Product Presentation

Overview: –

In today’s lesson, we will be covering what goes into planning and ideating a product, the fundamentals and examples and then conclude with an activity of presenting your idea to stakeholders. Key concepts covered will be: –

1. Market
2. Market Size
3. Product Market Fit
4. Minimum Viable Product

What is Market?

Market is a place where businesses and consumers barter products & services at a price. Traditionally, markets were geographically located but with the advent of technology and flourishing businesses, markets are omnipresent and categorized based on industries.

As a product manager, you should understand your market (existing or potential) and know the market size.

What is Market Size?

Market Size is a concept and a metric used by product managers and product orgs to gauge a market that is suitable for their product to flourish & with a decent number of customers to support and run the business.

“… decent number of customers to support and run the business” ?

Yes, as product manager you need to thoroughly evaluate the market by asking yourself “What can the market afford ? “

What can the Market afford?

Before you as a Product Manager or an organization decide to build a product based on any business hypothesis and decide to put a price tag on the product/service you plan to offer, you need to understand Customer’s willingness to pay.

“Will my potential customer(s) pay this price for the product ? “

How should I as a Product Manager set a price ?

Setting a price for a product/service is one of the most difficult task while setting up a business and launching a product.

It primarily depends on the business philosophy a business, a founder or a product manager believes, practices and wants to institutionalize it with the product. On one end of this spectrum, some believe to capture the market by selling their product at a ridiculously discounted price and let economies of scale do the magic in future, while on the other end of the spectrum, some believe in asking for a price upfront for the entire or key features of a product and service the moment they enter the market.

But ideally, one should consider pricing a product/service such that the proceeds from selling this product/service should account for and cover the cost of : –

1. Developing the Product from scratch
2. Running the business

Competition

When it comes to launching a new product in a market, especially when it’s in a matured market, you as a PM need to think and consider the following carefully: –

1. Are you entering a market which is nothing less than a bear pit with competitors preying on each other?
2. Is it mature enough where the existing players are pivoting & moving out due to stagnation, lack of growth opportunity or their business rationale ?

Therefore, along with keeping an eye, a close one on the competitors, you need to also consider Product Market Fit.

What is Product Market Fit?

As quoted by David Rusenko, founder of Weebly,

Make something that a lot of people want

While Michael Seibel, Co-founder of Twitch states Product Market Fit as : –

Being in the market with a product that satisfies the market

So what we can infer from these two definitions is that if a product has a great market fit, it will correlate with having a large & a happy customer base while the product satisfies the customer’s needs.

It is also important to build & sell the product in a way that it justifies its price, it’s easy to use and lastly, it is part of a market that will support the business.

Now that we know what needs to be thought of before building a product and launching it in a market, how should we enter a market? What should we launch?

It is a minimal viable product, an MVP

Minimal Viable Product (MVP)

How would you gauge your hypothesis about a problem & solution you’ve drafted on paper, be a great solution that will actually solve a problem and make money for you?

One answer to this can be, Well, do a thorough survey, talk to people, invest money, raise some money and build a product in a year or two which you think is the best solution and hope it all of it and makes you money.

Or, build a product which may not look good, may not have everything you’ve thought of but it functions to solve the problem & it does it really well.

The second one, is a product which is called an MVP.

An MVP is just a bare minimal product with features that simply solve the problem correctly and has no bells and whistles on it.

The rationale behind building an MVP is to launch something (a product) quickly, learn from the users and then iterate development to improve the product considering the user feedback & behavior.

When building a tech product’s MVP, keep in mind that it should: –

1. Be able to be built fast, very fast
2. It has very limited features, with the core solution being the only feature
3. It should captivate attention of at least a small set of needy users.

Also, in order to build an MVP correctly, you should : –

1. Ensure the development is timeboxed.
2. Write specifications thoroughly.
3. Butcher the specifications to keep them minimum enough to simply solve the problem.
4. Do not fall in love with MVP.

Activity

As we’re done with the theory, let us actually start building a product together and learn things practically. Today, we will start with presenting our product’s idea through a product presentation to our stakeholders and in the next chapter, articulate the features as user stories, encapsulated in Product Requirement Document (PRD).

Background (Use Case)

An online laundromat service that allows customers to locate and select laundromats within 3km radius of their homes.

We will present it’s presentation by encapsulating what we’ve learnt.

Slide Notes: –

S3 – Although many of us know that there are businesses offering these services, we quickly assume the high price associated with the online pick up and drop laundry service and as consumers we’re almost always right about it.

S4 – No one wakes up looking forward to do the laundry. Whether it’s on your own or dropping it off to the nearest laundromat near your house or even just collect and hand it over to the laundry man who’d collect and deliver. It is a boring and a mundane job. At the same time, all the major players in online space charge a premium high enough to resent the need to opt for. Look around you, ask people around you, how many of them actually use an online laundry service?

S5 – Look at the premium two of our potential competitors charge. The laundry basket charge Rs 79 for pick up and delivery alone, Rs 12 for Regular Steam Press and Rs 30 for Heavy Press. On the other hand, Laundrokart vary prices based on type of apparels with an added delivery charge.

Rest, all the remaining slides are self explanatory.

Takeaways

We learnt everything that needs to be thought of and considered before considering to build a product. Following that, we identified a problem, identified a use case for it and proposed a product to our stakeholders.

In the next chapter

We will articulate our proposal in a Product Requirement Document, list down the requirements as user stories and further understand what goes into writing a user story.