Presentation I gave April 11th during TechSaturdays meetup in Wroclaw.

1. How to build great products?
Sebastian Kwiecień
Epic Ventures sp. z o.o.
Wrocław, April 11th 2015

2. About Epic Ventures
• Helping tech entrepreneurs with funding and operations
• A broker, a consultant
• Helping with business plans, business models, sales and
fundrising
• A few success stories
– Rised funds for Finpack.pl
– Rised funds for Hatak.pl
– Sold Biblionetka to PWN
– Sold Dziennik Internautów to Infor Biznes
• Lots of consultations on the way

3. How to build great products?

4. The answer seems to be quite
simple…

6. But the execution is far from
being simple…

7. Why do startups fail?
• 9 of 10 startups live no longer than 2 years
• Of those who survive 9 of 10 will not last longer than another 3
years
• Why is it so?

10. Psychological bias
• When we make something up, we usually think we are right

11. Is there remedy for that?

12. Is there some structured way as
to how to succeed?

13. Let’s see how we build products
first…

14. Product Development Model

15. Product Development Model
• Every company launching new products uses some version of
product development model
• This product-centric model was developed in the 20s of last
century, in the middle of century it was adapted by FMCG
companies, and by the end of century also by tech companies
• Unfortunatelly it works only when the market is very well
defined, stable, and the customer is well known
• …which doesn’t fit innovative tech products

16. Why do startups need to take
some other way?
• Startups very often build something nobody needs, so they
really don’t care if its on time or on budget
• So the real purpose of a startup should be to understand what
really should be built – what does customer really need

17. Complimentary approach -
Customer Development

18. Customer Development

19. How is it different from Product
Development Model?
• Failures (iterations?) are OK if you plan to learn from them
• You will fail (iterate?) a few times before you can confirm you
know your customer, market and product hypotheses
• Iterative model

24. Customer Development
summary
• One main purpose: to confirm that there is profitable,
scalable business model for a company/ product
• That was actually lacking in pure Product Development Model

25. Customer Development obstacle
• Do geeks love to sell?
• Meh!
• Talking to people?
• Let’s build a product right now…
•
• Actually you need sales+marketing skills since the very
beginning

26. Wrap-up

27. Lean Startup
• Introduced by Eric Ries
• Based on Steve Blank’s Customer Development
• Main theses
– Lean approach = reduce waste
– Iterative development = Build – Measure – Learn
– Early feedback from real customers
– End-user early feedback = Customer Development

28. How can a startup build great
products?
• Lean approach – reduce waste whenever possible
• Question all assumptions
• Iterative approach
• Measure everything
• Interdisciplinary problem solving (hipster, hacker, hustler)
• Making mistakes is OK if you plan to learn from them
•
• Or simply BUILD IT THE LEAN STARTUP WAY – it’s all there!

29. Bibliography
• Steve Blank “Four Steps To Epiphany”
• Eric Ries “Lean Startup”
• Ash Maurya “Running Lean”
• Alexander Ostervalder “Business Model Generation”
• Alexander Ostervalder “Value Proposition Design”
• Images from appropriate books

30. Questions?
Sebastian Kwiecień
Epic Ventures sp. z o.o.
Phone. 604 102 100
Email. skwiecien@epicventures.pl
Blog. www.SKWIECIEN.PL