.
3. Trade-offs differ from team to team. Be aware of bias in different teams. Always keep ownership of key decisions.
Put yourself in a position where you are embarrassed, and things are going to happen faster.

“Rocket Powered Bicycles: Avoiding Over and Under Engineering your Product” - Chris Burnor, Co-Founder & CTO, GroupTie & Curator, StartupDigest

A product connects business priorities with user experience.
Proposes that instead of Minimum Viable Product (MVP), think about Product: Viable Minimum (PVM). Focus on viability.
A scientific method to approaching product roadmapping.
- Idea: think about business priorities, user experience. Do not let technical decisions drive your product. Let product drive your technical decisions.
- Test: Viability of the solution is whether it solves the problem it’s setting out to solve. Determine what level of viability is suitable in different stages: GroupTie’s first viable minimum was a keynote presentation that was sent to potential customers.
  Scale of tests will vary. Lack of big tests means the lack of breakout growth/ideas, lack of small tests means the team is doing too much.
- Conclusion: Debriefing phase is vital, share test results with the team and learn what it means to the idea. Testing without debriefing is like “talking without listening” in a conversation.
An unusual example of a PVM is Apple. Product first: cares about user experience and business priorities. Viability second: it just works. Minimalism third: wait till a technology is ripe before adding to the product (no LTE for a long time, no RFID).

Notes on other panels:

Key Takeaways from the Design Thinking and Rapid Prototyping Panel at Startup Product Summit 2013

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 10:13:00 -0800

I had the privilege to attend the Startup Product Summit yesterday, it was a great lineup of speakers and a full room of buzzing energy and great conversation. Without further adieu, I’d like to share some key learnings of each panel.

Please let me know if I omitted or made any errors in the references. Credit for the good stuff is entirely the speakers’ (link to twitter handles are included on each name).

“Turning Mediocre Products into Awesome Products” - Jonathan Smiley, Partner & Design Lead, ZURB

Ideation and iteration can ”turn mediocre products into awesome products”.
Discussed a full spectrum of research from market-driven (focus group, survey) to user-driven (remote teaching, usability teaching)
Importance of sketching, a lot, aim for speed and volume, then critique
Advice to the audience: ”do 10 more sketches ( more ideation is always better ), build 1 more prototype, get 1 more round of feedback, ask 5 more customers”

“Being a UX Team of One” - Vince Baskerville, Product, Lithium & Co-Founder, TripLingo

1. Internal politics is a common challenge as a UX team/professional. Learn to manage expectation of different internal stakeholders and keep everyone in the loop.

2. Don’t listen to what customers are saying. Users’ claims are often unreliable. See what they are doing. Understand the underlying issue.

“Validate Your MVP on Paper” - Poornima Vijayashanker, Founder & CEO, BizeeBee & Femgineer

- 2 Reasons MVP Fail
1. Fail to figure out how to provide a simple value proposition that differentiates your product from your competition
2. Fail to figure out who their early adopter are.

- Early adopters are people who aren’t using the competitor’s product. Don’t want to take time to switch over.

- Steps on usability testing

Explain the problem. What you are testing. How they are helping. Get them excited about the idea.
Set expectations. Make them comfortable.
Communicate intention (what exactly are you testing and specific feedback you are looking for).
Thank them for their time. Follow up regularly.

Poornima’s slides are available here.

“Everyone’s Customers Are Wrong” - Evan Hamilton, Head of Community, UserVoice

Data doesn’t tell the whole story. Analytics are bandaids because we can’t watch our customers.
People don’t tell the whole story. Identify who the users are, where the feedback are from. Are they: paying/freeloaders? Using product in the intended way? Using main features? Early adopters / ‘tech fanatics’ (who are not likely to stay on a product for the long haul)?
Combine data and customer stories. Customer feedback / feature suggestion usually leads from a deeper issue. Find out what the actual problem is by understanding the underlying need.
Don’t lose track of your creative mind by getting lost in data rat-hole. Don’t chase 1% when you can get 15%. Not just A/B, but try something crazy. Try big bold things along with incremental fine-tunes.

