In “MVPs – Refresh, Reimagine or Retire?” we went through some of the evolution of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) framework and how it might be in need of some polishing here or there. Now it’s time to look at where.
[Read more…]MVPs – Refresh, Reimagine or Retire?
TL;DR:
- If there’s no market, then your methodology doesn’t matter, MVP or otherwise.
- This article is going to be a bit about MVP history and where it’s gotten a bit tired. (Or really more about where the idea is misused.) If you’re just interested in some recent thinking on alternatives and extensions, skip this article entirely and go to the Part 2: MVPs – Something.Next.
How is MVP Feeling These Days?
You’ve seen the clickbait headlines… “MVP is Dead. Long Live MVP” Etc. I saw one recently and since I work with several startups that’s what motivated me to create these two posts.
The Minimum Viable Product idea was the new bright shiny object once upon a time, spawning all manner of adherents. It got going around 2001 with Frank Robinson and Steve Blank, but didn’t get popular until 2011 with Eric Ries’ book “The Lean Startup.” Like many management innovations, everyone likes to pile on. There are just two, maybe three issues…
- It’s rare that one tool can solve every problem.
- It’s hard to measure. (We see the winners, but does anyone really know how many fail?)
- Time. We learn things with time, but don’t necessarily adapt well.
It’s time to look into this. Maybe make a few tweaks. For the record, I’m an Eric Ries, Marty Cagan, Dan Olsen fan. So this isn’t about MVP bashing. If you haven’t, read their books and blogs to realize the way some talk and go about MVP is not what they espoused. Ries’ ideas are about rapid experimentation and validated learning, Cagan about product leadership, empowered teams with discovery and understanding user needs. Olsen expands this with ideas of problem-solution fit and more. (If getting Cagan’s “Inspired” make sure to get the latest edition.)
None of them say just fire up your task management software and have at it.
Over time we’ve found holes in the framework, pushed against some edges, and maybe run into a wall here or there. Often perceived problems aren’t the model, but poor interpretation and use. Or perhaps it’s the wrong tool for a challenge. MVP should help validate ideas in the marketplace as early as practicable. What could be wrong with that? Well, if it’s just used as a shortcut to produce something minimal, but not at all viable, maybe you’ve wasted more time and development cycle costs than you would have with better research. Even if your building and iterating early tests super fast with AI prototyping tools, you might just be headed into a wall faster.
It’s time to take another look. First, we’ll go over some basics and where some aging, but still valid, ideas fall down somewhat. Then we’ll look at enhancements to fill in these gaps.
[Read more…]Content Moderation: Management Checklist
Content Moderation for New Products
This is a follow up to “Content Moderation: Where We Are Now.“
If your product has user generated content (UGC), moderation is an essential burden. This is likely the last thing on your mind. You and your team have a vision of some great new thing. Dealing with the dark side here is a time suck distraction and cost. But deal with it you must. Products small to large haven’t fully solved this. The large scale social networks are the lightning rods, but all services contend with this. And you take pain from at least two sides; managing moderation itself, and the criticism from those who think you’re doing it wrong. Maybe too little. Maybe too much. Most likely just not “their” way. You need to have communications management in place to deal with this as well.
Spoiler Alert: At the end of this writeup is a link to a sample of how code classification for moderation can work.
[Read more…]Content Moderation: Where We Are Now
This pair of articles is for product managers who might deal with content moderation issues. We’re not going too deeply into the hot debate about moderation at the major platforms. There’s no shortage of folks throwing in on that. Though we’ll dive in somewhat to take away lessons. We’re going to look more at what’s going on for those who are practitioners as managers and builders, not observers.
Rising Volume of Posts and Debate
Besides the top blogworthy targets of debate, there’s tens of millions of sites with some form of user generated content. (Estimate based on Netcraft’s 2024 Web Server survey. Over a billion websites across 270 million domains. If we look at categories of sites that likely have UGC, it’s maybe 40% Even just half of that is still 50 million.)
This means many of us who don’t happen to be Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, etc. have the benefit of not being hauled before Congress to testify on our content moderation policies. However we still must deal with the issues. Especially since manipulation isn’t just about politics, it’s serious dollars. Among the statistics CrowdRiff reports, they include the GrandView Research estimate of 2023 UGC market at $5.36 billion, growing at a 29%+ CAGR through 2030.
[Read more…]Content Moderation: Product History
This is mostly for product managers who might be involved with products that have content moderation involved. Given the increased pitch around this topic right now, having built or managed several products with these features, I thought I’d do a series on some of the issues involved. This first part will be historical. If you’re not into that, you can skip to an upcoming article, (once I write it), to go right to some suggestions.
Our collective societal debate over content moderation moving from a simmering debate to a boiling over mess was inevitable. As one of the first product people to be faced with managing consumer masses as they gained access to the open internet, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at how we got here and where we might go next. Especially because so many of us working in product management have some degree of this issue to deal with. You don’t have to be a Facebook or Twitter or Reddit to face issues in these areas.
[Read more…]Strategic Responses to GenAI from Search
I initially planned to write about how Generative AI (GenAI) might impact traditional search in a classic startup vs. incumbent scenario. Over time, as the landscape rapidly evolved, first I shared thoughts on “Search Tools in a GPT World” and then “Traditional Search vs. GPT Business Models.” This all leads to the obvious question… what are traditional search engines doing and what else might they do to respond?
Traditional Search vs. GPT Business Models
What About Business Models?
