Moshe Mikanovsky's Step-by-Step Playbook for Startup Product Strategy

What usually you will want to look for is, you know, user retention in the product and see that people are coming again and again to use the product. Then based on your product, you will be able to look into what are different flows or specific things they do in the product that shows you that they will come back or they will tell other people or that will increase their usage. My name is Moshe Mikhanovsky. As I mentioned, I'm from Toronto and I'm really excited to be here today. Just in a way of introduction, we are Root Quotient. I'm the product director at Root Quotient. Root Quotient is— we are an engineering development company that We started about 5 years ago. We just actually celebrated our 5th anniversary, anniversary, and we're a global partner of Founder Institute. We build products from 0 to 1 and beyond. So all the way from inception to go-to-market. In the 5 years so far, we delivered over 100 product solutions in 7 sectors. So we have a lot of experience in many different places. Personally, I have over 30 years of experience building digital products, first in the engineering end of things and then in product management. These days, product management is my passion and what I love talking about. I also teach at an MBA program here in Toronto, and I host our podcast, the Ruth Walshen Podcast Beyond Product. So if you're interested, check us out on YouTube as well. Some of the companies that we work with, you can see here on the screen, like Akamai and Deloitte. But we have many other clients, like I mentioned, over 100 projects that we delivered. So let's dive in directly into our agenda today. So we will talk about what is product strategy and why is it so hard to do product strategy. And then we'll break it down into a holistic approach that we do at RootQuashent. This will give you a tool to define your own strategy. So we will go through this process today. At the end, there will be time for Q&A, and please write your questions on the chat. I probably will not be able to answer them as we go, but what Ian and I are going to do at the end is he will read those questions to me and then we'll answer them through. So there will be time for that. So let's start. What is product strategy? So on the one hand, we have a vision, or some people call it big audacious hairy goal, or they call it a north star. In general, this is the outcome that you want to achieve in the world. This is like the value we want to create, the big problem to solve. On the other end, we envision how we can solve it. We have some ideas about how we can make it happen, how we can deliver a product that will create value to our users and also be viable to us. What comes next is the thing that connects them. This is the strategy. So the strategy is really the choices we make in order to get from these two points, from point A to point B, from the ideas that we have or the vision that we have into a product that creates this vision. But product strategy is not easy. It's never a straight line. It always takes a long and curvy way. So why is it? Why is it so hard to do product strategy? There are 3 main reasons that I want to highlight today. The first one, it's really a guess. So we are strategizing about what we think will work, but we usually don't have enough data to actually say this is actually going to work because Usually it's innovative, it's a new thing, it's something that no one has done before. So this is really our best guess that we're bringing forward. The second thing is that a lot of it is really out of our control. Many things that are related to the strategy, like the market that we're going to work with, the vendors, the partners we'll work with, even the world situations around us, it's out of our control, which affects the strategy. The third thing that makes it hard is that many times we just take it out of context or we do it, we try to implement things out of context, forgetting to see how this context will actually change the strategy that we have to work on over time. What should we do really to make that happen? The first things we should do is to say, Strategy is in our center, so everything evolves around the strategy and, and started from there. But the strategy also comes from a vision, so we have to start really even earlier than that to say the strategy will derive from our product vision, and the product vision derives from the company vision and the company strategy. Now, many times as new founders, or when you start a new organization, we might think that our company strategy and vision and strategy is the same as our product vision and strategy. But imagine companies like Microsoft or Amazon, they have so many products, but they still have one vision ahead of them that they're— all of their products are trying to reach that vision. So even if you start in the beginning thinking it's the same, you will see over time that your company vision might be much bigger than what the specific product vision that you have. But at the end of the day, each one of those products that you're creating needs to have some type of relationship to the company vision and strategy. Now, once we have our, that, you know, ideas that it all comes from that vision and it's all centered to everything that we do, we need really to put it into context. Which is go beyond the business strategy, go beyond what just the product will have to do. And we will see this next in all the next slides. So first of all, usually when we think about product strategy, we think only about, you know, the value creation to the users and to our company. This is like business product decisions and another type of decisions that usually are related to the product. For example, who are the users? What problem do we solve? What is our unique value proposition? What approach should we take to gain this, this market share? What we need to add on top of that is also the context of how we build it, and we need to make this, uh, context, the part of the product lifecycle decision. So it's not just the business and product decisions, but it's also the lifecycle decisions that we make as we build this. This is what we see as a holistic product strategy. And we're using here first principle philosophy that we're breaking down this problem