“Designing for Everyone: The Craft of Picking or Killing a Concept” - Miki Setlur, Product Designer, Evernote

Everyone use product in many different ways. A useful strategy is to segment users into business, partners (e.g., app stores for Evernote’s case) and users.
Figure out what each segment cares the most about: Business / Partners - acquisition, retention, engagement, revenue. Users - being faster, better, happier.
Case study on how Evenote’s design process stroke balance between business goals (monetizing) while being sensitive to user experience and goals (finding things faster).

Other relevant points

How to access willingness to pay during pre-product interviews. Get the first dollar within the trial period. Provide clear value proposition from the get-go.

How to get good feedback. Be specific in what feedback are you looking for. Instead of asking in general ‘what do you think of the prototype’, ask whether they are confused on what stage, what was confusing.

Tips on prototyping. Put more emphasis on story telling than illustrating.
For remote testing, use keynote as prototyping tool, screencast the keynote.

On the tension between product vs. business goals in roadmapping a product. Early stage products make sense to focus on product. Once reached product market fit, it makes sense to lead with business goals such as, acquiring, converting, retention customers.
Also mentioned was a tool called Impact Mapping.

Read on:

Key Takeaways from Roadmapping and Execution Panel
Key Takeaways from Marketing and Getting Traction Panel

aquinomarlon: #powerofyou #positivity #life #quotes #instagood...

Sat, 02 Feb 2013 17:37:36 -0800

aquinomarlon:

#powerofyou #positivity #life #quotes #instagood #instaquote #struggle becomes #Reward

Something better

Choice over default

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 22:32:00 -0800

Creating over consuming.
Action over inaction.
Fail fast over stagnation.
Ask for forgiveness over permission.
Why not over why.
Discipline over indulgence.
Listen to your heart over head.
Fear fear over fear.

Think

Abundance over scarcity.
Exploration over quick-fixes.
Present over past.
Possibilities over limits.
Experience over status.
We over me.
And over or.

Curious over disparaging.
Freedom over constraint.
Compassion over apathy.
Constructive over condemning.
Living now over waiting.
Mindful over drifting.

Live life

Choice over default.

Photo Credit: mdlawson

"Think of life as a prototype. We can conduct experiments, make discoveries, and change our..."

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 12:21:10 -0800

“Think of life as a prototype. We can conduct experiments, make discoveries, and change our perspectives. We can look for opportunities to turn processes into projects that have tangible outcomes. We can learn how to take joy in the things we create whether they take the form of a fleeting experience or an heirloom that will last for generations. We can learn that reward comes in creation and re-creation, not just in the consumption of the world around us. Active participation in the process of creation is our right and our privilege. We can learn to measure the success of our ideas not by our bank accounts but by their impact on the world.”

- Brown, Tim (2009-09-16). Change by Design (p. 241). HarperBusiness. Kindle Edition.

Be curious.

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 14:20:41 -0800

arjunbalaji:

“1. Be curious. Read widely. Try new things. I think a lot of what people call intelligence just boils down to curiosity.

2. Say yes to everything. I have a lot of trouble saying no, to an pathological degree — whether to projects or to interviews or to friends. As a result, I attempt a lot and even if most of it fails, I’ve still done something.

3. Assume nobody else has any idea what they’re doing either. A lot of people refuse to try something because they feel they don’t know enough about it or they assume other people must have already tried everything they could have thought of. Well, few people really have any idea how to do things right and even fewer are to try new things, so usually if you give your best shot at something you’ll do pretty well.”

— Aaron Swartz

Creating over Consuming

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 19:30:28 -0800

Recently, I have found myself scaling down consuming and scaling up on creating. The mobile era has brought to us unparamounted convenience in accessing information. We can read, share, and save content on the go, always connecting, self-documenting. Since moving to San Francisco, due to the costly iPhone plan, I switched to an Android phone and an AT&T phone plan, which consistently ran out of credit amongst other frustrations. It turns out to be a blessing in disguise; I have massively scaled down my mobile data usage. Using the newly-gained free time for reflection, I am happy that the habit of creating over consuming has begun to bear fruits.

Start with a small step

In the beginning, be it a line of code each morning, or a short blog post a week, start with the smallest step possible. Every new habit faces resistance to build up in the beginning. Like flossing, a new habit can be formed with one tooth at a time. When the step is so small that failure is practically impossible, the brain feels rewarded by the accomplishment and that feeds into the virtuous cycle.

