Study with me: How I learn in Obsidian

How's it going? It's Jason Edward here. Today I'm gonna be demonstrating how I actually study inside of Obsidian. So I figured it'd be a perfect time to make this video because right now I'm diving into a completely new topic that I haven't really like explored very much. And so I figured, you know, I might as well just hit record and make a video because this could actually help people. And I'm really excited to, to share this with you. I mean, I don't know what's gonna happen in this video, but Essentially, I've got this article on the right over here. I'll just make myself a bit smaller. So I've got this article on the right, and this is an article I've actually taken from a website. So you can see this is straight out of the website. And then on the left-hand side, I've got a, I've got my own notes, which is basically trying to extract the valuable information from this article. So you see how I have this split, split view, and that's super helpful. And, um, within that you can see if I just, fold everything. I've got all these different headings. Okay? So whenever you're trying to learn something new, you want to, yeah, just break, basically like break down the information. So this is kind of, um, where I'm at right now. You know, I've, uh, I, I've looked through the article and then there was this one part where they said that, um, why companies develop MVPs for their SaaS. So it was just like a piece of information. I made that into a heading. Okay? And then I take all the subpoints that they have and I look for the ones that make sense to me and then I try and like rewrite them or just kind of like identify what is the main lesson within these points. Okay? And from there, yeah, then the next thing is I'm looking at the common challenges of building a SaaS MVP. So this is where they're gonna be talking about, you know, different things to avoid. Okay? So I just create a new headline Things to avoid when creating an MVP. All right. So, yeah, this is just basically how I study. And what I'm going to do is I just read through all of these different notes. And so you can see I've already done a broken feedback loop. Now, what's interesting to mention is that this is where you can also start linking stuff together. So the whole goal, the reason that I write all of this out in Obsidian is because I want to be able to come back to it. If it's just on a web page somewhere, I might never go back to it again. So I always try when, whenever I see something that's got a lot of value, I will generally try my best to put this into Obsidian so that I can then have a foundation whenever I need to look up minimal viable product. This is something that I can, yeah, very quickly go come back to. Okay. So with that being said, just going through, I've got these 3 different challenges that they mentioned that are, Basically, yeah, challenges that you wanna avoid when you're creating a minimal viable product. So on the second one over here, they spoke about the Agile methodology and Agile is a term I've never heard it before. So I've just decided, okay, let me create a new note on Agile. And basically from there, what ends up, uh, what I, what I like to do is I'll just basically grab the definition. So that's as easy as just going online, typing in Agile. Agile definition. So you can see there. And then from there, I want to understand the main points of what is Agile. So I just typed in, you know, Agile methodology explain principles. And what I see over here is that there's 4 core principles of the Agile methodology. So I will just click on that. Okay. So we see Agile Manifesto, 4 key values, 12 principles. Interesting. So the 4 values of Agile. So sometimes, you know, it's, I, I don't, I don't always do this, but sometimes I will just take the original 4 points and then from there I'll be able to have like the building blocks that I can use for headlines. So we can see we've got these 4 core values of Agile. Just copy that in there. And the 4 values of Agile software development as stated by the Agile Manifesto are individuals and interactions over processes and tools, working software over comprehensive documentation. Adaptation, customer collaboration, responding to change. Okay, great. So these are just like some bullet points. And now they explain, okay, what, what are these 12 principles? So the 12 principles articulated is satisfying customers through early continuous delivery, breaking big work down into smaller tasks. So this is a big theme. This is kind of what, where my mind is at right now. And recognizing that the best work emerges from self-organized teams. Providing motivation. So all of this is really fascinating to me. So then again, I will just take this and generally, you know, whenever I start a new note, I will just grab like some information and over time I will then refine it, maybe take some, some things out, um, like rewrite some things, add my, my own interpretation of it. And yeah, that's basically just the starting point. So paste that in there and now we can see breaking down work into smaller tasks. So I've actually got a note that is very, very similar to this. So what I can do is just find a new note. So breaking, breaking things down. So there we go. Now I'm starting to form links to other notes that I have. So you can see this is a note that I've created in the past, and now that is linked to that. So that's kind of cool. So things are starting to, you know, form connections. All right. Recognizing the best work emerges from self-organized teams. So this. Can actually link to my team