I think about this a lot. We actually use it when we talk about Spuul versus the others. We don’t have phone support – I think something we will try to add eventually but we are fairly maniacal about replying to emaail, tweets, fb and app store comments in play store. Looking at you Apple for sucking big by not adding this feature. It is a mindset but I think one that is very worthwhile. There are some great points in here about the angles to take – I love the lose every fight one. Great point. I need to remember that one. Anyways – good advice here and I urge every startup to think about this more than they do. I am appalled at the customer service of a lot of local services. The black hole issue I have experienced more than a few times.
Category: People
Episode 5 of Analyse Asia
https://m.soundcloud.com/analyseasia/episode-5-tying-the-knots-of-video-spuul-smithy-asia
I won’t comment on the photo but was a fun podcast – hope you enjoy it.
Nice work Bernard!
On big phones
I need a new phone but I don’t know if it will be a 6 or 6 plus yet. I need to feel it and play with it.
On just returning back from Thailand you notice phablets everywhere. To me it’s a simple reason why – I think for a lot of these people this is there only device and the bigger the better. Within reason of course but it has a bigger battery, bigger screen and they don’t care what they look like talking on it, watching videos on it or taking pictures with it.
It’s their computer and happens to fit in their hand.
For me it’s just that simple.
How I try to Product Manage… (part 1)
I am usually brutally honest. I am the first to answer I don’t know when I don’t and when I think I know I tell it like I see it. I probably need to take my own advice here more often and getter better at the soft middle of knowing and not knowing. Hell – we all can get better at what we do right?
That being said the role of product management is like a craft one hones over time. I don’t think it is easily taught and I don’t think it is easily learned. It comes with time, experience and lots of mistakes. I excel in the lots of mistakes category so I guess in some sense I am still learning and trying to improve.
I try to listen to lots of podcasts, still haven’t found a good PM podcast, and I read a lot. Plus – I try lots of products. I use my own as well. Personally I am always baffled when you hear people give product advice and you find out they don’t use a lot of products apart from the main ones everyone uses. There is no right or wrong when it comes to product taste since it is a taste and I think taste improves with experience. So I like the school of hard knocks when it comes to acquiring taste – you have to have built some things and you have to have used a lot of things. Of course this is not relevant to the folks who have an idea and build their own stuff – I think that is a different form of PM. I wish I was talented enough to have the coding skills to build my own stuff but alas I don’t. Probably never will.
All that being said I am always looking for tools and techniques to get better at what I do.
Over time I keep settling on the same stuff:
– email
– dispatch
– evernote
– asana
– slack
– spreadsheets
– keynote
I use lots of little things for idea tracking or idea generation or I guess note taking, but still don’t have something I love:
– paper with the paper stylus
– vesper
– IA writer
– probably other things I can’t remember and also just a normal notebook
So I use the tools to manage the team and other tools to convey ideas to the people in the company. I guess then the rest of it is the things I use to manage myself, my ideas and my communication. Communication is so huge and this is why slack is just taking off like a rocketship. Communication is key. Really interested to see how slack will tackle email. Asana is partially tackling email but I will admit that a lot of my interaction with Asana is actually via normal email.
Looking for any comments or ideas on this stack of ideas or products.
I will follow this up with a post for how I manage the team so to speak. Or shall I say unmanage them…
More on Karma
Sometimes current events remind me that Karma wins in the end. I’ll just leave it at that.
From Gruber I happened to read this post on politeness. It’s so good. I can’t claim to be this polite but damn I wish I was. We just had a small get together with some friends and family for my daughter’s birthday. She is two now. I hope I can teach her how to be this polite and caring.
I have touched on this subject slightly before – here: http://www.nokpis.com/2013/03/08/learning-from-the-masters/ and http://www.nokpis.com/2013/06/19/being-a-connector/ . The idea being that your past WILL alter your future. How you treat people will come back to delight or haunt you.
I think a lot about my past and can even recall specific events where I was NOT polite. It could be that I was too young to contemplate how my actions would be perceived. I wish even now I could go back and fix those events. Other times I was not polite and I knew it. I wish I could also fix those events as well but I am glad I remember them. A constant reminder helps me to be polite in the present.
I am older now. I think one of the coolest things about aging is that I can get better at my craft – the art of being me. I don’t care so much anymore what I wear or what people think of me. Other than if people meet me, or hear me speak or hear others speak of me – that they will have a good impression of me. I try to remind myself that this is more important than fashion, more important than my job and will in some way lead to delight in my future.
I am sure that I can improve upon this process. I will try. Starting today to be even more polite than I think I am.
Happy Monday!
Consumer services in Singapore…
someone in the SEA region tech press needs to start tacking the startup deadpool
— dreampipe (@dreampipe) July 14, 2014
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I tweeted this yesterday mostly out of frustration with trying out a consumer service here in Singapore with horrible customer service. Looking at you http://www.icarsclub.com/. I signed up over a week ago – about 2 weeks now – for their iCarDriver service where you get access to automated short term car sharing. My app is still processing:
iCarDriver
To rent and keyless enter nearby cars affordably
PROCESSING
Okay – no drama. I user their online customer support email thingy twice. No replies.