(Source: Power of Habit)

Link consumption with creation

The constant availability of information can lead to overdose. I find myself filling my waiting time with scrolling of Twitter, Instagram feeds, while absorbing very little portion of the data I received. Since I got into the habit of writing, every time I read an article, I jot down ideas for a next blog post. The same can be applied to ideas for new web app, mobile app ideas. Often, daily frustrations can be turned into good ideas of creation. It is powerful to link consumption with creation; by noting down and actively engaging the information that comes through, consumption becomes much more conscious, which leads me to the next point.

Schedule offline time

From commuting to a suboptimal cell phone carrier, I was lucky to have a natural limit of my information diet these days. That, together with being more conscious with what I consume, has done magic to my creative pursuits. Limiting “online time” by going to a cafe that has no wifi, and schedule that offline time for uninterrupted creation. At first, the lack of access to online resources can be daunting. Soon, you will experience the exhilarating freedom that comes with not checking email every other half hour.

Identifying itches

In Hong Kong, where I am from, a fun group activity is art jamming, where a group of friends would go and paint, each with an empty canvas and paint with acrylic paint whatever they want. Each time after I go, I find myself noticing different things on the street that would make an awesome painting. Not long after starting on a creative habit, I start to experience that itch. I would notice ideas and experience urges to make an output. It is a tremendous relief every time I get to sit down and write something. It takes experimentation of different medium, some in music, some on the canvas, some in words, or code etc. Regardless of the medium, the reward and satisfaction from creating and shipping to the world trumps any form of consumption.

Discuss and socialize

Lastly, reach out to people that are doing similar things. While the first few pieces of creation are not going to be of the best quality, you will be surprised how frequently inspiration arrives. Creation begets inspiration. Get together with other creators, discuss topics and experiences and most importantly, enjoy the process of creating.

What is your creative habit? What are some unexpected learning that surfaces while cultivating your creative habit?

The You in Ten Years

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 10:23:47 -0800

Recently I came across this old Canto-pop song. It first came out in early 2008, when I graduated from college. It was one of my favorites, and a great timing as I was looking forward to beginning my life after college. Fast forward five years, as a midpoint check, the decisions I have made so far have mostly fared positively to the questions this song posed.

Dear new graduates, I wanted to share with you this song. I translated the lyrics here; they say it all.

Enjoy the journey. Stay true to your beliefs. Bias toward action. Keep your edges. Most importantly, strive to make the you in ten years proud.

To the Me in Ten Years

The things that you have done in the past ten years
Did they leave you without regrets, and make you proud?
Your beliefs back then
Are they still intact?

Have you found your life partner and true love?
Have your accomplishments been satisfactory?
Over the journey, you accumulated experiences
and as a result, did you let go of your edges?

Are you feeling weak?
Did you mature but lose your style?
Are you still as dedicated as you were in the beginning?
The edges in your character, did they become blunt?

Are you feeling weathered?
Do you rather become wise but without impulse?
Will you be tired of taking deliberate steps?

Are you happy?
Do you still remember your promises
to not be numbed by the handful of successes or failures?

Are you happy?
Did you forget about your ideals and get caught up with life?
Don’t wait another ten years and then ask if you are happy

Originally posted on Medium

Problem-focused versus Solution-focused

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 10:34:04 -0800

Last week I had coffee with a serial entrepreneur, who started and sold two companies and currently on his third venture. His journey was very inspiring to me. Amidst a good conversation, he asked, “What is your dream company?” For a moment, I could not articulate an answer.

Later that night, I reflected upon his question and realized the fundamental disconnect between my belief and his question. I realize my mindset has shifted from building a dream product, to solving a problem.

Focus on solving a painful problem. One key learning I had at my previous startup, was that, if the customer would not pay for the product, the problem is usually not painful enough. While there are many things that could have been done more, such as better sales, in hindsight, the product was too ingrained into the team’s mindset that we failed to recognize the fundamental issue - the problem was not painful enough.

Products are usually a specific solution to a problem. However, given a painful problem, there are countless approaches to solve that. Focusing too much on the solution reduces resilience of the team to pivot later. By focusing on the problem - becoming passionate about solving an unmet need - each product is viewed as an experiment to solve that problem. If one experiment fails, move on to another one.

