Not A Genius Playbook

Intro: Identify a market trend with lots of users with a set of problems Chapter 1: Problem and Solution Research 1. Create initial problem statement hypothesis - 1 hour 2. Research the Problem - 10 hours 3. Research Existing Solutions - 5 hours 4. Organize - 10 hours Chapter 1.5: Audience engagement Problem/ Founder fit Audience building World class content Chapter 2: Product Ideas, Landing Pages and Leads 5. Decide - 5 hours 6. Landing Page - 10 hours 7. Content - 10 hours 8. Repeat Chapter 3: User Flows and Wire Frames 8. User Model Make a big flow chart DELETE STEPS Data Models 9. Revisit to focus on the core game loop 10. WireFrames and VaporWare Chapter 4: Vaporware to MVP Chapter 5: Real Data, Authentication and Payment 11. MVP Prototype Chapter 6: Activation, Conversion and Retention 12. Repeat this for 3 months to get 3+ revisions Chapter 7: Growth Model Analysis 13: Automate Segment?Tweak prices? 14: Repeat Feedback

Intro: Identify a market trend with lots of users with a set of problems

You might already have an idea. If not, read this article from Julian

Startup Handbook: Finding Ideas through Market Timing

This lesson explains how to find startup ideas by studying market timing. My focus is big, venture-backable ideas, but the advice applies broadly. There's an important question that founders of $1B+ startups can answer: What recently changed about the world that made your startup newly scalable?

https://www.julian.com/guide/startup/find-ideas

In fact I’d recommend reading this full start-up guide:

https://www.julian.com/guide/startup/intro

https://www.demandcurve.com/blog/growth-hacking

A good observation of a market with people in motion.

“A lot of people now have to {do something} because of {some need or external catalyst}, so that they can {do, achieve or experience something}. Let me see if there's a solution out there to help them”

Chapter 1: Problem and Solution Research

1. Create initial problem statement hypothesis - 1 hour

This is the key background research to help narrow our focus.

Task: Answer these questions about the problem are you trying to solve?

Who is a user and who is a buyer of this technology?

Where on the internet or in real life to they hangout?

What phrases would they likely use in google search to help solve their problem?

Result: A clear problem statement hypothesis, a list of websites and seed questions to focus our research

A clear problem statement hypothesis in the form of:

💡

PEOPLE X need a solution to Y so that they can DO/FEEL/HAVE Z

We have a list of WEBSITES where we can read conversations between users about their problems, issues and how they are solving them. (Target at least 2 websites)

We have a list of SEED QUESTIONS that these users would likely query to help them, learn more about their problem, discover solutions (Target at least 10 questions)

Tips / Tools and Further Reading

Enter your questions on google and write down the “People also ask” questions. Here is are the suggestions for “How do I take better photos?”

Use some SEO tools that also suggest similar questions

Product Led SEO - Advocates to stop focusing on Keyword Research and instead focus on what the intent of the user searching is. Since search engines are better at guessing a user’s intent, you must aim to provide high value pages on how to do things and solve problems rather than target certain keywords.

2. Research the Problem - 10 hours

Qualitative User Research is truly hard work. This is why we do it first, while we are most excited about an idea. This is a don’t skip, extremely valuable as it will shape EVERYTHING we build from here on out and it might stop us from building anything.

Determine WHO, under WHAT conditions, wants to DO SOMETHING, so that they can DO SOMETHING ELSE. Determine HOW they will evaluate the success of the thing they did and WHAT TRIGGERS likely caused them do want to do this. Discover HOW they are currently accomplishing this task and what have they tried that DOESN’T DO this task and why they SWITCHED to their current solution.

Task: Answer the SEED QUESTIONS by reading content from the WEBSITES

The goal here is to find direct quotes, from actual potential buyers in your space, talking about the problem you have set out to solve.