into its most basic elements. So now we have an holistic view. And then what I will take you through in the next stages is also how do we break it down into these basic elements And then we work through each one of these elements to reach a solution. And that solution at the end will be our full strategy that is not just one or the other, but it's a holistic approach to everything. So if we're starting just with the product itself, we are using this strategy decision tree. What you're seeing over here is a graphical representation of this decision tree. And by the way, we have for you at the end a playbook that includes everything that I'm sharing today here. So you can then take screenshots of this, and this will also be available later as a recorded recording. But we also have that playbook, and all of this information and, and slides are in the playbook, so you will be able to use that later. Um, so the idea here of the product, um, uh, strategy decision tree is that there are many different types of Things that we have to make in order to put together our product. And for each one of us, it's a different set of decisions. Many of them are associated with who are the clients and the users, who is the competition, and what is the unique value proposition we're creating? What type of product are we building? What is the technology available for our users that will make these constraints for us to build it in a certain way? How do we monetize it? So we listed all of this in this type of a tree, and it's quite easy actually to go through that tree with all the specific assumptions of our organization and put together a very specific strategy that is just the product. What are we going to build in the product so we will be able to solve it? But then we have to put it, like I mentioned earlier, in this entire lifecycle loop. So let's look into that. What is this product strategy loop that I'm talking about and where everything fits? So we started with a vision. We talked about the vision before. It is part of the loop. It's always the first step. And what is it that we want to achieve in the world? It is a loop because we keep returning to it on an ongoing basis. As this is iterative, we have to go through every once in a while and we'll talk about it a bit later, how often do we do this? But in general, you have to repeat it to see is the vision still the right vision? Do we need to adjust this vision or not? After that, we can use that decision tree that I shared with you earlier to decide what are the different features or specific unique value proposition we are creating with this product. And that's the strategy of the product itself, which we need to really create two of them. The first one is a long-term, that is, how do we get to that, to get to our vision? Because our visions usually are quite big and it's very hard to get to the vision right away. And the second one is more of a short-term strategy to say, what is it that we need to do right now to actually started to get to that place that we want to go to. Now, is this going to work, the strategy? That's where we need to go into discovery. And here we need to strategize how we are going to discover what we need to know. So this involves creating, setting our ideas and forming hypotheses based on them, and also strategizing how we're going to test it. And there are many different ways to test. And each one of our ideas might need or require different ways to test them. After that, we should go into road mapping. Now, road mapping, because we don't really have a product market fit for our ideas, because they're just, you know, we just strategize about them, but we don't know if they will work. And we may have done some discovery, so we may have some more information to tell us these things will work or not, we can focus really on, on the immediate strategy and what we need to build right now. So the roadmap that we're usually talking about is in the format of now, next, and later. So everything that is critical to work on now to reduce the risk should be done now, and everything that we are not sure yet or is not the highest priority for us to work on can be put into the next and later. And usually what we do is we timebox this. So we say we are building a roadmap for the timebox of, let's say, 3 months or 6 months or whatever makes sense to us that in, in the context of our product and our company and then the sector where we are. And, and then we try to implement that. Now, before we get into implementation, we also have to make decisions about debt management Debt management is one of those things that many times we really forget to do. It was important for us to include it here in the loop. Then they come to bite us. We strategize, we build things, and then all of a sudden we have all of this debt. Part of the strategy is really to understand what is the level of debt that we are allowing ourselves to obtain and how we're going to actually manage it, how we're going to identify that there is debt and how we're going to make sure that the debt is captured and we make the right decision about which debt we can actually leave as debt and which debt we have to solve right away and we cannot live with that. So then next, after we have all of that, we can start implementing. And this is where we focus only on the now in that time box. Here we can already start applying some project management processes Like who are the resources that are going to build it? What is the milestones that we'll have throughout these? What are the processes? What is the technology that we have to use to build it, etc. Now after that, there are two more steps. The first one is validation. Here we need to make sure that we create some ways to validate in our product how we will know that there is that it's actually working. So what does success look like? How do we measure the success? How do we collect and analyze the data to understand it and to understand if our bets are successful or not? Because we really took bets here with this strategy. And then the last thing is adoption. So this really divides between before product market fit and after. Before product market fit, we need to really explore ways to acquire and adopt users. So how do we get to those users? How do we get them educated and onboarded to the product and get them to