Maximize learning early on. The problem-focused mindset calls for designing small experiments to solve problems; build fast, fail fast. Instagram started as Burbn, a location-based service. If your product is consumer facing, use the “bar test”. Founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger validated their idea in social settings; figure out how to pitch an app to a stranger in 20 seconds, in a noisy bar. In the case of Burbn, the lack of intuitive understanding and interest from the early testers prompted the founders to re-work the idea. Groupon started as ThePoint, which allows users start a campaign asking people to give money or do something as a group. The learnings from the earlier products laid foundation to the successes of the ones that followed.

Be creative in getting the problem solved. Many great startups survived not because of the quick reception from their target market. Instead it was because of the conviction that there is an unmet need, they were able to be creative and use different methods to get through to their users. To generate seed capital for their startup, the founders of Airbnb bought bulk supply of generic cheerios and created presidential election themed boxes to sell at the Democratic Convention in Denver. Their founder Joe Gebbia described:

We made 500 of each (Obama O’s and Cap’n McCains). They were a numbered edition on the top of each box, and sold for $40 each. The Obama O’s sold out, netting the funds we needed to keep Airbnb alive. The Cap’n McCains… they didn’t sell quite as well, and we ended up eating them to save money on food.

Go from me-focused to market-focused.

Marry the problem - Dane Maxwell

The problem-focused mindset allows for more flexibility in developing a solution. Dane Maxwell said it well in his podcast, entrepreneurs should go from “me-focused” - from going after passion, skills - and shift to “what the pain of the customer and become passionate about improving their life”.

When asked the same question again, I will say, “to solve a painful problem well”.

Photo credit: BubbyMakesThree

Making Change a Habit

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 17:11:48 -0800

Recently I have joined the club of waking up early. Starting from 6:30am, I shifted my schedule to more recently 5:30am. Following the structure suggested by The Power of Habit, there needs to be a cue, action and reward. My cue has been simple, putting the alarm clock far away from my bed, so that I have to get out of bed to turn the alarm off. In fact, it is placed on my yoga mat which naturally transitions my morning routine of a 30 minute self-directed yoga practice.

The first few days, or even week, in waking up at 6:30 was not easy. I would lay in Child’s Pose for a good 10 minutes at times, “meditating”, aka, falling back to sleep. Then in the new year, I switched to 5:30am, and surprisingly, it felt so normal and much easier than I started at 6:30am.

That led me wondering, is habit creating an exercise of a diminishing difficulty? Is it because our willpower gets stronger as we build up more constructive habits? Can habit creation become, like a habit?

In the past 18 months, I left the comfort and predictable of finance industry and launched myself into the unknown realm of startups. Moving from Beijing, to starting my own company, to Hacker bootcamp, to working at a ycombinator startup. Each time, I encounter empathetic friends who tell me, “I don’t know how you do it”. It meaning the uncertainty, constant change.

Like everyone, I yearn for security, and stability. However, I have realized first hand, that no matter what situation we are in, life is constant changing. Specifically in entrepreneurship, an awesome startup trajectory can be wiped out in market changes, founders can turn against each other and take away your baby, or the lowest low may actually turn into the darkest moment before dawn.

From this series of change, I have somehow developed a sensitivity against inertia, and a heightened willingness to seek out change. I used to strive for “solving” the big question, “arriving”. These days, I just want to make change a habit.

He knows the “why” for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any “how.”

- Victor Frankl

Photo Source: Shadowness

Common Pitfalls in Building Products and How to Avoid them

Sun, 06 Jan 2013 15:23:00 -0800

New year is a great time for reflecting past year’s learning. In 2012, I brought a product from ideation to market, acquired customers for it and implemented features from customer development of Lean Startup model. I realize, there are a few common pitfalls that first time entrepreneurs, including myself, are prone to fall prey to, and how I would do differently in the next product.

Training the empathy muscle

Building a product that people need requires a thorough understanding of customers’ values, priorities, perception, tolerances and experiences.

