Nurture Talent organised StartupYatra with the aim of connecting entrepreneurs with Gurus who have been there done that. 7 sessions hosted by experts from ixigo, Indiamart, IHO, Value360, Delhivery, Payu and 5ideas were hosted by respective CEOs and founders in their offices. This presentation contains Aloke Bajpai's insights for startups on product management.

1. Product
Management

2. It all starts with a vision

3. The Classical Approach
What’s Wrong With This?
Concept/
Seed Round
Product
Development
Alpha/Beta
Testing
Launch/
1st Ship
Product Development
- Create Marcom
Materials
- Create Positioning
- Target market
identification
• Hire PR Agency
• Early Buzz
• Create Demand
• Launch Event
• Branding
• Hire Sales VP
• Hire 1st Sales Staff
• Build Sales
Organization
Marketing
Sales
• Hire First
Bus Dev
• Do deals
Business
Development

4. Build It And They Will Come
• Only true for life and death products
– i.e. Biotech Cancer Cure
– Success is binary and issues are
development risks and distribution, not
customer acceptance
• Not true for most other products
– Software, Consumer, Web
– Issues are customer acceptance and
market adoption

5. An Inexpensive Fix
Focus on Customers and Markets
from Day One
How?

6. Company
Building
Customer
Discovery
Customer
Validation
Customer
Creation
Customer Development is as important as
Product Development
Concept/
Bus. Plan
Product Dev. Alpha/Beta
Test
Launch/
1st Ship
Product Development

7. Customer Development Heuristics
• Stop selling, start listening
• There are no facts inside your building, so
get outside
• Develop for the Few, not the Many
• Earlyvangelists make your company
– And are smarter than you
• The goal for release 1 is the minimum feature
set for earlyvangelists
• Test every hypothesis – be data driven

8. Rapid Prototyping
1. Whiteboard Drawing
2. The Paper Mock
3. Wireframes
4. Functional Mocks
5. Code

9. Change is the only constant

10. Growth=
Iteration

11. Choosing the character
42.3%
16.9%
14.6%
26.1%
0.0%
10.0%
20.0%
30.0%
40.0%
50.0%
A B C D
A the most preferred choice…leads the pack with 42% voting for him
People who chose D (26.1%)…sample 182
Stylish, smart, smiling and good personality. Young, clean and
cool….local lad!
Looks intellectual,
learned (beard),
elderly, mature
Reasons for choosing A: looks knowledgeable, specs add intelligence.
Reliable, Genuine & Experienced. Traveler and prepared as other
add-ons
Looks happy, local
(cap),
approachable

12. Loop in feedback early

13. Loop in feedback early

14. Involve Users in MVP Validation

15. Tools for Quick Iterations
1. Interact with real users !!
2. Fivesecondtest.com
3. Usertesting.com
4. Optimize.ly (A-B Testing)
5. Google Analytics / Chartbeat
6. Clicktale / TeaLeaf
7. Webengage (Feedback management)

16. Quantiative Analytics
• Google Analytics
• Chartbeat
• Flurry
• Set goals / events
• Monitor bounce rates
• Observe funnels

17. Qualitative Analytics
• Measuring Happiness
• How do my users behave ? What do they spend
their time looking at ? Why do they do what they
do ?
• User Interaction / Behaviour (Clicktale/UserFly)
• Net Promoter Score
• Surveys (on-site / off-site)
• Social actions on the website (Likes/Shares)
• Social Media Mentions / Sentiments

18. NPS Example

19. Qualitative Analytics

20. The HEART Framework
• Happiness
– User attitude, qualitative metrics, perceptions
• Engagement
– Behavioral signals, Depth of Interaction, Frequency, Clicks
• Adoption
– % Users who adopt new product / feature, “Get” the product
• Retention
– Returning users / Churn
• Task-Action
– Efficiency, Error Rates, Time Taken, % who complete a specific goal
– Specific metrics / signals critical for your product’s success

21. A Few Things to Remember
1. Everything you launch needs a hypothesis
2. Set Daily, Weekly, Monthly Targets for your
metrics for hypothesis validation
3. Be willing to throw stuff out - test “what can
we remove”
4. Don’t plan assuming success
5. Pivot, Pivot, Pivot

22. Further Reading

23. Thank you
Aloke Bajpai
Chief “Experimentation” Officer
aloke@ixigo.com