I tweet at them in a friendly, like is anywhere there kind of way, and no response. Nothing. How does a consumer company not answer any emails or tweets? Appalling.
Seems they have not tweeted in 30 days. How is that possible?
Check out the tweet search about them – just all stuff about funding and nothing about customers, traction or customer service.
Yet this is a company recently funded – https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/car-sharing-startup-icarsclub-raises-035538613.html
Maybe they are just annoyed by me, wannabe paying customer, asking for help. I just don’t get it.
But this brings me back to my other feeling about the local ecosystem coverage. There is not much depth to it. It is announcements about starting/funding, then the buzz about someone doing well and then the general industry coverage. There is not a lot about actual reviews of the service, report cards on how companies are doing and a little, but not much about the failing companies – how they failed and what the peeps at the failed places are now doing. I am not bashing the coverage or the people that cover the scene – just highlighting what I think is missing.
Will anyone with a bigger voice than me look into the iCarsClub weirdness? Probably not.
Next I will look into one of these organic vegetable services.
JFDI 2014A
I am back to trying to focus my efforts outside of Spuul in one place again this year – which is JFDI batch 2014A.
Last Thursday I met with with a few from the list but I think some have already changed their names. I will wait to see who I end up spending the most time with since it is usually up to the teams to ping me for follow up.
For now I have had the most conversations with http://storyroll.co/ and http://stylehunt.com/ . Storyroll is fascinating since it is some guys from Lithuania coming to singapore, frying their asses off, to make a go of the program. I figure I can help a bit given my video and consumer product background. For stylehunt I am always partial to the Thais and it turns out I am from the same part of the world as one of the founders which is cool.
We shall see who continues to bug me as the program rolls on and I will see what kind of impact I can have. Exciting stuff!
Before I get to my tiny advice column I will recall the dinner we had with Werner Vogels and some of what we learned from talking to him. The key takeaway I had was that Amazon is still lots of small teams working on lots of projects. As big as Amazon is today the small team ethos is still going strong. I dig that. The other thing Werner mentioned was how the team still writes the marketing one pager, the FAQ and the press release before any code is written. I love this. I should try to do this at Spuul as well.
It’s good advice to focus on what you want the customer to experience and then work backwards to make it happen. I am sure there are tons of ways to do this or to manage the process but the basics are pretty clear. Don’t code or draw pictures first. Take the time to write out what you hope to build before building.
Obviously this may not work for everyone who has already started making something or is in the program however I think for those who are in the JFDI program there is another way to handle this.
This is the advice I was giving out on Thursday to the companies I met individually with. I have seen a few batches go though the system and generally if one can keep themselves organized and productive leading up to investor day then the odds of success, as far as the program is concerned, are much higher. Fall apart, lose track of time, bicker, try to build too much, or lose sight of the product – will lead you to a bad investor day.
One could hope for breakout success, killer metrics, a sick viral loop or a crazy amount of pr – but pinning your success on the things that may not happen is not very smart. If these things happen consider them a bonus but instead focus on the event. The investor day. Imagine yourself or your team up there presenting, have a vision for what you want to say, make a few slides now that will be the boilerplate for that final day and focus on projecting now what you will accomplish on that stage.
Then work backwards to make it happen. Manage each week precisely enough, don’t go crazy about it, to ensure that you are meeting your weekly milestones that will add up to your successful investor day.
As a member of an accelerator program you are in a time compression chamber. Manage it will and you will succeed.
Interesting stuff I learned
Yesterday while hanging out at my kid’s taekwando lesson I started to chat with another parent about what they did in Thailand. Normally I keep to myself, watch the kid and get some reading in but I tried to branch out a bit this time.
So what did I learn.
This gentleman moved from India to Rayong to help with a factory that builds the giant machines that can extrude aluminum into the aerosol cans used for sprays and deodorants. It’s a giant machine that on one end can take the aluminum and at the other end kicks out the painted can. At this point the cans can be shipped to be filled for retail sale.
It takes this factory team 8-9 months to build one machine. They assemble it in Rayong and then test it for production usage. Then they dismantle it into 80-90 crates for shipment by boat to anywhere in the world.
Then they send a team to re assemble it, test it and turn it over to production usage.
This company can only make 2-3 machines per year and it turns out a large Japanese company in Sri Racha owns like 20 of them.
Was fascinating.
I may ask for a tour next time I see him.
Sometimes Thailand does amaze me.
Hoping to try something new
I sent my first request out – let’s see how it goes.
I dig watching Pando Monthly Events and love the interview format.
In our region we have lots of people doing stuff – startups and other stuff.
I know many of this people and I talk to them from time to time but I don’t always know how they got here, why they do what they do and so on. I am curious – I want to get to know the people behind the products a bit more than I do. I think other people want to as well.
So I plan to interview these people via text and share it on my blog. It’s always about the people anyway – isn’t it?
Who knows where it will go but I am curious to try.
more soon…
Dreampipe's Blog 