understand the value in the product? Once we find this product market fit, then we can focus a bit more about growth. And here we can go into bigger audiences, extended markets, improve the product to help them even more, etc., etc. So you see, we got into this full cycle, and all of that really needs to be strategized. So as I mentioned before, we usually think about strategy only on the product itself, but there is many things around it, which is the lifecycle, and this creates a more holistic way to do that. Now, um, we have actually created a canvas that we're using, and I want to share with you this, this canvas. So this canvas will be available in the playbook that we are going to share at the end. But what I wanted to do before we actually get there is I'm going to share— this is a bit hard to do on, on the presentation, so just bear with me for a second over here. I'm going to stop sharing my screen. And let's see. Okay, here we go. And then I will share a more, um, uh, a better view of that. And we actually prepared, uh, in, in the, um— okay, you can see it, right? Does anyone want to thumbs up over there that you can see it? Perfect. Okay, so now we see the Thank you so much for that. So now we see the product strategy loop canvas, and this is actually an example that we included in the canvas for Airbnb. So what we did, you know, I wanted to make sure to say this is not based on Airbnb's specific situation, but this is more of like us as if we would have this type of an organization this day. But, um, so, so it's not, um, completely, um, um, based on all the history, true history of, of Airbnb. Uh, the idea here is to give you an idea, you know, how to fill this, um, uh, canvas and what included in there. And you might be familiar with other canvases out there in, in the market, uh, for, uh, different things. What we try to do over here is to, again, to create a holistic approach that includes everything in one canvas. So it might look a bit, you know, there is a lot here, but it really goes through the full, the full loop that I mentioned. So you will have here your product vision, your discovery, your strategy, the roadmap, debt management, implementation, validation, and adoption. And on top of that, we will also— you will also have Communication and governance, because communication and governance is one of those things that help us across all the loop, the entire loop for how do we communicate things across. When we create a vision to share internally and externally, how do we do it? What tools do we use for that? How often do we want to do it, etc.? This will help you really with all of those components. In each one of them, we have a question that leads you through what are— what is the question you want to answer over here to fill this canvas. And then on the top here, you will see we, we just did it as an example. And if you remember, actually Airbnb, when they started, that was their original name, uh, Airbed and Breakfast. And you will iterate through that. Now we put here as a quarter, so a quarterly iteration, and it's really important to iterate through it and not, um, uh, you know, do it once and forget about it. Because the idea is that whatever you do in the next iteration is also a learning opportunity for you to see, did our assumptions or our hypotheses make sense? Is the strategy that you created still working for us? Um, did everything that we learned in the last iteration, um, is still valid for our vision and for future to continue the strategy, or do we need to change anything? Do we need to pivot completely to a new vision or something completely new? So that's why it's really important. So as you do that, you will keep noticing how you improve and evolve over time, and that's what we continue noticing with our clients as well. Um, few other sections that might be of interest I mentioned earlier the roadmap. You see the roadmap as a now, next, and later is really a very simple thing to do once you have the building steps or those stepping stones before that for product strategy and the vision and your discovery. You will be able to tell what is the things that really are critical to do now. And the debt management, one of the things here about that that we really have to figure out is what does high risk mean to us? What is, what is it going to mean to us if we keep that in, in the system? This could be for the short term, for the long term. It can mean what is the impact on the users, and also it can mean what is the impact to to us, what might be the cost to us if we keep this debt in there, etc. So we hope that you will find this also useful. As I mentioned, you do have access to this through the product strategy playbook. And this is how the playbook will look like once you download it. And you will have over here also the canvas itself. That example from Airbnb that we put together. And we're probably going to put more, more examples in the future. So it's really useful to, to, to see. Um, now let me just switch back to the presentation. One second. Okay, and here we go. Thumbs up that you see it. It's coming. Yes, perfect. Amazing. That was the canvas. Basically, once we have this done and we are putting all the efforts to do that, there are some outcomes that we're going to get from that. We will be much more focused. And that was, you know, I'm not saying that just because— I'm saying that because we've done that and we see how this is helping both our clients and our teams to be much more focused on building the right things. We are building products that are really powered by insights. The entire process is transparent, so we know where things are, we know everyone is on top of things, and they know why decisions were made. And then we also, um, getting more confidence that the bets that we're making— and there is no way around it, at the end of the day it will be bets because there is a lot of things that are unknown, uh, so those bets are things that, uh, we have more confidence about to move forward and make even better bets the next time. So with that, um, I want to share with you the QR code that just scan this quickly here. We can keep it, I am sure, during the Q&A. We can keep it on so people will be able to download the— to get access to that. But I really want to open this to any questions that everyone might have.

