We realized going into this that the gain was not profit. We thought we’d learn something and that, to us, was something we couldn’t quite put a value on. Nevertheless, we didn’t go into it without wanting to make money. We just didn’t know where to set our expectations. After all, publishing a book first [...]

Core Market There comes a time in the life cycle of a failing product where the progenitors, in spite of their best intentions to develop a strong set of features the customer wants, find themselves scratching their heads asking the million-dollar question: “Why won’t you come?” “Look at all these features. Now, why won’t you [...]

Like the food pyramid, only richer. Achieve “market fit” product status before worrying about the rest. Which is to say, prove that there is a market for what you offer by getting a small but dedicated audience willing to pay to use it. The most compelling KPI for market fit products is essentially customer satisfaction: [...]

Just because the food has gone off it doesn’t mean you have a bum taster. On the contrary, your tastebuds are doing what they should. So what does taste testing have to do with product development? When tests fail, the test is doing its job. Finding “fails” fast is why we create tests in the [...]

What is Fail Whale?. This page is a collection of a lot of user generated images for the Twitter Fail Whale. It also answers the question above. I think this is a great example of two measures we have an eye for when we help companies develop products. First: failure is a means to the [...]