Tag each of these direct quotes to better organize them later. I suggest using tags like:

PROBLEM SPECIFIC:

TASK: A task a user does, usually in service of a greater goal. These can be sequential. Must contain a verb.
FEELING: Any emotional description of a problem or task that is not an opinion of a tool or solution. This should be “solution agnostic”
QUALITY: An aspect of the product or task being completed that the user cares about. Example: “faster page load speeds”. This usually contains directional words like higher, lower, slower, faster, larger, ….

SOLUTION SPECIFIC:

TOOL: A reference to a product or solution that a user is currently using.
OPINION: An opinion on some existing product or a feature of it.
FEATURE: An aspect of a TOOL

Result: You have now created your core research table that you can add to whenever you get product feedback, conduct user interviews or see new information emerge in the marketplace.

Create a table in your favorite spreadsheet like tool that has the following fields

Seed Question
Website URL
Direct Quote
Tags

As a rule of thumb you should have 10-50x more “quality” tags than you have “task” tags.

Tips / Tools and Further Reading

This type of analysis falls under “Qualitative User Research” and there are some tools out there that can speed this up, but in general I think this is where time spent getting into the weeds and absorbing a ton of content and ideas is worth it’s weight in gold.

There are some great “Jobs to Be Done” books out there. I’d recommend the “Jobs to be Done Playbook” by Jim Kalbach and “When Coffee & Kale Compete” by Alan Klement. There are others and many are good.

Just do it. You need to go deep here to get to the real problems and to organize them appropriately.

3. Research Existing Solutions - 5 hours

From Step 2 we have a list of “TOOL”s used by people to solve their problems as well as a partial list of some “FEATURES” and “OPINIONS” on them.

Task: For each TOOL, breakdown their landing pages, pricing pages, competitor comparison pages. Extract the following:

Product Positioning and Company Data

Product Name

Tagline (Also called the H1)

Above-the-fold Description (The text usually right below the Tagline)

Top self-identified competitors (Usually if there is a product comparison page)

Happy path analysis: How does a new user get initial value? List out specific steps

Company Size:

Revenue
Subscribers
Employees

Features Top things the product does (usually these are ~3 emotionally descriptive tasks with lots of verbs). These are the products differentiators. Also list Additional Features: These are usually presented in a dryer text and are put towards the bottom of a page or in a table. Make sure you add all the features mentioned in the pricing pages as well as in any comparison pages.

Feature Position (the order in which it is mentioned)

Is Featured Feature? (Is it part of a ‘top features’ section or is it an ‘additional feature’)

Feature Name

Description

Any Problem Specific Tags that are referenced here

Lowest tier the feature is available

Pricing Tiers

Pricing Model { Freemium, Opt-in Free Trial, Opt-out Free Trial, Usage based free trial, No trial, …}

Pricing Unit: {per seat, per team…}

List of Tiers:

Pricing Tier Name
Time base: Monthly Price range (with annual discount / without / any discounts applied?)

Sales Channels

Inbound:

Website traffic / SEO Ranking - SEFP Keywords and backlinks
Featured Integrations
Social Media

Profile URL
Subscribers
# of views on top 5 pieces of content

Community Members:

Discord, Slack, …
Online users during the day
Total Members

Outbound:

Sponsorships
Size of Sales Team

Result: Tables of data corresponding to Product Positioning, Features, Pricing Tiers & Sales Channels

4. Organize - 10 hours

Pull out your favorite pen & sticky notes / mind mapping or whiteboard tool, we’re going to make some flow charts.

Task 1: Organize Problem Research items into a hierarchy of tasks

Group similar tasks together and organize them into a Top-to-bottom + Left-to-right structure

Place more abstract and more emotional tasks on top (for example “Get a good job”), while simplier tasks (like “Upload file to website”) towards the bottom
Please tasks that have to be completed in a certain order in a left-to-right order on the page

Next to their corresponding TASKS, group and add

QUALITY
FEELING
FEATURE

If we have organized it correctly, the more emotional tasks should appear on the top, the tasks with a lot of features attached to them should be in the middle and the tasks with quality tags attached to them should be near the bottom and towards the right

Note we will be adding our TOOL and OPINION tags in the next step

Add BEGINNER tag to certain features if they are appropriate for people who are new to solving this problem or haven’t used many tools in this space before. Add the ADVANCED tag to certain features if only a small set of users would use them or if the feature’s sophistication would only be appreciated by a small set of users.

