Feb 3 -- Build Better Products, Apple's 1978 Business Plan, How To Launch a Network, Elon Musk in 1999, Scale Product Processes, Successful People. CommunicateBetter.io - Improving Company Communication, One Week At A Time. Come for the tool, stay for the network. A popular strategy for bootstrapping networks is what I like to call “come for the tool, stay for the network.” The idea is to initially attract users with a single-player tool and then, over time, get them to participate in a network.
The tool helps get to initial critical mass. The network creates the long term value for users, and defensibility for the company. I’m going to give two historical examples and leave it to readers to think of present-day examples (there are many): 1) Delicious. The single-player tool was a cloud service for your bookmarks. The multiplayer network was a tagging system for discovering and sharing links. 2) Instagram. Instagram’s initial hook was the cool photo filters. The “come for the tool, stay for the network” strategy isn’t the only way to build a network.
Lessons learned from scaling a product team. There’s been lots written about how Internet business should build software, from books like The Lean Start-Up, and posts from Google Ventures, but not many examples where startups open up their process and show how it really happens. Back in 2013, Spotify talked about how they build, but other detailed examples are hard to find.
Maybe that’s because it’s a messy reality and people can be uncomfortable sharing that in public. Given the abundance of abstracted advice, primarily from advisors rather than operators, and lack of actual examples happening from fast growing startups, we thought it would be valuable to share more about how we work at Intercom. In the last 12-18 months, over dozens of releases from incremental improvements to huge redesigns, we’ve learned a lot about scaling a product building team, and the nitty gritty involved in getting valuable product out the door as fast as possible. Our process is broken down into four main areas: Some things to keep in mind: 1. 2. 3. 4. The Design Sprint — Google Ventures. The sprint gives teams a shortcut to learning without building and launching. The sprint is a five-day process for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers.
Developed at GV, it’s a “greatest hits” of business strategy, innovation, behavior science, design thinking, and more—packaged into a battle-tested process that any team can use. Working together in a sprint, you can shortcut the endless-debate cycle and compress months of time into a single week. Instead of waiting to launch a minimal product to understand if an idea is any good, you’ll get clear data from a realistic prototype. The sprint gives you a superpower: You can fast-forward into the future to see your finished product and customer reactions, before making any expensive commitments. This page is a DIY guide for running your own sprint. Successful people. Original apple business plan. Young Elon Musk featured in documentary about millionaires (1999)