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Product

Product is at the center of your startup. Your product is what it’s all about. When I say product, I don’t talk about the idea. Idea on its own is worth nothing. Ideas are a dime a dozen – everyone has them but not everyone is able to bring their idea to life.

Gates Sign at the Bangkok Airport

Execution is the key – that’s what startups are all about. If you cannot execute your idea, you won’t have a company and won’t make the world, hopefully, a better place.

Your product is not the heart but a brain of your startup. Without your product your company is brain-dead. Even if it looks shiny, it’s not operational.

The art of the product development is to deliver a working solution as fast as possible by keeping an eye on the big picture. Keep in mind that during the development of your product, your idea will transform as well. Don’t be too stubborn – otherwise you may get stuck and frustrated.

Products are hard, good products are even harder. They are hard to build, hard to launch and even harder to continuously improve.

Products solve problems. Good products solve hard problems. Hard problems are not easy to solve, so good products are hard to build.

According to Marty Cagan – the founder of the Silicon Valley Product Group has the best definition of a successful product – the best products exist on the intersection of following qualities: – Valuable – Something that our customers will choose to use – Usable – Easy to figure out how to use – Feasible – Buildable using the technology stack and skills we have – Viable – Workable for our stakeholders within our budget, legal, ethical, and reputational constraints

Summary

Idea alone is worth nothing

Your idea will change when you start executing it

Good products are hard to build

Launch early

You can launch multiple times

Founding Team

If you’re long enough in the tech business, you should have heard a tale about 3H that every startup needs. In order for a startup to become successful it needs 3 founders: – a Hacker – a Hustler – a Hippie (they call it Hipster nowadays but don’t follow the crowd)

If you think about this setup for a bit, this constellation will definitely start making sense.

Let’s see what every one of those 3H actually entails.

<img style=“width=”100%” src=“./assets/founders.jpeg”/> Mbanq Founders at the Mbanq Labs Hackathon in Singapore

A Hacker

Let’s start with the easiest one. A Hacker is your CTO – someone who will build the product, someone who cares about building cool products, someone who understands how to spend time efficiently.

Some tend to spend too much time over optimizing the early stage product. Scalability doesn’t matter when you didn’t find your product fit yet. When you over optimize too early in the process, you’re wasting at least double the time by not executing on your idea, losing time on unnecessary bells and whistles before having found your product market fit.

As you may know, startup is all about the execution. The faster you can execute, the higher are the chances of your startup to become successful.

So a hacker should know how to cut corners in a smart way. There is a huge difference between your MVP and your final product.

Building products is hard, building valuable products is even harder – that’s exactly why every hacker needs a counterpart – a hippie.

A Hippie

Who’s a hippie you may ask. If you are too young and don’t know who Steve Jobs was, I pity you and recommend you start getting to know about him.

Up to this date, I personally consider him to be the best product person ever – you can argue, I don’t care.

So, if you haven’t seen The Lost Interview yet – do it now, you won’t regret it.

One of the questions Steve was asked is Are you a hippie or a nerd – so when the best product person of all time considered himself a hippie, we can assume that a hippie is your CPO.

A Hustler

This one is almost as clear as a hacker position. Your hustler is your Head of Sales. A very important person on your team. Don’t be disillusioned – build it and they will come is a fallacy. In the world full of similar products and never-ending competition, you need a hustler who will sell your product to your customers and your idea to the investors.