AMA: Gainsight Group Product Manager, Pavan Kumar on Building 0-1 Products

Creating an entirely new product or entering a new market, the first steps typically involves conducting thorough market research and validating the product idea. Here's a breakdown of the initial steps: 1. Identify a Market Opportunity: Start by identifying a potential market opportunity where you believe there is a gap or unmet need. This can involve researching market trends, analyzing customer pain points, and exploring emerging technologies or industries. 2. Define Target Customers: Clearly define the target customers for your product. Understand their characteristics, behaviors, preferences, and needs. Develop buyer personas or user profiles to gain a deeper understanding of your target audience. 3. Conduct Market Research: Conduct comprehensive market research to assess the viability of your product idea. Evaluate the size of the market, competition, existing solutions, pricing models, distribution channels, and potential barriers to entry. This research helps you determine if there is a feasible market for your product. 4. Validate the Product Idea: Validate your product idea by gathering feedback from potential customers, industry experts, or advisors. This can be done through surveys, interviews, focus groups, or prototype testing. The goal is to gather insights and determine if there is sufficient interest and demand for your product. 5. Develop a Value Proposition: Based on the market research and validation, refine your product concept and develop a compelling value proposition. Clearly articulate how your product addresses customer pain points, offers unique value, and differentiates itself from existing solutions. 6. Define Product Objectives: Establish clear objectives and goals for your product. These objectives should align with the market opportunity and address the identified customer needs. For example, objectives could include acquiring a certain number of customers, generating revenue, or achieving specific user engagement metrics. This is one of the key foundational steps! 7. Create a Product Roadmap: Develop a product roadmap that outlines the key milestones, features, and deliverables required to bring your product from 0-1. The roadmap should align with your objectives and incorporate feedback and insights gained during the market research and validation process. 8. Assemble a Team: Now we are ready to commit to our idea by investing on a team with the necessary skills and expertise to execute on the product roadmap. It's important to remain flexible and adaptable throughout the process, iterating based on feedback, and continuously validating your assumptions as you move forward.

Validating the problem space sufficiently before dedicating engineering resources is crucial. Indicators that suggest you are ready to proceed include: a clear understanding of customer needs, consistent feedback validating the problem, comprehensive market research and competitive analysis, alignment with business objectives, a potential market size and opportunity, confidence in achieving product-market fit, and risk mitigation through iterative learning. By thoroughly researching the market, gathering feedback from potential users, and assessing the competitive landscape, you can understand the target customers, their pain points, and the viability of your product. Consistent validation from multiple sources strengthens the case for moving forward. Additionally, aligning the problem space with your business objectives ensures strategic coherence. Evaluating market size, growth potential, and customer willingness to adopt your solution provides confidence in the market opportunity.

Projecting revenue for a product that hasn't been shipped yet can be challenging since it involves forecasting future outcomes based on limited information. However, you can utilize several approaches to estimate revenue growth, listing a few of them below: 1. Conduct market research to understand market size, growth rates, and revenue potential. 2. Determine the total addressable market (TAM) and assess revenue potential within each market segment. 3. Define pricing strategy and business model, considering product differentiation and competitive pricing. 4. Estimate customer acquisition and conversion rates to determine the number of customers and revenue generation. 5. Develop financial projections based on revenue drivers, growth assumptions, and customer acquisition rates. 6. Seek insights from industry experts and consider industry benchmarks for revenue growth patterns. 7. Communicate the inherent uncertainty of revenue projections and regularly update them as more data becomes available. Any revenue projections for a product that hasn't been shipped yet inherently carry a higher level of uncertainty. Make sure to communicate the associated risks and assumptions to the leadership team. Regularly review and update revenue projections as more data becomes available and the product gains traction in the market.

These are based on my experience: * The most important one, that is often overlooked is expecting immediate success - this can result in unnecessary pressure and compromises in quality * Insufficient customer research/validation - being too carried away with the idea leading to confirmation bias * Poor stakeholder communication, expectation setting - resulting in unrealistic timelines/expectations. * Overengineering or scope creep. * Lack of clear product vision.

I typically take the following into consideration for prioritising (in no particular order): * Assess impact: Evaluate the magnitude and consequences of each problem. * Align with business objectives: Prioritize problems that align with strategic goals. * Evaluate urgency: Consider the severity and time sensitivity of each problem. * Consider feasibility: Assess the resources and complexity required to address each problem. * User feedback and demand: Give priority to problems frequently reported by users. * ROI considerations: Assess the value and potential return on investment for solving each problem. * Evaluate dependencies: Consider if solving one problem is a prerequisite for others. The final prioritisation score is a weighted average of all the above. Having said that, its important to adopt an iterative approach: Continuously reassess and reprioritize as new information becomes available.

Obtaining feedback to validate problems and challenges is crucial for product development. Here are some methods I usually employ for gathering feedback and validating assumptions: 1. User Interviews: Conduct one-on-one interviews with potential users or target customers. Ask open-ended questions to understand their pain points, challenges, and needs. Probe deeper to uncover specific problems they face and evaluate whether your product idea addresses those issues. 2. Surveys and Questionnaires: Design surveys or questionnaires to gather feedback at scale. Use tools like online survey platforms to reach a wider audience. Craft targeted questions to validate assumptions, gauge interest, and understand the relevance of your product idea to potential users. 3. Prototyping and User Testing: Create prototypes or minimum viable products (MVPs) to gather hands-on feedback. Conduct user testing sessions where participants interact with your prototype and provide feedback on its usability, features, and overall experience. Observing user behavior and gathering real-time feedback can help validate assumptions and identify areas for improvement. 4. Focus Groups: Organize focus groups with a small group of individuals who represent your target audience. Facilitate discussions around their pain points, challenges, and needs related to the problem your product aims to solve. Encourage open dialogue and note their feedback, insights, and suggestions. 5. Online Communities and Forums: Engage with online communities, forums, or social media groups where your target audience congregates. Participate in discussions, ask questions, and seek feedback. These platforms provide opportunities to interact directly with potential users, gain insights, and validate assumptions. 6. Early Adopter / Beta Programs: Offer a limited release or early access program to a select group of users who are willing to provide feedback and insights. This allows you to gather feedback from users who are genuinely interested in your product and are more likely to provide valuable insights. 7. Analytics and User Behavior Tracking: Implement analytics tools within your product to collect quantitative data on user behavior, usage patterns, and engagement metrics. Analyzing this data can provide insights into user preferences, pain points, and areas of improvement. It's essential to listen actively, keep an open mind, and critically evaluate the feedback received. Look for common themes or patterns that emerge from multiple sources of feedback, and use the insights gained to iterate and refine your product idea accordingly.

Several factors come into play in deciding this: 1. Product target market: B2B / B2C / Enterprise Striking the right balance between customisation, integrations along with data security and legal compliance are key for B2B, Enterprise markets. However for Consumer markets, a mass market appeal driven by modern UX is often desirable. 2. Product maturity phase: 0 > 1 / Maintain and growth phase / Market leader For a 0>1 market, the focus is always on validating the base hypothesis on product market fit, building a functional proof of concept would be good enough. However the focus would often shifts to scale, data security with continued market differentiation as the product matures. 3. Immediate goals, focus areas along with key stakeholder expectations: Acquire customers, grow userbase / Get profitable / Customer satisfaction & delight / Competitive differentiation (first to market?) / Riding the current market trend 4. Effort vs impact it can deliver Ultimately, the decision to ship a product or solution is often made by considering a combination of these factors, in addition to the specific requirements and constraints of the project and stakeholders involved. It's crucial to strike a balance between achieving a high level of readiness and meeting the desired timeline for delivery.