management. All right. And then providing motivated individuals with the environment support they need and trusting them to get the job done. Interesting. So this is good enough for now. And then what I'll do is I'll just go back to my, you know, original document that I'm working on over here. And we can see that covers the second point, inefficient development methodology. Now we're looking at the third point, the fine line of testing. So there's a fine line between putting too little effort and, and getting it out as soon as possible. So this is actually a separate thing. This is not from the— I, I, I wrote this myself, so I will just keep that separate. And then let me say, create a new headline, make it number 3, and then we've got not prioritizing security. Personally identifiable information. So what I can take away from this though is that you, you must incorporate effective mechanisms such as multi-factor authentication. All right. Okay. So this one not really important to me. So I'm going to actually just remove that whole piece. And then scalability. Having too many concurrent users in a cloud environment might create performance issues. You need to select the right Amazon, interesting. So that's not important to me either. Unrealistic budget estimates, MVP developments. So this one is very, very important. Okay, so unrealistic budget estimates. I just create a headline for that, make that number 3, and now I can start looking there. So MVP development is more affordable than full product development, but it certainly isn't cheap. All right, so take that. However, many companies understand— underestimate how much their project will take and go over the— and go over the budget even at this stage. So this is kind of an important point. This is kind of why I'm learning this whole thing, is because people underestimate. So underestimating is— it's interesting concept to me. I think I might even make this into its own note. So I would just go Estimation. And yeah, I like, I like the, the note estimation. So I'm actually just gonna call that a concept and then I'm even going to relate that to another note, which is your intuition. Intuition. Great. So that's created. All right, cool. And then the next thing is, hey, 25,000 to 80,000. To create an MVP for startups if you have a team of skilled engineers. The development cost also depending on team's location. Interesting. Yeah, I actually think this is valuable information, so I'll just grab that. Okay, cool. And then I'll just remove this link because I don't really need that. 25,000. $25,000 to $80,000. Cool. All right. So for example, top outsourcing companies charge $150 per hour while experienced on top of that Ukraine performs North America. Cool. So now we're getting to this next part, which is how to build an SaaS MVP in 7 steps. And I'm just gonna create a new headline for that. Give it 3 hashes and let's take a look here. So an MVP helps you learn what your audience thinks of your SaaS early on, making it invaluable for smaller startups with limited resources. Okay, so this is, this is getting interesting. So, but a successful MVP requires thorough market research and planning. So to make the process simpler and avoid bottlenecks, we dive into the following steps. Nice. So I'm just gonna make sure that I have that part done. So I think I've even got a document on on market research, I believe. Yeah, there we go. So I got a document on that. And planning. So I can definitely create a document on planning. Now I've got long-term thinking, long-term planning, and— okay, so to make this process simpler, We dive into the following steps. Identify the target audience. Interesting. So this is very important, right? So this is going back to everything. Creating a solution where the problem does not exist is a fatal flaw of many SaaS startups. Yeah, that's super fascinating. Okay, so we've got identify target audience, right? Who is your customer? Okay, try to do this. Try to answer the following question. All right, creating a solution. Answer the following questions: who is your customer? What are their desires and pains? What problems validate significant enough? What devices do they use? Gather as much information from people that fit your customer persona. If your idea for a project doesn't have an audience then maybe it's not the best idea. On the other hand, don't spread yourself too thin. Nice. So yeah, a lot of the time the reason that you actually do this is purely just to integrate your notes. You know, there you can see I'm actually just taking a lot of what they've already said, but the very act of just, of just taking, of reading through it and copying out the best points and then being able to go back to those best points is really what it's all about. That's how you learn. And you can literally do this with anything. It doesn't have to be exactly MVP. So, all right, cool. So study the market and competitors. So what I'm seeing already is that, yeah, okay, we've got target audience, studying the market and competitors. So 90% of unsuccessful startups didn't pay enough attention to their competitors and didn't realize they'd missed their window of opportunity. You need to thoroughly think through the market. All right, this is like really good information though. Like, whoever wrote this article is really smart. So, great. That— think, what is the size of your market? Is there demand? Is your audience heavily concentrated in specific locations? What laws and regulations apply? How do competitors solve the same problem? How do you target audience perspective? How fast we— right, so core