Task 2: Organize Solution Research into an order list with three types of features

Aggregate all the features from the solutions and group similar ones

Label each of the features / attributes as a NICE-TO-HAVE, MUST-HAVE or a PERFORMANCE feature. This is based on Kano Analysis framework that looks at user satisfaction based on types of features (attributes) of a product.

NICE-TO-HAVE: A user doesn’t expect them to be in the product, but might be delighted if they are there. Example: A sun roof in a car
PERFORMANCE: The more or less of a this attribute or feature, the happier or sad the user is. Examples are: A Website’s page loading speed, Car’s gas millage, etc..
MUST-HAVE: A feature that must be in a product or the users get angry or confused. Examples are: Copy and paste functions in a document editor.

Add any OPINION TAGS to any of the features

Add whether the features are usually free, paid or premium

Task 3: Connect Tasks with Features

Draw lines connecting each Feature to one or more Tasks

Note if a feature doesn’t map to a task, it might mean it’s such a obvious NICE-TO-HAVE that no one has talked about it. For example: who discusses a Print to PDF feature online? It could also mean that it’s a NICE-TO-HAVE and we just haven't discovered a person who uses that niche feature yet.

If a task doesn’t have a corresponding feature, ask yourself if it is a task that the user is doing on their own (like in a custom spreadsheet) or if we are missed it in our initial research. Additionally this could by such an obvious MUST-HAVE feature, that no product provider felt the need to mention it on their websites.

Result: We have organized features and connected them to tasks the users are trying to accomplish.

Chapter 1.5: Audience engagement

At this point we know where are target audience hangs out and we have a sense that the community is active (meaning they help each other out and it's not just online help channels), it is growing. We also know the common problems they have, how they solve it and the tools and techniques used to do so.

Problem/ Founder fit

At this point we should consider if you personally care enough about the problem to become world class at any of it.

Audience building

The purpose of this is to quickly find and engage with a couple hundred true fans who we can eventually DM or email about our products (a la 1000 true fans)

World class content

Focus on high impact and clarity per word. Spent 1 day or even week on a Tweet / reddit post / Quora response.

Chapter 2: Product Ideas, Landing Pages and Leads

5. Decide - 5 hours

You now have enough information to make a guess about the initial product hypothesis, business model, pricing and market positioning

For each of the features of the competitors we have mapped them to tasks described by customers. We should have a sense of what are the needs of the customers, how they do things, and they ways the existing solutions have segmented the market and how they used positioning and pricing models to differentiate themselves.

Look out particularly for people who are actively switching tools or are otherwise ‘in motion’. We like growing markets.

Task 1: Create three different product hypothesis by selecting the key features to include

Lowest Pricing Tier Features: Must have the ‘MUST-HAVE`s + BEGINNER features

Pick the 2-3 core features to compete with on PERFORMANCE where we aim to be > 10x better

Select one NICE-TO-HAVE to differentiate yourself

Task 2: Pick one potential business model

Determine Product-Led vs Sales-Led model

Three are basically 6 types of Product-Led-Growth Strategies: https://productled.com/book/

Freemium (Some features are free forever)
Opt-In Free Trial (Credit Card required only at the end of the trial)
Opt-Out Free Trial (Credit Card required at the start of the trial)
Usage-Based Free Trial (Payment is only required after a certain amount of usage)
Sandbox (Fake data is pre-loaded into the account during the trial)
Separate Products: No Product tiers, just differently branded products

Select Pricing Strategy

how much per (month / year / use…?)

Review competitor solutions to be in the same ball park of pricing be 20% cheeper and 10x better
Keep it SIMPLE! Only two pricing tiers

per user? per team?
What is the best guest to offer expansion revenue?