In the first part of this article series, “Search Tools in a GPT World,” we looked at Search Tools in a product environment where AI GPTs are clearly on a tear. Now we’ll look at how technology and consumer sentiment shifts are impacting economics and business models.
The rise of GPTs introduces significant shifts in business models underpinning search and information retrieval. Search engines operate primarily on ad-driven models, based on traffic, clicks, and ranking. This impacts income to both search engines and the publishers to whom they drive traffic. We’re going to focus on the search engines themselves. In contrast to traditional search, GPTs seem mostly out of the starting gate with pay-per-use, subscription, or freemium models. This may be a reflection of the resource-intensive nature of generating real-time responses. It’s a simpler business model than search, which depends on a complex ad services ecosystem. As well, ads alone might not be sensible from a P&L perspective. Let’s review some of the business models.
[Read more…]Search Tools in a GPT World
I’ve always enjoyed search, both as user and builder. So from a product perspective, I’ve been fascinated by its evolution and the recent fires lit under the traditional tools thanks to the ascendence of AIs. This will be a three part series. First, Search Tools in a GPT world, then business models, and lastly, how traditional search might respond.
So… How might the “traditional” Search industry evolve in the face of AI GPTs? Let’s take a historical tour to consider some customer pain points and values that various tools deal with and how these are morphing. It’s not as simple as GPTs are better search and it might be useful to consider other technology shifts. Did Video Kill the Radio Star? Maybe. But video didn’t kill radio. At least, not completely. Yet. OK, yes, perhaps the shift decimated revenues, but niche use cases survived through both television and even through more recent digital streaming. Even satellite radio was also able to find a place. Will the information retrieval industry experience something similar with what’s been billed as an even more disruptive technology? Or is this truly something radically different if we consider this shift on the level of industrial revolution?
Will the future of Search follow a similar path? Perhaps somewhat, but maybe not quite the death blow some have suggested given there seem to be a lot of niche values for Search. AI driven GPTs, (Generative Pre-trained Transformers), are already changing the search landscape. But their evolution is not as simply obvious as “this is a better search” for at least two related, but separate reasons. First, GPTs can likely excel past traditional search for a wide variety of use cases. But perhaps not all. And second, GPTs can and are used for significantly different use cases than search.
[Read more…]Customer Quests Part 2: Solutions for the Journey
The Search Problem
In Part 1, we explored the idea of reframing customer journeys as a quests; purposeful pursuits with challenges, obstacles, and transformative moments. Now we’ll look at some ideas to possibly solve challenges along the way and empower customers navigating decision-making complexities. Let’s focus on brands as guides, clearing obstacles and providing tools for success.
The Search Problem Revisited
Every quest starts with a need and evolves into a search. Consumers gather information from diverse sources to evaluate their options and make decisions. This search, however, is often full of friction points that can delay or derail the process. In crafting better experiences, we should understand not just what customers seek, but how they seek it and barriers they encounter along the way. The sources consumers rely on during the search stage can vary depending on the type of purchase, the consumer, and the circumstances.
I’d like to introduce the idea of some general quest archetypes. This first framing of this idea is probably not exhaustive. Individual customer personas are useful, but I’d like to try to focus more on general types as that can also help us figure out what we need to provide. I expect to expand and refine this over time.
[Read more…]Customer Quests Part 1: Decision Making as a Search Problem
The ideas for the following thoughts came out of a search project, not a customer journey mapping effort. But the ‘filter bubble‘ idea came up in conversation and it struck me how we often only find that which we’re capable of seeing based on our perspective. And even a subtle shift can make a difference in helping us reach our goals. So here you go…
In Marketing and Product Management we often refer to the Customer Journey. Maybe we should be thinking about a Customer Quest instead. And treat the process as a search problem.
This may seem to be a subtle difference; somewhat more about attitude than a significant departure of definition. But consider the value in just a small shift. Our outlook can impact how we think about and handle customer touch points. A journey is a trip or process of traveling from one place to another, whereas a quest is a purposeful pursuit. For our purposes, the quest is more about the motivation and goal, whereas the journey is just the path we’re following trying to solve a search problem. But we’re often not just following a path. We might be blazing this new trail. Yes, some enjoy the journey. Shopping is fun for some people, maybe a learning or social activity. More so if the category is fun; new skis, golf clubs, etc. For commercial goods and services, we might enjoy the journey as we learn useful things on our quest. Nevertheless, we didn’t choose a meandering cruise with the all-you-can-eat buffet. We’ve got a goal. The cliche for a variety of things in life may be “it’s not about the destination, it’s the journey.” That’s a nice thought. But not always true. Sometimes we just want to get things done. Just mapping a consumer path and trying to inject a marketing message here or there might not be enough.
If you’re still not sure about buying off on this concept, think about your own behavior over the past year or so. Have you started trying out Generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc? Have you used them to solve any challenges you’ve had as a consumer of goods or services? If so, why did you try this new tool? What was traditional search or the company’s customer service not doing for you? If you’ve done this, then you’ve experienced exactly the kind of challenge we’re talking about here. There was a search/discovery need we all had that was not being met. (Or was being poorly handled.) And no one was really helping us adequately. We got lucky and the world gave us yet another tool. The lesson though, is that we had existing unrecognized needs. What else are we missing as product creators and marketers in terms of customer information seeking needs? Maybe… maybe just this subtle shift in thinking about this aspect of customer experience can help find out.
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