Building Product After "Product-Market Fit"

BUILDING PRODUCT POST PMF MORNING

BUILDING PRODUCT AFTER “PRODUCT-

MARKET FIT” CASE STUDY OF

SHARETHROUGH’S PROCESS

ROB FAN CTO & Co-founder

Presented by

BUILDING PRODUCT POST PMF

@ROBFAN @SHARETHROUGH

BACKGROUND

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120 employees

Founded in 2008

Offices in SF, LA, CHI, NYC, LON

Voted Best Places to Work

AdWeek’s “Native Ad Platform of the Year”

Digiday’s “Platform of the Year” Finalist

BACKGROUND

Growth Stats



GARAGE DAYS



THE JOURNEY

Product-Market Fit

$

TIME



THE JOURNEY

Lean Startup

AAARR

Customer Development

MVP

Pivots

Growth Hacking

Product-Market Fit

$

TIMEMost Startup Thinking Only Addresses This Timeframe!



THE JOURNEY

There is life after product market fit.



THE JOURNEY

Pre PMF Post PMF

Green Field (No Debt, No Users)

Technical DebtScalable Code

All New Customers (No Demands)

Existing CustomersDemand Features

No Competitors (or Only Startup Competitors)

Startup and Incumbent Competitors

Customer Feedback Cycles Immediate

Customer Feedback via Liaisons

Small Team (Everyone Knows Why)

Large Team(Clocking In and Out)

Rules are Different



*GASP*

The P-word.



PRODUCT PROCESS

Product Planning Software Development



Ideas Feedback Hunches

Requirements

Product Roadmap

Idea Funnel

PRODUCT PLANNING



• After our vetting process, we call each item a Milestones

• Only items that will take a pair of engineers >= 1 iteration (2 weeks) are included

• Smaller tasks are often bundled into a milestone

• Larger items are explored before entering this process

• Items are business problems, not solutions

= 1 Item of Work

PRODUCT PLANNING



PHASE 1 PHASE 2 PHASE 3 PHASE 4

PRODUCT PLANNING

Product Exec Team Sales

Customer Support Engineers

Quarterly Roadmap



Phase 1: Gathering Ideas

• Strategic vision comes from product exec team

• Iterative items come from department ‘dump and sort sessions’

• Requests are written out, voted on and compiled in a spreadsheet.

• Net result is a spreadsheet of 80 items from large strategic bets to incremental workflow improvements

PRODUCT PLANNING



Phase 2: Shrinking the List

PRODUCT PLANNING

• VP of Product, Engineering, and myself spend a day whittling this list down to 25 items.

• Initial order dictated by the votes casted by each department

• We add another layer of votes onto this list. Based on this criteria:✓ Will this fit our workflow?✓ Supportable?✓ Can we do it well?



Phase 3: Costing the Ideas

PRODUCT PLANNING

• Art to estimating

• Goal is to come up with a dollar cost for each item in the list

• $4 = 1 pair of engineering for an iteration (our iterations are 2 weeks)

• Aim for a conservative estimate. Need to also account for chores, bugs, and small tasks.



Phase 4: “Funding” Ideas

PRODUCT PLANNING

• Half day is allocated for this. Product executive team is in attending in-person.

• Items are printed out as “story cards” and laid out on a table.

• Poker chips represent total engineering capacity. Everyone is given an equal amount of chips.



Phase 4: “Funding” Ideas

PRODUCT PLANNING

• Once we start, a very healthy debate ensues.

• First round of funding:• 50% go completely unfunded.• 40% are half funded.• 10% immediately get funding.

• Keep going until all chips are allocated and stories are fully funded.



ROADMAP EXAMPLE

Cross-Device Targeting

Third-party Behavioral & Demo Targeting

Enhanced Tablet Support Machine-Learning Optimization Algorithms

Article Cards v2 Cards Refresh + Brand Logo

Improved Support for Infinite Scroll

Data Exploration



TAKEAWAYS

So, how is this going?



TAKEAWAYS

• No one wonders what product and engineering are doing.

• Business has confidence in product. Product execution is very low a risk factor in decisions.

• Works very well for our ideas/vision heavy culture.

• Just finished 5th time. We have slipped our schedules by 1-2 milestones, but everyone understands!

Results



TAKEAWAYS

• Executives are allowed to “jump the process.” Can get items straight to Phase 4.

• Keep the product exec team meeting regularly during the quarter.

• When milestones don’t get finish, deduct $$ to finish it up.

• Keep milestones focused on the problem, allow the PM’s and engineers to find the best solution.

• Mid-quarter “must-do” ideas have come up - when they do, we pull a milestone out of the list.

Learnings



TAKEAWAYS

A good process forms a way to repeatably decide, decision-make, and build software that is reliable and somewhat predictable.

Process is needed in a post product-market fit world.



DISCLAIMER

There is no “right” process, only the process that helps you build and ship product.

BUILDING PRODUCT POST PMF GOODBYE

THANKS! @ROBFAN

@SHARETHROUGH