Keep it simple 🤷

Amsterdam Product Club #17

“Playing football is very simple, but playing simple football is the hardest thing there is.”
Johan Cruyff.

Cruyff building products

The greatest mind in football had a way with words. His observation that simplicity is the highest form of sophistication, but also the hardest thing to attain, is bang on.

I think the same goes for product-building. Keeping things very simple, both for you, your users, your team, and your finance team is the hardest thing to do.

My view on product building

December always puts me in a reflective mood. So far I’ve used this newsletter to go deep on specific topics. But what is the underlying model that puts it all together? What’s my overarching model of building great products? That’s what I’m sharing this month.

My model is clearly biased: I’m doing what works for me, in my unique context. I’ve been building digital products as a job for the past 5 years. Before that, I shipped many side-projects and failed startups while studying. This is what I’ve learned along the way.  

I believe that the underlying principles of building a successful digital product are simple. You need to solve a problem people are willing to pay for, and you need to make sure they can find and use that solution. Simple as that.

But each of those elements presents a challenge: How do you know what problems your users have? How do you know if, and how much, they’re willing to pay for it? How can you make sure they find and pick your product? And what are the things that could prevent them from figuring out how to use it?

The problem with simplicity
The problem is that nobody really wants to think through these questions at their core. They’re too simple, and thus too much work to figure out. We prefer to copy a complete playbook that has worked for a famous company, as anything off the shelf saves us the hard work of thinking deeply. Or we don’t want to get strategic at all, and just take action (believe me, I was here once). But both approaches have their flaws:

1. The Guru Playbook
   It’s very appealing to adopt a ready-made playbook promoted by great product leaders or entrepreneurs. What we conveniently forget is that people like Sam Altman, Brain Chesky, or Elon Musk are absolute outliers. They’re very talented and have insane work styles. What works for them will likely not work for you and your team. Simply because we don’t have the same talent themselves, or a team building a SAAS is different from a team sending rockets to Mars.

2. The “just-do-it” method
   The other school of thought is to just do it. We don’t have time for all that frivolous thinking work. We need to execute. So we don't clearly articulate the problems of our users and how they think. And by doing so we risk going off in the wrong direction. Or creating misalignment on what’s important between you and your team, or you and your leadership. This will lead to a lot of friction and wasted effort, which we will try to execute our way out of. This won’t work.

How I keep it simple
So I’m trying to take the lens of these core questions when building products. How can we create something that solves a problem users are willing to pay for? And how can we make sure they find it, and know how to use it?

Overlaying this lens on all your problems will keep you sharp: Is what we’re doing important for one of these main areas? Or is it work-around-the-work? (the type of work that Daniel Eck is trying to cut out at Spotify by laying off 15% of staff).

This is how I try to keep it simple:

1. Solve one problem at a time
   We humans can only hold one main idea in our heads at any given time. Make sure it’s the most important one.

   1. Keep the main thing the main thing
      Define what your main thing is, and do it better than anyone else. If you do this long enough you will automatically differentiate yourself from competitors. 

   2. Ignore the shiny stuff
      It’s very tempting to jump on trends you see flying around on tech Twitter. But will they really help your users? A good example of this is Linear’s first AI feature “similar issues”.
      Instead of going fancy on generative AI they looked at how a new technology could improve the existing workflow of their users (the main thing). I’m trying to use the simplicity lens.

2. Keep a high pace
   The value of your product is created by executing. Your results are measured against time. This is why you need to keep a high pace in everything you do. 

   1. Keep shipping fast
      Make sure you and your team regularly improve the product for your users. Apart from creating a product that’s actually better, it will also help build trust with your users. They see that the product is evolving and that their problems are being solved. This will make them retain.

   2. Break work down into small parts
      Every project that ever took too long was because it was too big. It was too big because we didn’t put in the effort to break it down to its core parts. Big projects that came out well did so because we broke them down into small chunks. Better for you, your team, and your users.

