The Overview #65
Hi, I’m James. Thanks for checking out Building Momentum: a newsletter to help startup founders and marketers accelerate SaaS growth through product marketing.
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Too many cooks, and all that.
This is what happens when you have no real insight, and no conviction, about what should happen. Sometimes we have too much information, too much data, too many opinions.
At some point, you just have to call it. What’s going to work best in your opinion?
The majority of decisions are reversible and tunable. They can be adapted or cancelled as needed.
Grant someone (maybe you?) the authority to make a decision, communicate transparently, and push forward.
Recommended customer interview questions
This is a great tip from Samantha Leal, part of her thread on customer interview questions. Ask your customers this, and hear exactly how they describe your product and the value they get from it. A surefire way to build messaging and copy that resonates with your target audience.
Don’t forget to check our my customer interview questions to help you extract juicy insights to guide your Segmentation, Problem Discovery, Problem Validation, and Product Validation work.
Swipe File: Don’t serve burnt pizza
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Consider this analogy that Zhang uses with her students at Stanford: “Say you’re trying to test whether people like pizza. If you serve them burnt pizza, you’re not getting feedback on whether they like pizza. You only know that they don’t like burnt pizza. Similarly, when you’re only relying on the MVP, the fastest and cheapest functional prototype, you risk not actually testing your product, but rather a poor or flawed version of it.”
First Round
The phrase ‘MVP’ is bandied around the SaaS world like nobody’s business. We think it’s a quick and dirty, barely-working product that we can throw in front of customers and see how they like it, before we invest more time in it.
But deliver customers something that fits the brief, but doesn’t actually meet their needs, doesn’t give you the feedback you really need to decide whether you should go ahead or not.
This ‘MVP’ triangle illustration is easy to understand. Your MVP has to deliver a thin slice across the whole experience, ensuring it’s functional, reliable, usable, and delivers value.
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