Warren Leow: Slides on Product Management based on experiences at Inmagine, Amazing Fables, Designs.ai and more.

1. Online Business
Product Management
Some Anecdotal Insights
Warren Leow, Vice President
Inmagine Group
Amazing Fables
Warren.leow@123rf.com

2. My experiences
• Fluentfuture- C2C social network focusing on
language learning
• Project Butterfly- Live-matching C2C dating
platform
• Guru-App- 50+ mobile B2C apps on Google
Play and
• MaGIC- designed, managed and ran some
startup programs
• Inmagine
• Designs.net, TheHungryJPEG - marketplaces
• Stockunlimited- subscription product
• Designs.ai- SaaS product I am NOT a trained product manager,
nor do I follow proper UX/UI
methodology. I just get things done.

3. Basic principles of Product Management are
the same…
https://www.shopify.com/partners/blog/design-sprint
Product Management is NOT rocket science. You just
need to be able to listen, rationalise and prioritise.

4. What am I building exactly?
• How big is the problem or the opportunity?
Lifestyle or mega opportunity
• Can I distill it into two sentences for clarity?
Clarity, communication, core understanding
• Does it make business sense?
Revenue, cost, repeat purchase, basket size
Time, speed, constraints, cost of investment
• Can I validate it?
customers, geography,
competitors, stakeholders

5. First step, establish a feedback loop
1. Identify core value proposition and monetisation model
2. Speak to people about pain points- internal and external
3. Validate via competition or external benchmarks
4. Understand user willingness and ability to pay
5. Sketch things out, write thoughts down, rank them from top to bottom,
arrange them to form order
6. Sleep over the idea and mull over it
7. Launch and iterate again and again
8. Double down on growth channels
9. Go back to step 1 until you can have sufficient clarity on the top 1-2
drivers
Feedback never stops

6. How do I plan for my product?
• Which are the reference products out there?
• Competitors- Do a quick scan of USPs
• Reference cases- Reddit, Product Hunt, Techcrunch, TechinAsia, e27
• How can my product be 2X better or more relevant?
• Can I visualise the step-out improvement?
• by logical sequence always try to cut the length
• By value what is my source of competitive advantage?
• by adjacent parallels If too many parallels, it means you are not focused
• How can I simplify it into components?
• Can my user go from A to Z without this module?
• What is the trade off for each? Time vs Budget vs Opportunity Cost

7. What is a MVP in an online context?
• User can go from A to Z without manual work, i.e. registration to
usage to output
• You have the presentable basics to make you look legit- landing page,
checkout page, T&Cs no excuses nowadays with templates
• You have already cut off unnecessary slack in the core flow; Challenge
yourself 2-3 times on whether a module is necessary
• No need to over-engineer and overthink about setup at the start
• Launch within 12 months. Don’t drag it
• Your users are willing to pay $$$; Nothing beats money as a validator
Aim to get the first 100 customers

8. How can I build my product?
• How can I ship my product?
• Create MVP myself- coder or non-coder
• Outsource MVP to a freelancer
• Build my own team
• Hire an agency to create MVP
• How can I fund my product?
• Self-funding/bootstrap with time- Wordpress, Shopify, Wix, Magento etc.
• Self-funding/bootstrap with money- Fiverr, Friendly contacts, Agencies
• Self-funding with equity- Friend, Relative, Strangers
• Raise money from VCs to build the product- Unless you are a superstar, no
one is going to give you money without proving something first
If you can’t get a basic product out yourself,
you shouldn’t be running a startup. Go work for someone else.

9. Understanding Pareto compromise
Budget for
Outsourcing
Micromanagment
Propensity
to discount
Product
completeness
Find balance
between
leveraging your
own time vs
delegating
You can never
launch a
perfect
product.
Find a balance
based on value
Your job as PM is to find a compromise

10. How do I handle tech people?
• Clarity with Outlined Expectations
• Be exceptionally clear in instructions and alignment
• Sketch and map out your ideas first to have better discussions
• Always have a live view on feature prioritisation
• Feedback, feedback, feedback
• Get internal and external feedback before building
• Solicit regular feedback on work in progress
• Frequent communication and check-ins for them to contribute ideas
• Respect
• Overindex for quality if you want things fast and don’t want to micromanage
• Understand that yield loss is normal and never 100% unavoidable
• Factor in 25% for scope extension and 25% for slippages
• Have 3 strikes policy. Don’t tolerate unresponsiveness and non-performance
Be Clear In Communication

11. Key metrics to focus on when starting off
• There are 5 pirate metrics but your MVP should
focus on 3 of them during the early stages
• Acquisition
• Activation
• Revenue
• Retention
• Referral
• If you can hustle to the first 100 users, it shows
product validation; focus on product improvement
• If you can grow to the first 1000 paying users, it
shows business validation; start shifting towards
acquisition
• If you can grow to first 1000 paying users and retain
30% of them, it shows you have a fundable
business; think of scaling it aggressively
Race to $ validation
Product lifecycle
Time
Users

12. Do’s and Don’ts in terms of tech startup
product management
• Focus on building a product which scales; Don’t do social enterprises. 99%
social enterprises are not sustainable as they don’t make $
• Read a lot, keep track of relative competitors and trends. Your ideas will
evolve
• Practice makes perfect. Keep sketching to improve
• When you’re on the wrong track, don’t be afraid to pivot or kill it off
• If you make a mistake, learn when to cut losses
• If you lack direction, take a step back and reevaluate
• Be decisive and committed when making decisions
• Be humble enough to listen, learn and copy

13. Warren’s own 5 principles and 5 rules of
thumb
What is the
core product
built on first
principles?
How can my
product
maximise
value and
simplicity for
users?
What is my
simplest and
shortest
flow?
How can I
quantify and
extract $
from the
value?
How do I
retain
customer
loyalty?
With good product
management, you should
not have to rely
on discounts to survive
If your customer base is
subsidy driven, your
product & business model
are screwed up
Your product must have
50-60% gross profit
margin to be a viable
profitable business
Don’t just build a good
product. Be a good
marketer. Product is 50%
of the equation.
Don’t reinvent the wheel.
Don’t be arrogantly
stubborn. Don’t take too
much pride in your work.

14. Check out Designs.ai soon…

15. Check out www.amazingfables.com