Product Strategy | An Essentialist’s View

By Shayan Khomami
08 Mar 2021

Building great products should be simple

Introduction: Building great products should be simple. This view can be seen as somewhat controversial, but I cannot stress it enough. Building great products should be simple. Does that mean there aren’t several variables that can derail the success of a product? No. Does that mean you can control everything to do with your product’s success? No. Does simple mean easy? No. But it does mean simple.

I identify myself as an Essentialist. What this entails is an intentional focus on what’s important right now and being willing to shut out the noise of everything else, but more on that later. This same thinking and laser-like focus can and should be applied to building products.

This article is structured into 3 key themes:

  1. Positioning — what product do we build?
  2. Essentialism — what do we focus on?
  3. Remarkable — how do we make our products stand out?

If you build and deliver any sort of product (or service), be it digital or physical, and you are fed up with dealing with boundless needs, conflicting priorities, and endless complexity, then this article is for you.

First Principles

One of the most important things when reflecting on a problem is to think of it in terms of first principles. What does that mean? Strip everything back to its basics. What do we know as true? What are the assumptions we take for granted?

As such, the key questions we must ask are:

What are products? Why do we build them?

A product can be defined as anything offered to a market to satisfy a need. That is the key purpose: satisfying a need. This understanding already puts you ahead of the average person. Most people build a product or service to self-serve. They have an idea then ask “can we build this?” Whereas, if the ultimate goal is to satisfy a need, then the question becomes “Should we build this?”

Positioning & Product/Market Fit:

Marc Andreessen famously said that “Product/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market” (Source: The only thing that matters). The lack of this fit then becomes the biggest reason for failed products. Delivering a great product for the right market is the single most important aspect of a successful product.

“Delivering a great product, for the right market, is the single most important aspect of a successful product.” — Mark Andreessen

Market positioning refers to the space you occupy in the consumer’s mind. What do you stand for? What does your brand represent? What problem space to you operate in? There are two essential aspects to defining your market positioning: Who are you serving? What do you stand against?

Find Your Tribe

Ideas and products have a lifecycle, in which they transition across 5 segments of audiences:

  1.  Innovators — technology enthusiasts who pride themselves on having the latest and greatest innovations
  2. Early Adopters — look to gain advantage over the status quo using new products
  3. Early Majority — adopt new products after a proven track record with strong references
  4. Late Majority — risk-averse conservatives who don’t adopt new things until pressured to do so
  5. Laggards — skeptics who are wary of innovation and only change when there’s no other option

The common mistake is to pursue a combination of 3 and 4 — the majority. This is because people get carried away with grand visions of pursuing ‘mass scalability’. The mistake here is that, by their very nature, the majority do not tend to adopt new products. In addition, when you want to make a product for the average person, for the majority, you end up making an average product. You try to please everyone, and end up pleasing no-one.

So this simply does not work, or at least will take a hell of a lot more work and frustration than is necessary.

The Early Adopters is the key group you want to target. This is where your tribe lies, waiting for you. Within this group, of course, there are certain psychographics (user behaviour, values and beliefs) that you will seek. This group, your tribe, has underserved needs. We all do. Identify your tribe’s underserved needs by listing some of the current solutions they have access to, that can be thought of as your competitors, and mapping them onto a simple graph. On the x-axis, we have the importance of the outcome that a particular solution would provide them. On the y-axis, their current level of satisfaction with existing solutions on the market.

This informs your value proposition, perfectly positioned to address the underserved needs of your tribe.

When you want to make a product for the average person, you end up making an average product — you try to please everyone, and end up pleasing no-one.

Anti-Positioning

It is a fact of human nature that certain things resonate more strongly with us than others. One of these is anti-positioning. What does that mean? It means that we build stronger connections with people based, not on what we stand for, but on what we stand against.

Be clear on what you stand against. You know who you are serving. Be confident to convey who you are not serving. This increases the connection with your tribe and makes your product positioning that much more likely to succeed.

Essentialism

Essentialism, a term coined by Greg McKeown in his book of the same title, is defined as the disciplined pursuit of less. It’s about achieving a true understanding of what’s the most important, impactful thing you can do at this moment and focusing relentlessly on that, at the expense of all other activities. Every use of time or effort must justify the ultimate goal. If it no longer fits or aligns with your goal, it must be eliminated.

Most people find this extremely difficult. I have always struggled with this too. Though, recently committing myself to the way of the essentialist has truly changed everything. As Stephen Covey said in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: “The main thing is to keep the main thing as the main thing.” The hardest part is certainly the eliminating of the non-essential. There’s a multitude of cognitive biases working against you, from sunken cost fallacy to the fear of missing out. But you must learn to remain stoic. Focus. Eliminate.

“The main thing is to keep the main thing as the main thing.” — Stephen Covey

We have already talked about finding your Tribe. These are the people you seek to serve. You seek to serve them by helping them solve their underserved needs. This is now your main thing. Any feature of your strategy, product, and marketing must be focused directly on this. Eliminate all else.

This has been what’s really been the biggest mental relief for me, in my experience. No longer needing to listen to and treat all potential users with equal importance. Not all priorities are actually priorities. Ruthless focus. Bold elimination. What’s important, now?

Remarkable

We have now defined our Tribe and positioned ourselves with a clear value proposition to best solve their underserved needs. We have also imposed a ruthless focus on doing this and only this. There is just one part of the 3-piece puzzle remaining: being remarkable.

At the essence of this is Seth Godin’s book Purple Cow.

Imagine you are driving. You see a cow. Cool. The cow leaves your thoughts and you go back to thinking about whatever it was you were doing before. Now imagine you are driving and you see a Purple Cow. Now that’s something worth remembering, something worth talking about, right? Something remarkable. It stays with you.

Godin advocates that being remarkable is the art of building things worth noticing right into your product or service. This could be centred on design, experience, service, and many other things. But it must make you stand out. Think of Google as a perfect example, when they originally released their Search homepage, it consisted of a box and a couple of buttons. That’s it. Nothing else. That was remarkable. Apple enabled us to carry a thousand songs in our pocket with the iPod. That was remarkable.

Design a remarkable product. The advantages must be obvious, easy to talk about, easy to demonstrate and just begging to be brought up every time a member of your tribe uses it. This is ultimately, also how your idea moves from the early adopters towards the majority.

So, what are you waiting for? Paint your purple cow. Be remarkable.

“Being remarkable is the art of building things worth noticing right into your product or service” – Seth Godin

Summary

Building great products should be simple. That’s what I started this article with. Amidst the chaos of constant complexity, conflicting needs, and spreading your product thin trying to please everyone, I hope I have managed to bring calm and clarity to your effective, efficient product strategy. This is based on my experience and what I’ve learned from industry leaders, but I am constantly working on my craft and no doubt will find further ways to simplify as I continue on this journey. What I know is that my focus is singular and intentional — building great products that are simple, yet remarkable and impactful to those I seek to serve.

Find your tribe.

Ask “what’s important, now?”

Be remarkable.

Building great products should be simple.

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