Common pitfall: assume the same technological proficiency from ‘regular people’ as ourselves. I find it helpful to speak with friends and family in different industries, such as my sister in the healthcare industry who owns one page of apps on her iPhone 4S and my high school friend who works in airline marketing who only recently opened a Gmail account.

You may argue, the best products are those that solve the creator’s own problem. It is true that solving our own problems helps us see the users’ (ourselves) need more clearly. However, to make the user interface accessible, we still need to step out and think about the product from a beginner’s eyes, respect and cater to users’ technical understanding.

Product discovery

Making software products is a two-stage exercise, figuring out what to build and building it. During the product discovery process, the team flushes out ideas, tests out new technologies, thinks about long term, short term product direction. Once the team is done crafting a winning product, the focus shifts to execution.

Common pitfall: product discovery is often treated as a scheduled task like building out a feature. That is because engineering talent is often the most expensive asset in a startup and once received funding, startups are pressed to build as quickly as they can. That can often be a blessing in disguise; most startups should place emphasis on product discovery and maximize learning, instead of building.

Instead of believing “build it and they will come”, Marty Cagan, author of Inspired: How to Create Products Customers Love, recommends to focus on answering these questions:

- Are there real users out there who want this product?

- Have we identified a market and how can we verify the opportunity with potential customers?

- What is a valuable, usable and feasible product solution to this problem?

- What technologies can I apply solve this problem in a better way?

- What should the user experience be?

While there is no shortage of hard problems out there, the challenge is in discovering a valuable, usable solution to that problem. That involves talking to a lot of customers. To me, the biggest part was to learn how to ask good, open ended questions. The goal is to learn as much about the potential customers as possible, how they perceive the problem and what are the constraints in finding a solution.

Case study: Dropbox

After talking to venture capitalists who said they don’t use any of the cloud storage servers, despite the plethora of them in the market, Drew Houston, founder of Dropbox came up with 3 minute screen cast and received feedback from Hacker News. The next step involved posting on Digg, to get more ‘general mass’ users. By posting links on politics and humorous content, it attracts significant interest from the non-tech community. All these were performed before shipping code. His first demo video is posted below.

Product validation

After discovering a potential solution to the problem, what follows is to find evidence that the product will be successful without building out and deploying it.

Common pitfall: to be over confident in a product spec, or an idea, and think they will adjust the product with the feedback they get when the beta version is out. The beta version is often too late for major changes, and the time and emotional investment by the team while developing the beta product often make it costly, economically but also in terms of team morale, to pivot at that point.

There are three types of validation:

Feasibility: Is the product going to be buildable, given time and funds available?
Usability: Can users figure out how to use it? Present the prototype test in front of real people.
Value: What really matters is whether or not the product is something users will fund valuable and want to buy?

Often, the road is windy with lots of false starts and resets. In all, it is better to learn about the market early on than after consuming months of engineering resources. For example, my previous startup Spotick went after the mobile loyalty space, which is a validated, large market with lots of sizable players. However, the geographical market we went after, Hong Kong, was culturally less ready for a consumer product. While the merchants were willing to try it out, we did not sense a willingness to pay. In light of that, we switched to explore enterprise sales with retail and food & beverage chains, which we saw more demand and validated the value through securing marketing budgets with a handful of companies.

Case study: Buffer

Buffer’s landing page serves as one of the best examples that I came across regarding product validation. Founder Joel Gascoigne put up a landing page and showcased a “product’, and by checking the clicks on the potential pricing plans, he validated customer needs and willingness to pay - all before even building the product! The details can be found here.

Improve existing products.

This is an area that I feel especially strongly about. Once the product is out in the market, the excitement of having real users also brings in lots of opinions, sometimes contradictory, but equally passionate. Which ones should we listen to, and when should we respond to feature requests?

Common pitfall: to gather subjecting feedback, elicit customer requirements and chase features. In my past experience of selling to enterprise customers, I remember clearly the allure of ‘adding just another feature’ to close the sales. It requires a lot of discipline and determination to say no to the feature requests. While it could feel devastating to turn away potential customers in such early stage, it is wise to avoid the slippery slope of becoming what Marty Cagan calls “feature factory”.

A more fruitful pursuit is to focus relentlessly on the most important metrics and perform A/B testing to drive the metrics to the right direction.