   3. Do it right the first time
      There’s an awful lot of time wasted in redoing previous work. Most often due to sloppy thinking to begin with. Make sure to get things right on the first go. This will save you time in the long run, and save you a lot of mental space too. Plus it will make your user trust you can build a high-quality product. One of the ways to do this is to spend time thinking through new projects with your team, something we do in project kick-off meetings. These are preceded by a clear project spec, and a video explaining the proposed project plan. Post-mortems (a form of inversion) are another good way to avoid preventable issues.

3. Listen to your users
   Users are your lifeline, so *really* listen to them already. This means communicating with them often, synthesizing what you learn and sharing that with your team. And with sharing I don’t just mean sending, but also making sure it lands and is understood.

   1. Make it super easy for users to give feedback
      Put a button in your app to let users give feedback. Don’t put in a huge Typeform list, keep it simple. Focus on what your user wants (a better product). 

   2. Make the feedback easily accessible
      The feedback your product is getting should be visible to everyone. Don’t hoard information, share it openly. Yes, it might hurt sometimes to hear that a part of your product sucks, but it will keep you sharp. The more direct the feedback we take from reality, the better. And the better informed your team is, the better their solutions will be.
      Making feedback accessible also means you need to synthesize it. What are the core problems? What are users trying to accomplish? There are many good methods to doing so, I like to use Toyato’s five whys sometimes.

   3. Review it often
      Review feedback often. Get a fixed rhythm in doing so. Compile a report so it’s easy for everyone (with limited time) to consume what your users are saying. I do this every week (with ~50 feedback points per week. I also use excerpts from this report when presenting roadmaps or new projects.

   4. Communicate back to your users
      When people leave feedback, let them know you got it! Keep a list of users with a certain problem or request. Send them a message once you’ve solved it, or once you have a design for how you might want to solve this. This allows you to get feedback and build a connection with them. There are always people on the other side of the wire.

4. Respect growth and monetization
   Your product has 0 impact when nobody uses it. And the chance of your product being around for a long time is small if you’re not making any money.

   1. Make sure users find your product
      For too long I was just focussed on building the perfect product. Now I see that growth and distribution is the main thing in making your product successful. Treat it as such. Make sure relevant users find your product, so it can grow. If your product isn’t growing it’s your fault. Do better.

   2. Make sure people pay for your product
      If your product isn’t generating revenue, it’s probably not valuable enough yet.
      Find a way to make it more valuable so that people start paying for it. Otherwise, it will be very hard to build and maintain it long-term (it’s no longer 2021). 

I’m striving to build product the way Cruyff made his teams play football: Simple, but in such a way we might win the Champions League.

Closing off the year

So, this is what's been working for me and the projects I've tackled. Fast forward five years, and I might read this again and think, "Wow, I had so much more to learn." I hope I will. So take this as inspiration, not a blueprint. Find the bits and pieces that click with you here, and run with them.

And most importantly for December, take a break and chill with your family and friends. Have a good laugh, share stories, and take a moment to look back at your year. Here’s to a great 2024 🥂

What happened in Dutch tech? 🇳🇱

1. New early-stage VC fund launched 💰
   (Former) Dutch operators launch €12M fund for seed-stage companies. Read more here

2. Crazy AI-bioscience startup got big funding round 🧬
   Jelle Prins & co are working on something very exciting. Check out the announcement here

3. APC product management course 2.0 launched 📚
   After 2 successful pilot cohorts, we’re now launching our Product school in partnership with some of Amsterdam’s best startups. You can find more info here

Internet things I enjoyed 🤓

1. Lego block builder
   Fun AI toy to create Legoboxes of random scenes: LEGOboxgenerator.com

   

   Here’s one of an APC meetup

2. More AI video magic
   Transform yourself into George Clooney (or anything else), with fal.ai

3. Run your own AI models locally
   LMSstudio makes it super easy to run models locally