features. Okay, so this is also important. So grab all of that, paste that there. So what is the size of your market? Is your audience heavily concentrated in specific locations? What laws and regulations to apply? Yeah, I love this point as well. Okay. So from there, we study both successful and failed ones, and now we're looking at the next part. Now we gotta see, um, hashtag— nice. So what's really interesting about this, I've actually made a video about it, but I can literally just go like, uh, There we go. Open up a mind map. And this is super cool because now you can actually start to see how the, the notes that I've been taking are starting to add together. So, you know, we've got this, why companies, why companies develop MVPs for their SaaS. There's little effort, no risk, things to avoid, a broken feedback loop, inefficient development. All right, cool. And so this is really what it's all about. You know, I'm starting to put weld it all together. I'll just close this for now. So let me say hide floating meeting controls like that. Awesome. Okay, so determining the core features. Many companies stuff their MVP, SaaS MVP, with non-essential features or make them too complex. Don't forget that it's not an end product or prototype. Focus on the bare minimum functionality. So we do that and then just highlight that. Nice. Okay, determine the core features. Nice. Okay, now each feature and filter based on the following criteria. You can use prioritization techniques. Nice. So just going to grab that. And then this, I've got a— definitely got a note on this already. Priorit— I think I've already got it. Yeah, or if I haven't, then I should have it. So concept and then priority. Cool. So we go back there. All right, so secondary initiatives, um, use the following criteria. Can your SaaS work without this feature? Does the target audience want it? Does it solve a critical problem? Will it have a significant impact on the revenue? Is this part of the company product vision? Okay, put the features that match these criteria into your list of must-have initiatives. Everything else should be positioned. All right, so this is really key and I can even use my M Gradient, Gradient 1. Just paste that there. Nice. So for instance, an MVP in healthcare SaaS platform might need a document client, invoice management. However, you wouldn't need time tracking. Okay, awesome. So choose a business model. Very interesting point as well. So just add a hash. There we go. Choose a business model. 70% of startups fail because they couldn't find an appropriate business model to scale. Okay, so it's really important to determine your revenue model and pricing strategy very early on. Okay. And most SaaS companies stick to the subscription-based revenue model, monthly recurring payments, to help convert more customers as they incur less initial costs. All right, cool. So this is very valuable information as well. I think I'll even do some Arc Gradient 1, just did that. Nice. And then as for the pricing strategy, you can pick one of the following. So flat rate, complete, complete package, tiered pricing, user-based pricing, usage-based pricing. This is super, super fascinating. I don't know if I actually need this information, but I want to just keep it there anyways just so that I have some sort of idea when I maybe need it down the line. According to 2021 research, 54% of SaaS companies use tiered pricing. 27% developed their own hybrid strategy. Got it. Free offerings are an excellent way to grow your product, but you should be careful. For example, the freemium model works as a lead generation. So this is fascinating to me because a lot of the time Yeah, with what I'm doing in marketing, there can be times where you wanna give something away for free or you, you need to get people's attention with a different type of offer, but you don't want to mess it up too much because as they said here, the freemium model works as a lead generator. A paid model with a free trial generates twice the conversion rates from free to paid account. Nice. And then building a product roadmap before the start of the development, your engineers Designers should analyze the documents, product project requirements, software specifications. Okay, so building a product roadmap is also very interesting idea. Paste that there. Design specifications, cloud assessment, security analysis, cost avoidance. So the interesting thing though is I don't actually need to know any of this stuff, um, I guess the most important thing in my, in my stage is SOPs, SOPs, marketing strategy, um, product ideas, and that should be good to go. Okay, so additionally you can map out development for executives, the marketing department, and customers. So this is important, okay? So you want to have, you want to have short-term and long-term goals. So I believe I've got something on goals. Let me just see here. Goals. All right, cool. And short-term, right? Progress metrics, success criteria. Nice. So we'll link this to success and then the sales and marketing teams must have a plan with prioritized channels. An external roadmap helps keep customers interested until the project is launched. Okay, cool, cool. So promote your product before launch. You won't know if your MVP is up to the mark unless you have sufficient number of people to try it out. This is why you must showcase your product to customers, influencers, landing page or video that illustrates your audience's problems. Okay, so this is important for me as well to remember. Just do that. You can begin. Make it as straightforward as possible. All right. And then lesson