Determine which features fall under different paid plans. What can use use without logging in, with account, on trial, paid version

Must haves + beginner features must be in the lowest / free plan

Gut check feasibility Business Plan

Revenue growth forecast = channel traffic * CTR * conversion rate * trial conversion rate * monthly price

ex: 10k 1%*10%*20%*9.99 = 19.99

Costs of gaining market share with your offering via Lancaster Rule:

To enter a fragmented market, you need to spend >1.7x that of the weakest competitor to unseat them.
If the market has a clear market leader, you need to spend 3x more than the market leader. This is $$$.

Task 3: Pick 1 inbound Channel

Rank the sales channels that solutions in the space is using by its attractiveness and relevance to you. Pick one

Result: We have three different Business to test {product, pricing model, business model, inbound channel for leads}

Make it very clear here how you are going to position your product differently than your competitors

6. Landing Page - 10 hours

Smoke screen test - 30h 1. 4h - Feature prioritization: user quotes, happy path flows, value prop, description, must have, performance metric, nice to have / delightful 2. 4h - Business model + pricing + model 3. 2h - Positioning + copy + design 4. 4h - landing page mock 5. 8h - Product wireframe 6. 8h - User test landing page and wireframe (do we get signups) 7. Repeat (30 hours per loop / 1 week)

We are going to build and test out three landing pages. One corresponding to each

Task 1: Write Copy - Focus on Product Positioning

Using some of the emotions referenced inthe top tasks from step 4 along with each of the Business

Read April Dunford’s Obviously Awesome for inspiration

Create the Tagline, Description and Describe the 3-4 core features in a user-centered, verb-heavy, emotionally intelligent way

The best part of having so many direct quotes from the first section is that writing should be easy as we can follow their language and style.

Pick a domain name that is exactly the main task you are solving. www.bakebettersourdoughbread.com The point is to not waste time on branding and just validate the product offering.

Task 2: Build 3 landing pages

IMPORTANT: Keep the layout generic, there are plenty of templates for this.

Startup Handbook: Landing Page Copywriting

This resource covers how to write and design a homepage (landing page) that converts visitors into customers. Let's start by identifying the three common landing pages: Homepage - Your catch-all for all visitors. Persona landing page - A page tailored to a specific persona (audience).

https://www.julian.com/guide/startup/landing-pages

Use a no-code solution like CARRD to speed deployment and itterations.

Focus first on getting the copy and organization on the page

Then focus on FONT, COLORS and RELEVANT IMAGEs to accent your story

Task 3: Test with users (ideally in-person) to determine which of these you want to lead with

Read the Mom-Test to not mess this up

Add FullStory or other tracking analytics to understand how people are interacting with the content.

Task 4: Launch the best landing page with a sign-up form.

7. Content - 10 hours

Since we now have a landing page, we need to drive some traffic. Depending on your channel selected it will differ, but it should be only 1 day of work and ideally < $100 dollars to get >2,000 visitors to your site.

You should have ALL the information you need to write these articles from your initial research. If you find yourself researching new content, you have strayed too far from the initial goals of our test.

Positing on the WEBSITES you researched in step 1

Social Media and Search Ads: Google, Twitter, FB, other social media

Content: TikToc, YouTube, IG, etc…

Cross post on other blogs

To drive traffic to the site the standard technique should apply. Actively contribute to the forums which the end users are. Engage with other influencers in the space, to map out how much traffic exists.

Create a couple custom tweet threads, YouTube videos, tick tock videos, anything to drive traffic to the lead magnet.

Watch how many people convert, reach out to the first email addresses and set up up conversations, to help validate all information above find out any other blind spots.

Keep experimenting until conversion rates are greater than 3%, and traffic continues to grow in your site. Remember the target is 50,000 unique visitors a month. A great starting point would be a hundred unique visitors a day / one to five sign ups a day.

At this point you are unable to reject the null hypothesis that this is a bad market.

