Building an awesome product is what keeps us going at Koddi. We’re a group of people who are passionate about creating great things. Through our shared and individual experiences, successes, and failures, we’ve picked up a few tips we feel are critical to the product development process.

1) Don’t assume you know better than your users.

This is a big one. Product people are typically smart, ambitious, and often wear a ton of hats within an organization. These traits are incredibly valuable and sought after, but they can also come with a bit of an ego. If you want to build a great product, you’ll need to leave that ego at the door. Many make the mistake of thinking that strong product people know exactly what to build all the time.

But the truth is that great product people are great empathizers. You should intimately know and understand your users. You should not only care about what they feel, but also share in it. This comes from genuine interest in building relationships with customers and taking time to listen to them. If you find that you’re making a lot of product decisions behind closed doors, it’s probably time to bring in your customers.

2) Understand the difference between cool features and features that matter.

It’s easy to let impressive features consume your product roadmap. This is especially the case for startups after they’ve developed their MVP (minimum viable product) since many of the “fancier” features were left off to get it to market. I’m talking about features that demo great, elicit positive emotions from customers, but in reality provide very little value.

Your interactive hive plot may be exciting, but it might not be the best tool to help make a business decision.

Quick caveat – I’m by no means dismissing cool features all together. They can be incredibly helpful at building interest, supporting sales, and getting customers excited. But you need to find the healthy balance between these things and ones that make a real impact on the user’s daily life.

3) Think Long-term.

As you go from a minimum viable product, to a product that stands on it’s own, you’ll want to think about how your product can grow. Think about the markets you have the potential to expand into. Where might your customers be in 5 years? Taking the future of your product, users, and market into account can help make sure you build a stable foundation, creating the ability to adapt quickly to changes in the environment.

When possible, try to make each piece of code something that can be repurposed for future developments. That being said, don’t let your long-term vision stop you from getting work done today. There are plenty of occasions where the quick solution makes more sense than the extravagant one.

4) Experiment. Learn. Repeat.

When you think about a startup technology company, you probably imagine an incredibly unstructured work place. You may think about a group of young friends working in a garage, not some place that has recurring processes and structure. But good process is critical for a startup to stay nimble.

Your job is to learn. Every feature and idea should ideally be turned into an experiment with a falsifiable hypothesis. By following the scientific method and testing ideas, you are able to evaluate whether or not they are something impactful.  This process is what will keep you from just building the “cool” features.

There are some great resources to learn more about validated learning and the startup process. Give The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries a read.

5) Never be (completely) satisfied.

Being a product person means that you’re never completely satisfied with what you’ve created. If you’re really invested in your product, then you are always striving  for it to be better. It’s important to stay in touch with this feeling. If you have lost the drive, you will need to resolve it quickly. In a startup, there aren’t extra managers or directors to keep things moving if you check out.

These tips just scratch the surface of what it takes to successfully develop a product in a startup. What are some of your tips or experiences?
+Trent