Product Management: why simple UX wins

I am a big believer of simple user experience.  Simplicity is more than design philosophy.  It's way of communicating clarity.  It's way of showing focus.  It's way of selling.  This is especially true with software.  That's because software does not have form factor unlike physical product that you pick up at Home Depot.

Take a look at this tool:

What do you think that is?  Bluetooth ear piece?  Ergonomic mouse?  Or thumb drive that has flip-out USB connector?

Rodney Mullen: create for the joy of creating and sharing

Rodney Mullen took a stage at TEDxUSC on May 4th.  Rodney Mullen is a skateboarder.  He started out as a freestyle skateboarder back in early 1980's and won 35 out of 36 freestyle skateboarding competitions by his 23rd birthday.  He then had to reinvent himself once new street skating style obsoleted freestyle of skating.  He draws parallel of how skating tricks are invented and shared with how hacker community create and share open source projects.

My thoughts on Paul Graham's email

Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator;
Facebook bubble is popping a bit and
start-ups should watch out for the side effect.

Yesterday I saw Paul Graham's email alerting Y Combinator teams that start-ups may have rocky road ahead in raising money due to over-hyped Facebook's IPO.  Then there are lot of pundits piling on the news.  Some compared it with now famous Sequoia Capital's R.I.P. Good Times deck.  Some had more balanced response putting Facebook's IPO in perspective.

Opportunity to innovate is everywhere

Innovation is what happens when you start challenging earlier assumptions.  It is more of way of approaching a problem than building on existing solution.  Because it's more of approach, how you look at a problem, questioning hidden assumptions and being open to outlandish idea are key ingredients to innovation.

Because innovation has more to do with breaking down earlier assumptions, opportunity for innovation is everywhere.  Sometimes assumptions that used to be valid are no longer valid because consumers have changed.  Sometimes what used to be technically impossible several years ago can be possible because of Moore's law.  Consumer may not have been educated to realize there is a problem earlier.  Perhaps they are now familiar with new product and how it can solve their problem.

When is the right time to launch?

Over the weekend I saw two tools that recently launched.  One was widbook and the other was gawk.it.  Widbook is social book authoring network.  It lets you write books and share your drafts with fans and friends to get their comments.  It also allows you to discover books on topics that you are interested in.




Gawk.it is a blog comment search engine.  You can search comments that anyone wrote on anyone's blog and jump directly to that comment.  Idea is to easily search old and new conversations and start engaging with the conversation.

Lessons from Sam The Banana Man

Samuel Zemurray was an entrepreneur around the turn of 20th century.  As a son of immigrant family, he did not have a college degree yet he started out as banana trader and eventually ran United Fruit company, the world's most influential fruit company at the time.

Product Management: sell experience, not just features

Lower your price to get a new customer, if you can be leaner than anyone and scale better than anyone.  Chances are, however, you will not be able to compete with China for too long in this lower price competition.

Add more features to get a new customer, if you know what features will help you close the deal.  Chances are, however, that you won't be able to do this for too long because your product will be too bloated for you to maintain.  Bunch of professional services put together as a product usually don't make a good product.

Create a new product category to get whole bunch of customers, if you know how to displace existing solutions that customers are accustomed to.  Chances are, however, that there will be second and third products in the newly created market soon, and you will be dragged into feature competition.