Here’s the starting point of the discussion on Twitter: @avinashraghava @dkhare better Q:what is the role of design in d larger socio-eco context? Which business & consumer problem does it solve? — Dhiraj Kacker (@dhirajkacker) January 3, 2014 Just to summarize my thought: the original referenced article talked about design being a key pillar of a startup. My contention is that that is a...
The inaugural edition of PNBootcamp at Pune is the best thing to come out from iSPIRT yet – in my opinion. For all the startups that missed this bootcamp, I strongly recommend staying tuned to pn.ispirt.in for the next playbooks and bootcamps. There were two themes in the bootcamp: ‘Discovery Hacking’ for those companies who have not yet figured out the product-market fit. ‘Scale Hacking’ for...
Saikrishna Chavali posted the following question on my blog post about Data & UX being two ends of the product spectrum: I’ve got a question: how did you understand the user when you were in the ad business? Did you ever meet real users? In PM theory, one is instructed to empathise with the user by actually “getting out of the office”. Since it’s quite an important question, I thought I will...
I was catching up with Avinash (@avinashraghava) earlier today and we were chatting about product startups in the country. If you’ve been in this ecosystem, and seen the evolution of product companies, some interesting changes happened over the past few years. Back in 2001, at AdventNet, the Product Manager role was created, and so was the Usability Engineer role (which were primarily UX...
Before we got started with PriceBaba, both me and Tirthesh had almost zero experience of building a product. We are passionate about Internet and web services that create an impact. Building PriceBaba over the past two years has been a learning experience and we have been blessed to have some amazing friends who have guided us throughout the process. Here are a few learnings (while we still...
It has been an interesting coincidence on the last few occasions in different discussions and industry forums I participated in, they have attracted a good amount of the classic “Products and Services” in IT deliberation. As such, this is not a new debate. It is common to see patrons from the products world root for it by generating IP and for the services gurus illustrate how they are able to...
Ensure that the right things gets done in the right sequence A product manager helps a company to achieve its goals by helping customers get their jobs done in an unique and delightful way, and getting customers to payin some form (money, attention, information). Let me elaborate on the key responsibilities encapsulated in the above definition. Getting jobs done: A parent purchases your app to...
Who is a product manager and what does a typical development cycle with a product manager look like? Product managers are often the most overlooked job descriptions in startups. The “let’s hack together” mindset is great but might not scale after a certain point. It becomes imperative that someone is incharge of defining the “what to build” part of the problem extremely well, keeping the...
The first question that I asked iSPIRT volunteers running PNCamp, the first ever bootcamp exclusively focused on product entrepreneurs in India, was why Pune? They pointed to Dilip Ittyera whose greying strands of hair masks his passion to firmly perch Pune on the product map of India. Later during many conversations, it became evident why Pune was the destination for the “product mafia” (term...
For mobile apps, there are three dominant pricing strategies: Premium, Subscription and Freemium. According to a report by app-store analytics company, Distimo, freemium now accounts for 71% of Apple AppStore revenues in the US, up from somewhere around 50% last year, and rising. In Asia, freemium is 90% of App Store revenues. Is freemium always the most optimal? What factors should you consider...