Case study: Skype

Skype was a prime victim of feature creep. It grew from a basic communication tool to many unused, complicated features like Public Chat, Send Money. A key sign that the product became too heavy and have too many superfluous features - releasing Skype Pro and Lite versions. These features and products are now discontinued, as the company strives to return the product focus to core functionality.

source: Skype Discontinued Features

What are the tricks that you have found useful in developing products? What are the key difficulties in different stages of product development? I’d love to hear about them in the comments!

Photo Credit: Collective Action Toolkit

Acknowledge You Don't Have All the Answers

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 14:30:00 -0800

Yesterday I came across two scenarios, both related to asking questions and reacting to them. While both situations involved lots of questions, the responses to the questions were divergent.

One with one of the co-founders of my company. I brought up a few product and market related questions. We had a great discussion regarding the product direction, and the main problems the team is trying to solve. He told me honestly some of the questions he does not have answers to yet, offered up some of his conjectures, and emphasized repeatedly that everyone, including myself, in the company should raise up ideas openly.

Later that evening after yoga class, I was sitting next to a mother and a son on the Caltrain on the way home. The boy, around 5 years old, was asking questions on why he has to finish the homework before going to play. He was a energetic and persistent kid, certainly irritated the mother who probably had a long day. ”What are you asking all these questions? What is the point you are trying to make here?”, she finally growled, “are you telling me that you don’t want the homework?” The son shut his month immediately, and turned away from the mother to look outside the windows.

“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to not stop questioning.”
-Albert Einstein

In addition to never stop questioning, great leaders are quick to acknowledge they don’t have the answers. They take advantage of the situation, and here are a few things I have noticed that they do:

Think about why people ask the questions. What does it tell you about their thinking? What brought them to ask these questions? Often, the questions come from some observations or insights into a deeper issue. By digging deeper, it can lead to meaningful discussion and exploration to related topics.

Find out the answers and follow up. I once had a conversation with a friend who is an excellent salesperson at a private bank. At the age of 27, he built a portfolio of high net worth clients on his own, while most of his peers start off by inheriting some small accounts from their managers. He shared a tip on how to engage with a new contact, “take mental note during the conversation, about things that the other person is looking for or a problem he’s trying to solve. Then I go home and find something useful/relevant, send an email to follow up.” The little extra effort, rather than just dismissing the topic with “I don’t know”s, goes a long way.

Encourage a culture of asking questions. One thing I really loved about the conversation with the founder was his repeated emphasis of open suggestions. As a company grows, and as a founder’s responsibility mounts, the culture takes more time to enforce. Steve Johnson, author of Where Good Ideas Come From, says it succinctly, “Chance favors the connected mind.”

Think of being questioned not as a challenge to authority, but as an opportunity to conversation, accountability.

“I want to start a company with all my best friends as employees.” - David Kelley, founder of IDEO

Indeed, creative work can only be done in an environment where conversation is freely flowing, where team members are free to play. Only by being in an environment where taking risk is encouraged, can innovation have a chance to flourish. Asking questions is risking to be thought of as being ignorant. But at the same time, the questioner must care enough about the topic to take the risk. So treasure that, and start a conversation.

Meanwhile, I can only hope that the mother, when cooled off from her anger later that evening, will muster her patience and talk sensibly to her son.

Photo Credit: Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru / The National Library of Wales

Welcoming 2013

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 13:58:00 -0800

In 2012, I brought a product from ideation to market, acquired customers for it and implemented features from customer development of Lean Startup model. Second half of the year, I delved into programming, gaining a deeper understanding in the technical possibility in products.

In 2013, my goal is to learn more about how products are designed for usability and growth. While technology continues to radically reduce the cost and time from ideation to market of software products, the increased ‘noise’ makes it challenging for quality products to attract, grow, retain and monetize users.

I plan to share thoughts on my journey in this blog and would love to hear from you. Look forward to a fruitful year ahead!

Photo Credit: Joshua Cripps

2012 in review

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 00:14:00 -0800

2012 has been a huge year in terms of personal and professional growth. On the professional front, I progressed significantly in pursuing my passion in products, from defining and building a product from scratch and selling it to real customers, to getting hands on with code. On the personal front, I moved from my hometown Hong Kong to the Bay Area in Jun and have been meeting many amazing people.