Optionally since people might be various stages of the buying process. {Don’t know they have a problem,

If don’t know they have a problem: Share the results of your research

If the know they have a problem but are looking for generic advice on how to solve it: Share they results of your research for a DIY’er.

If people are searching for a solution: Create a comparison page

These pages can be shared more broadly and can be a first ‘stake in the ground’ for future SEO.

Here’s an example of a 6 post campaign (using paid ad retargeting)

8. Repeat

Hopefully you a have a couple thousand visitors and > 100 signups

Congratulations! Talk to 10 more people and see if you are missing anything, what do they REALLY need from the product. Try to remove as many features as you can at this stage!

By now we should have a solid understanding of our product requirements, should have a minimal set of User Stories to implement (aka Features) and a basic validation that product positioning, business model and lead channels are viable.

Chapter 3: User Flows and Wire Frames

8. User Model

User flows - 16h x2 1. 4h - Interactive wireframe 2. 2h - user model + data model 3. 4h Color + typography + graphics 4. 4h User test 5. 2h Update landing page 6. repeat 2x

Now we do some feature engineering. This is usually my step 1!

Make a big flow chart

https://careerfoundry.com/en/blog/ux-design/how-to-create-a-user-flow/

Define, using flow charts the ‘happy path’ that a user takes through each of the core User Stories.

Additionally add USER AUTHENTICATION and PAYMENT Stories

for login/out/lost password/no authorized also checkout / upgrade / downgrade / cancel flows.

Determine what information should be stored / changed in the User State during each transistion

Also List out conditions of Unhappy paths, but don’t

We now want to focus on building out a user model

We start off by defining the ontology of states and actions

We create a series of user flows where a user can select interactions to move between states.

We filled out a data model, and understand how data must be transformed

Of all the user flows, pick the happy path

Determine the minimal steps required to get the value

Ensure that the expected value described in the landing page, exactly alliance with the perceived value through this happy path.

If we follow the product lead growth approach, users on the happy path should get quick value, we should be able to nudge them into additional ways to customize the results to solve more higher value tasks.

And where in the user map authentication should be required, how is the authentication made and what type of product let growth models are consistent with these flows.

Quick note on the risks here: there may be some open-ended questions that you and your team could hypothesize from the feedback step one. For example could there be additional ways to do this, would users be open to changing their habits or expectations.

Also look too different industries and domains with similar types of tasks to be done here. Use them as inspiration for additional flows. They can hear is leverage positioning of competitors from within the domain to describe what the tool is going to do and set expectations, however use solutions from other domains to solve the problem in a better way than the competitors.

It is often better to using the design Sprint methodology, create a lightning Sprint where you list out all other solutions in different domains to review

DELETE STEPS

Remember each line and block of text is added complexity for your user AND for you to build. Try to remove as many as possible. If needed, brainstorm how similar products in DIFFERENT domains solve this problem

Data Models

Determine what data is changed in each of these steps in the flow chart.

Create example data + user state data

Create a database schema to represent all of the data changes

Review the flow chart to ensure that all CRUD operations are implemented and add any new paths to satisfy the basic USER AUTHORIZATION

9. Revisit to focus on the core game loop

What is the core task a user is doing? How will they stay motivated the whole time? What if they get distracted, what will bring them back? How do we engineer engagement and curiosity? Which parts should spark joy / delight?

Look at ways in which a company tries to reach out to their clients: 8 mailing lists!

How does the beginner experience differ from the advanced experience?

Are there any other points systems, alerts, etc.. that will help the user stay engaged and have fun?

Rethink through all of the game dynamics, 1 player mode and multi-player mode fully thought out? What about sharing outside of the ‘game’ are there any viral loops to help out with the onboarding / sales process?

Startup Handbook: Product-Led Acquisition

This lesson explains how to rapidly acquire customers for a tech startup. If you read only one lesson in this handbook, make it this one. Even if your tech startup has market pull (as described in Lesson 1), you still need a way for consumers to know you exist.

https://www.julian.com/guide/startup/product-led-acquisition

Now that the users get value at least one time, what sort of hooks or nudges or other triggers can we use to drive repeat usage. What patterns separate out referring users from people who churn out.