from Dropbox: with little to no investment, the company validated its idea and skyrocketed the number of beta testers. That's, that's pretty awesome that they, they just used a 3-minute video. Okay, take lesson from Dropbox. All right, cool. Deploy the MVP to incorporate feedback. So post-launch, just important for your MVP, so as it allows you to check on certain things. Yeah, so if your MVP generates enough demand to warrant full-scale development What customers? Yeah, so criteria to be monitoring post-launch. So if your MVP generates enough— yeah, oh, that's weird. There we go. I wonder why there's so much spacing. If your MVP generates enough demand, what customers dislike and like and dislike, if your business model fits the solution and the pricing strategy appropriate. And so this is where iteration comes in. So yeah, so this is where you can begin iteration until you have something you really Bill scores well all of these points. Okay, it's a lot of work, but don't worry if your MVP doesn't resonate. You can start from scratch or apply your insight to the next iteration. Okay, so this is awesome. And once you perfect the core of your SaaS development, you can begin full-scale development. So super fascinating stuff. Um, I can use dark. There we go. And then how to speed up SaaS development. So this is super interesting to me. Okay, how do you speed up your SaaS development? Because the whole goal with the MVP is that you want to get things out quickly. You, you want to be testing very, very quickly, rapid iteration, and that's really the best way for you to figure out what works. And so Looking at that. All right, cool. So I like this idea, low-code platforms. I'm just going to mention that one, but there's not really that much that I need to know about this. So, uh, dedicated software development environments, reusable ready-made code and templates. You can get these tools to deploy. Nice. All right, cool. and then popular tech stack. So Python, Node.js. I don't need to know about this. Open source tools: Bootstrap, GitLab, cheapest way. So basically, this, this is important to mention. Okay, so open source tools, the whole idea is just how can you get it out faster? How can you just get something created from idea to the marketplace in as quick and short amount of time as possible. So despite the risks of bugs and documentation, these can save you a lot of time during early stages of development. This is like Bootstrap, Bootstrap and GitLab, open source toolkits. All right, so manually processed services. This is also very interesting. Basically, manually processed service, that means Essentially. Okay, so manual-first MVP, concierge MVP, a technique that mimics complicated backend processes with humans to save you time and money. So I love this idea. It's like mimic complicated backend processes because that is so key in a lot of this. Okay, so minimizing that. And now that we're done with the theory, let's look at some real-life examples. Okay, 3 examples of using a SaaS. All right, uh, so MVP: simple website to focus on people in particular tech conferences. All right, we know Spotify, uh, LinkedIn began as a shadow of its future self. The MVP for LinkedIn web app had minimal functionality Simple search engine. All right, cool. So interesting. I think that is it. So let me see. This is pretty funny. So, okay. A million-dollar idea can become a million-dollar failure if you rush development without validating your idea first. Building a SaaS MVP is the least risky way to learn if your product has a real audience and effective business model. Today's media giants started with an MVP. Their products were simple at first, but they allowed them to generate development and go off the rails even with an inexperienced team. But Acropolis, great. So I'll just take this and then I'm gonna move this all the way to the top over here. So because I think this is really important. Nice. So I love that. And we can see now this is the entire article. I've taken all the best place, uh, parts of it. So I can actually just close this now. And, um, yeah, this is what it looks like. So if I just say Ctrl+Alt+S, up, we can see there's a couple of things. And from here, what I like to do is I will maybe summarize it even further. Um, I'll maybe put these things on the subheadlines because there's quite a lot of headlines here. So what we could say, okay, why companies develop MVPs, things to avoid, how to build a SaaS MVP, ways to speed up your MVP development, low-code platforms. Okay, so this is, uh, should be a fourth one. So let's do that. Fine line of testing. Okay, so this goes back into that. So this is essentially what I've created in the time of this video, and I'll just put a line there. Uh, but yeah, that, that's pretty awesome. So you can just use that. This is one thing I just, I don't like about Obsidian is that even when you fold, you can't really have spaces in between the the items. So let's see if I just say fine line of testing. Okay, um, I wonder if there's a way I can just do that. Nice. So now we've got some space in between these and then the overall mindset idea validation. So hopefully that you— hopefully you learned something from this video. I know this was, uh, this was an experiment for me because I just wanted to learn about this anyway, and I thought I might as well just make a video, a video for Obsidian. So let me know if you have any questions in the comments below, if you have any ideas that you want me to make for future videos. And as usual, thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you in the next video. Bye-bye!