As the year draws to a close, I can’t be more thankful for a fruitful year that was made possible only by amazing people that surround me, in all parts of my life and in different parts of the world.

Startup

Spotick was a company that I cofounded with two other partners. It uses receipts as a platform to promote marketing messages of merchants. Due to lack of funding and full time commitment from more than one founder, I left the company after spending a year of work on the project. It was an extremely fun and enriching experience wearing many hats especially customer development, sales, lean product development and front end coding. Everything from dealing with customers, learning both software and hardware development technologies, to managing team expectations, exposed me to a myriad of situations that resulted in great personal growth.

One thing I learned from my first entrepreneurial experience, would be to spend more time cultivating relationships. While I was actively making sales contacts for the project, I would place more emphasis in connecting with the startup community. One of the best takeaways from my startup experience was the people I’ve met, including the inspiring Buffer team.

Hackbright

It was not easy to leave my own baby, but out goes the old, in comes the new. Hackbright was a pivotal episode of my professional life that happened in the least expected moment; when I was checking my Twitter stream one morning in late May, a tweet by Women2 came up about a program that teaches women to code. It just clicked.

I have always been passionate about building products, and having been in a startup and built my own, I have always felt half-blind when it comes to the technical side. I became even more curious when Spotick’s product touches upon hardware development as well. During my time at Spotick which I had been doing some front-end coding, I picked up Ruby on Rails on the weekends, by reading Michael Hartl’s Rails Tutorial and Peter Cooper’s Beginning Ruby. After getting my first Twitter clone working, I was hooked.

Hackbright helped jumpstart me from a hobbyist to a web developer. The program teaches python, django, javascript etc, but most importantly, it teaches me how to fish; I love the ability to create something I conceive of, knowing if I don’t know something yet I will be perfectly capable to figure it out. It is a very empowering feeling.

Aside from learning loads, I also appreciated the founders Christian and David, my fellow Hackbright classmates, who are amazing and smart individuals that made the summer a fun, challenging one. From pair programming, to hackathons, to coding challenges, the 11 ladies and the founders have created the best environment to learn and explore. I couldn’t be prouder to be part of the inaugural class of this amazing program.

Bump Technologies

Since graduating from Hackbright, I have been working on data at Bump Technologies. With over 100million downloads, it is an ideal playground for a data enthusiast. I spend most of the work days using Python, and libraries like numpy, pandas come in handy everyday. There are also wonderful tools like d3, Gephi that makes data visualization delightfully easy and elegant.

Having worked with data my whole career so far, it is an amazing feeling to use data to learn more about a product that I care about. That is definitely a combination of passion and skills, and I feel very blessed to be able to do so.

As I spend more time on exploring data, I also became more interested and involved in the user experience and strategy aspect of a product. A big part of data mining / data science relies on asking the right questions, and asking the right questions requires understanding the core values of the product. For example, when looking at retention, the value proposition of the product plays a significant role in deciding a goal to pursue. A social product may focus more on retention, as the network effect is sustained not only by user acquisition but also by active users, a utility application (like a Flash light app) may focus more on acquiring new users.

Goals for 2013

Blog: In the new year, I look forward to sharing more often on this blog. In particular, I focus on growth and product strategy.

Coding: I’d like to pick up a functional language, to stretch my programming muscles after an intense year of ramping up with python and ruby on rails.

I also want to invest more time on data visualization and user interface design.

Startups: A few friends have approached me to advise on their startups, and given my transition from Spotick to Hackbright and moving to California, I have put those on hold. I want to get involved in a project or two in the coming year.

Project: I plan to create a software product in the new year that produces an income stream.

A personal note

One really special gift to myself this year as I turned 25 is to find the time to get certified as a yoga instructor. The 200-hour, 4-week teacher training was an intensive challenge and worthwhile pursuit. While I do not intend to teach professionally full time in the near future, the training has launched my fitness level, and my awareness of such, to a new high. That has definitely had a positive spillover effect on other aspects of my life.

Yoga has allowed me to fill my days with energy and mindfulness. I hope to take every opportunity in the new year to deepen my practice, on and off the mat.

What did you learn in 2012? What are your goals in 2013? I’d love to hear about you in the comments.