Category: Uncategorized

Don’t piss off your power users

I’m one of those weirdos that listens to podcasts at twice the normal speed. I do this because I listen to hours of podcasts a week, and I consume them more quickly this way.

I use Apple’s Podcasts app to listen on my iPhone. When I recently upgraded my iPhone to the beta of iOS 14.3, I was surprised to find this 2x playback feature broken. No matter what setting I chose, podcasts would play at regular speed.


Needless to say, I was quite disappointed. This bug effectively cut my listening efficiency in half. Plus, suddenly everyone seemed to speak s-o s-l-o-w-l-y.

While this was a bug, and Apple did fix it a few days ago, let’s imagine it wasn’t. What if Apple decided to remove this feature intentionally? After all, most people listen to podcasts at normal speed. Those weirdos like me are just the small minority of outlier users. Apple needs to focus on the mainstream, right?

Not quite.

Power users are free advertising. They laud your product to others. They email you feedback at 3AM. They buy a lot of your products. They’re a small minority of your user base but wield an outsized level of influence over the success of your product.

The 2x playback feature is an example of a power user feature. It’s something most people don’t use. But of those that do, chances are they’re fairly serious about podcast consumption. Take a feature like this away intentionally, and those users will, at minimum, likely complain loudly and switch quickly to another podcast app.

The moral of this anecdote: when looking at features to add, extend, or remove from your product, don’t just look at how frequently the feature is used. Also look at the broader behaviors of the users using that feature, including level of engagement. If you have a small group of users enthusiastically using a feature, don’t take it away. You’ll just piss them off.

Treat your time like investors treat money

When we review strategic plans at Redfin, Glenn reminds us that he wants to behave more like an allocator of capital. This means he wants to evaluate different ways Redfin can spend its money, the potential return for those investments, and then decide what will return the most.

That may seem like a cold way to decide what to do and not do. In truth, we consider much more than just return on capital invested when making strategic decisions. We’ll pass on investing in something that doesn’t make a customer’s buying or selling experience meaningfully better, or an agent’s work experience better. But thinking about return on capital is a good balance to avoid getting too attracted to interesting ideas that have a low chance of paying off.

Time is your scarce resource

As a product manager, you inevitably have more to do than there is time in which to do it. You have user research to conduct, designs to review, specs to write, metrics to evaluate, and roadmaps to put together. You have asks from other teams to manage. You have new people to ramp up. You have random issues in production that your team needs guidance on.

For this problem, I like to think of myself not as an allocator of capital, but as an allocator of another scarce resource: time.

Do your due diligence

When faced with a decision about where to spend your time, think about what return you’ll get for that time investment. Ask yourself the following questions:

  1. Cost: How much time will this take? Is this a high-confidence estimate or could it take much more or less time depending on unknown things?
  2. Value: How valuable is the thing that gets returned for putting the time in? Why?
  3. Expertise: Will you be the most effective if you spend time on this? Or, is there someone better suited that can do it faster and/or better?
  4. Opportunity: What else could you be doing, if you weren’t doing this? Are those things going to return something that’s more valuable?

Saying no is necessary

Investors want to put their money in more things than they are able. They have to say no to some investment options in order to say yes to others.

As an allocator of time, you’ll need to do the same. Saying no to doing something means you get to say yes to something else and give it your full focus. Saying no also may mean you need to find someone else to do it, or get agreement that it can wait.

Make your investments public

Make a list of the main things you’re driving, and where you draw the line below which items remain unfunded.

If your manager or a colleague wants you to invest in something new, share with them your list of where your time is currently allocated, and ask the above questions: what’s the new item’s cost and return, who’s best for it, and is it worth more than current investments?

Having a focused, high-return list of investments of your time is the way you’ll make the most impact as a product manager. As a bonus, it should also help you stay balanced and avoid overwork.

What product managers should do in their first month

Congratulations! It’s your first day at your new product manager job. You’re excited about the company and its mission. You’re looking forward to meeting your team. Your new hire orientation is done. Now what?

Starting a new job can be overwhelming. It can feel like a firehose of information is hitting you in the face every day. Where should product managers focus their time in their first month? Here’s my list.

Meet the right people

Product managers need to learn to be effective in their organizations. That is hard to do without knowing and working with the right people. This goes beyond your immediate team of engineers and designers.

On your first day, talk to your manager and find out two things:

  1. Who are the people outside your team you should work with?
  2. Who are the stakeholders that are interested in making sure you succeed?

#1 may include people in marketing, business development, operations, data science, and the field. They will help you figure out what products to build and how to deliver them to customers. #2 may be leaders in these or other parts of the organization. You may not work with them every day, but they are good sources of feedback on your plans.