List of conditions for a behavior trigger

Social engagement and support

Mental Stimulation

Sense of Effectiveness

Ingredients of a behavioral addiction

Compelling Goals that are just beyond reach

Irresistible and Unpredictable Feedback

Sense of incremental progress and improvement

Tasks that become slowly more difficult over time

Unresolved tensions that demand resolution

Strong Social Connections

10. WireFrames and VaporWare

Wizard of Oz - 36 hours x2 1. 8h - Backend / API mock 2. 8h - Front end routing + component layout 3. 8h - Front end user model and event triggers 4. 8h - front end copy and design 5. 4h - Test with users (using mocked backend and fake door 404 pages for non-mvp features) 6. Repeat

Using the flowchart and example data from Step 6 create screens for each node in the flow chart.

Basic Screens (just describe in text what users can see and what they will click on (aka Affordances)

From this we can design url routes and site maps

Create black / white + text + data (clickable!) wireframes for the whole project.

This is where your choice of tooling has a lot of preference. If you are super fast developer you could stand something up in 8 hours, do it, otherwise a no-code solution might be better.

Test with some users on your mailing list to see if it make sense

Chapter 4: Vaporware to MVP

WIREFRAME

Add the Juice! (a gaming / slot machine term for the lights, animations, sounds etc… that breathe life into the gameplay)

Add Fonts + Colors + Graphics + Styling
Animation + Sounds + Vibrations

Repeat and Test as needed until users are getting through the core loops and outright ask you when this is going to be live!

Chapter 5: Real Data, Authentication and Payment

11. MVP Prototype

MVP Prototype - 64h x2 1. 4h - configure databases and services 2. 4h - authentication and authorization 3. 8h - Backend real data all crud work 4. 8h - overnight ETL 5. 24h - core backend services (the main IP) 6. 8h - intraday and realtime push services 7. 8h - payment backend + frontend 1. 4h - add legal copy 2. 8h - configure domain: purchase name: dskim / email / Google domains / social accounts 4. 8h - end to end tests and misc bug fixes 8. Repeat

At this point standing up a working prototype where a user can

Accomplish all core tasks (all must-haves, 1 nice-to-have and 2-3 performance tasks)

Can authenticate and pay for the product

We can track each user event so we can monitor their usage against the user-flow diagram we developed

Launch it quietly and let in some random users? Determine if it is working as expected? Do more advanced testing and then officially let in your first cohort!

Chapter 6: Activation, Conversion and Retention

12. Repeat this for 3 months to get 3+ revisions

Closed beta MVP - 32h 3. 8h - configure email signups sequence 5. 4h - Test with Beta users

Watch engagement and revenue increase with changes as you make changes.

At this point 1 lead channel + organic traffic should be the only parts of your top-of-funnel.

Plug leaks to the bucket, reduce churn, increase upsells and referrals

Chapter 7: Growth Model Analysis

13: Automate

This is a focus on the costs side of your business. What parts of the business would grow faster if we had more $$$ to throw at the problem? What if we threw more bodies at the problem? Were could efficiencies be gained from better processes / checklists / automation?

Segment?

Tweak prices?

ProfitWell has written the book on pricing.

14: Repeat

Rank order the next lead channels to grow top of funnel and attack them sequentially every 2-3 months.

Repeat this full process every 4 months to add new significant features to your product.

Eval product 1. 8h review event data to evaluate hypothesis 2. 4h - test with more beta users 3. Repeat any steps above as necessary. Test: positioning, expected value to experienced value, time to initial value, other features used, any recurring use

🧪

This should have taken about 200 hours!

Feedback

If this was valuable to you, let me know on Twitter and I’ll make it better

Sean Kruzel (@seankruzel) on X

Father of 2, Builder of alternative data investment strategies, MIT Alum Trying to give back as much as I get from Twitter

https://twitter.com/seankruzel