T.A. McCann_ founders institute_2011_product development

T.A. McCann – create something great

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Mental muscles…

• Data accumulation• Resources, features, time• Pattern recognition• Decision making• Coordination • Communications• Measure• Critique, learn and repeat

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Filling in the blanks…

• Customer• Value prop• Feature set• Biz model

• Better than…(existing way or competition)

• What and how will you tell your friends…

• All of this in 140 characters…

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• Know your customers• Create Personas• Engage directly early and often• Use surveys to quantify and test • Create ongoing user interactions/perception

• Find and nurture the new influencers• Social success and promotion on 1XUX

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A valuable target customer

• Business professional• Places high value of relationships (>8/10)• Has significant (>50%) of key relationships outside

company• >5 meetings/week with outside people (more/new is

better)• Uses technology to gain information advantage• Actively builds and manages his network

• Pays monthly information service fees (mobile, CRM, wiki, contact manager… (more is better)

• Roles include (execs, sales, recruiter, PR, journalists, lawyers…)

• Influencer of others and/or small teams• Technical, early but not bleeding edge adopter

• Often fits in GTD category as well• Reads books like “never eat alone” or “4 hour work

week”• Attends “networking” events or activities

People like this include;T.A.BradBuzzKendallBrandtMilesDave Thomas

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http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZTH5BJR

Kevin Spidel

Managing DirectorPatriot Strategieshttp://patriotstrategies.comWashington, DC, USA5300 contacts, 1279 companies

"I am the Managing Director of an international PR firm and am very active on the social web. Gist allows me to cut through the noise and manage my contacts directly. I am able to monitor what matters... the relationship."

Gist user since 11/03/09 – has invited 34 users

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It’s about a process

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Vision to value

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Product planning

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• 6 month corporate and/or product goals• 3 month product roadmap• 1 month themes• 2 week sprints• 1 sprint in Preview for complicated or hard to message

features

• Other options– Alternate Design and Feature sprints– Test after Feature sprint/bug fix during design

• Process notes– W, F, M, W, F

• Plan complete• Design complete• Code complete• Test complete

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Development process…

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Build for an 10 year old

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Tool set

• www.mindjet.com • www.crazyegg.com• www.surveymonkey.com• www.gotomeeting.com• www.zendesk.com (or

www.getsatisfaction.com)• www.skitch.com• www.launchrock.com

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Crazy Egg -

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Making it social…

• Sign in with… (Facebook, Twitter, OpenID…)

• Bring my friends…

• Tweet my success…

• Join the club…

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Happy, but never satisfied

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Beta users

• Engage them early, often and on a regular basis

• Be hyper-critical of who gets in, when

• Bring new users on in groups (200-1000) – test and measure (cohorts)

• Build your user communications models (bi-weekly updates)

• Help them find more users

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The new influencer

• Usually has a day job, writing for passion

• Well connected and socially enabled

• Selling to other influencers as much as customers

• Easily co-opted with “first looks” and attention

• Leverage your own influence to gain theirs

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Make someone else the champion

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Jump on someone else’s message

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Copy the leaders (for some stuff)

MarketingPositioningUser/market dataFeature priorityKey thought leaders

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Track your influencers

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Set big goals

Get connected

Listen and learn

Fail fast and iterate

Persist

Go make something great.T.A. McCann

tam@gist.comwww.gist.com/tamccann