Know your customer

To build great products, you need to know your customers and what they want. It’s good to spend time reading customer research that your colleagues have already amassed. But, there’s no substitute for doing your own research. Reading product reviews, driving usability studies, traveling to field offices, and doing first-hand interviews are all good ways to know your customer. Don’t forget to bring what you learn back to your team. Often, you’ll have something new to share.

Ship a quick feature

The best way to figure out how to get things done at your new job is to go through the motions of researching, designing, building, and shipping a feature. Even if you’re a manager, shipping a feature will reveal how decisions are made in your new organizations and highlight the strengths and weaknesses of your team.

This is especially important for managers; if you don’t go through the process of building product first-hand, you won’t be able to judge first-hand what is and isn’t working well.

Get a mentor

Mentors are invaluable in giving you feedback and showing you a perspective you won’t have when entering a new organization. Find someone who’s an expert in what you’re not, and ask them if they’re willing to mentor you. If you’re not sure who to ask, get advice from your manager.

Read a book

There’s likely one or two books everyone around you has read and values highly. Ask your manager or mentor to name them. Maybe it’s a book about being a good manager, or staying innovative, or the trials and tribulations of running and scaling startups. Whatever the book is, if it’s in the headspace of your colleagues, it’s probably a good one for you to read.

. . . . .

The first month at your new product manager job will start slowly and end quickly. If you do the above, I bet you’ll exit the month will a lot of groundwork that will set you up for success in your second month and beyond.

Get ahead of the FUD

Screw-ups are inevitable. Sometimes, our screw-ups are behind closed doors, with a small number of people. But sometimes they’re done in public, in front of customers. When public screw-ups happen, it’s important to correct the mistake quickly and publicly. Any delay will hurt you and your product through the fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) created through negative word-of-mouth, news articles, and social media.

Xbox One

I was on the Xbox team when the Xbox One was announced. When you read the press release, there’s a lot to like: new games, new controller, new Kinect. Looking beyond the PR, customers quickly learned the initial product was always-online, restricted support for used games, required a purchase of a Kinect, and cost $100 more than Sony’s PlayStation 4. Customers were surprised at the changes, and took to the Internet to complain, including members of the military.

Articles were written immediately after the announcement adding to the FUD of what the console did and did not support.

The result is that instead of collecting the accolades, and maybe even getting an early leg up on Sony’s PlayStation 4, Microsoft is already on the back foot. It’s come out early, and laid down core “features” of its console that are wildly unpopular with people who you may call vocal forum goers, but who are also the preorder customers, the early adopters and product evangelists.

About a month later, Xbox backtracked. But the damage was done; PlayStation 4 has gone on to beat Xbox in sales.

Revolv and Nest

I was an early adopter of Revolv, a home automation hub. It cost $300 but promised lifetime service and support for dozens of different home automation devices. It worked well, and the company was regularly releasing updates to its software. Then, in October 2014, Nest acquired Revolv and ceased sales of the hub and updates to its software, but support for the hub’s service was continued. However, in February 2016, Revolv announced they were disabling support for the hub’s service, rendering the device useless. Emails to the company were responded to with robotic sympathy and no recourse.

This went largely unnoticed given the small user base of Revolv, until articles appeared referencing first-hand accounts of the situation and shining light on the larger question of products tied to services, and what happens if a company decides to stop those services.

All of those devices have software and hardware that are inextricably linked. When does an expired warranty become a right to disable core device functionality?

Imagine if you bought a Dell computer and Dell then informed you that when your warranty ends your computer will power down.

Imagine if Apple put out a new policy that not only won’t they replace the device for defects, but they will actually be bricking your phone 12 months after purchase.

Is the era of IoT bringing an end to the concept of ownership? Are we just buying intentionally temporary hardware? It feels like it. I own a Commodore 64 that still works.

After two months, Nest backtracked, and offered full refunds to its customers. But the damage to Nest’s reputation, at least for me, was done. Before this, I had pondered buying a Nest thermostat or camera. Now, I am unwilling to buy anything from Nest, out of concern for what their policies are around product support and sunsetting.

Beat the FUD

It took a month for Xbox to change its position on Xbox One. It took two months for Next to change its position on Revolv. This is an eternity, given media like Facebook, Twitter, and Medium and the speed at which they transmit information. In the absence of information during those one or two months, Xbox and Nest customers were given lots of FUD to think about.

If you make a product decision that your customers react negatively to, take steps quickly to fix the decision. Else, FUD may set you in a position that’s hard to overcome.