Awesome, thanks, Moshe. Yeah, I've been sharing it throughout the presentation, so if you want, you can remove it.

So, okay, perfect.

I will stop sharing one more time on stage. Just so everybody has access to it because, and it's pinned to the chat, so everyone should have access to it. Let's start, and the reason is because once we do Q&A, we can't have too many windows on this. But okay, that was really, really cool. Thanks so much for sharing. I think you saw a lot of thumbs up over there, so I think let's kind of jump straight into questions. You know, folks, the point here was Moshe wanted to share some strategy and frameworks and then let's just do a few questions and then we'll kind of open up for networking and then we can learn from one another. So if you can go over the Q&A tab and then just upvote for your like most popular questions, we can kind of take it from there. So I'm gonna bring up this question from, I think her name is Liz, Liz from Wexford. She's asking, are there any instances in which the discovery phase should come before the strategy phase?

Yeah, that's a very good question. Actually, I always debate that and sometimes in other presentations I would put discovery before. Maybe one thing that I didn't mention is that sometimes you will go back. Even though the loop looks like only one way, you might go back based on what you discovered. But if you think, for example, about your first, you have an idea, you didn't even do anything yet, you just did a bit, this is your idea. You might already come up with some ideas how you want to solve that, and that will be your strategy. And then you will come down into discovery because the strategy that you put there will give you some directions about what is it that you want to discover. So, so that's why we put it that way, the, the strategy first and discovery second, but it's definitely impacting each other. And what— so thank you for that question. So because I did forget to mention it before that If you find things during it, you don't necessarily have to continue forward. You can go back from the strategy, from one step to the back. So for example, from discovery back to strategy and say, okay, now our strategy changes based on the discovery that we made. We can't hear you.

Oh, sorry, I was on mute. Uh, let's see this question from Rahimi. Uh, they're asking, uh, from all the products RQ has helped build through this product strategy loop, can you mention specific examples of these products from companies that have reached product market fit?

Um, sure, yeah. So, you know, I, I can talk specifically about a specific company, uh, you know, without, uh, their permission, but we do have lots of use cases, etc. But one of the companies that I also interviewed on the podcast, so it's, you know, public and you can look at the podcast Beyond Product, that's the name of our podcast, is a company that had built— actually, we have multiple companies in this area of sustainability and clean world and helping the world become more carbon neutral. And they had a lot of ideas about— they actually had a service that they started with and they wanted to productize that service. So they had a lot of experience that we were able to help them put into structure and actually come up with a product that will make sense. And the product market fit over there was with specific segment that they started. This one is in Canada, so they're still early stages and they're still building it up in Canada with eventually ways to expand to other places in the world, uh, because it could work in other places. Um, uh, so, so part of the strategy was geographically where did they start, um, and it was also based on a lot on the experience that that specific company had as a service provider with all the network that they already have and access to some of those organizations locally, where we help them with strategizing about this lifecycle, the full lifecycle of a product. And now we are already on, on further iterations with them.

Perfect. Thanks so much.

Let's just— I'm trying to remember the episode number with them. Um, it's, um, it's Carbon One, the company, and I can't remember, it may be 15 or 16, I can't remember exactly, but it's in the podcast.

Okay, cool, very exciting stuff. I want to bring up this question which was asked in the chat and then our team has posted it here. So, uh, the question is from Zana, uh, they're asking, does the product strategy work for physical products as well? We build, uh, products to use for the care of treatment support education of persons with autism. So I guess, how does your framework apply to physical products rather than SaaS products?

Yeah, it's a good, it's a good question. Admittedly, you know, my background is in digital products, and that's what at FruitQuotient we usually help. We also helped a few IoTs that had some physical products over there. But there is definitely more challenges with physical products because of the time it takes to create them sometimes and the cost that it takes to create them. So, so time-wise it might be different. And also, um, agility is a bit harder to do. Um, you know, this, um, loop is a very— it can be a very agile thing that you can check. You can find things and you can change and you can go backwards and forward and stuff like that. Uh, with the physical product, it's a bit harder to do because of a bit of a waterfall nature that you might have over there. But you can still loop through that when you find different, you know, cheap ways to do prototypes, and etc. So this can happen as well. We actually, speaking about the podcast, we also interviewed a company that does IoT called Poppy. So we talked a bit about that in the podcast as well. And if you're interested, I actually have another podcast and I interviewed also the head of the product at Poppy for my other podcast called Product for Product, because over there we, we spoke a bit more about those challenges of building physical products and, and how it's a bit harder, but it's still possible to do.

I think the biggest challenge with that is the feedback cycles, right? That, like you said, it's like, how do I go Yeah, so how do you get it cheaper and faster?

So if this is with, you know, 3D printers that you print things in a cheap way, or if this is with like one-off— it depends, you know, what is the product. Some products are very complex and some products are very simple. I'm working with— recently I met— not working with— I met this startup here in Toronto that are building something very cool, but it's a very hard product to build. So they build it one at a time and they have maybe 2 or 3, 3 of them. Um, and, and it's quite, um, a big undertaking to just build the product itself as a prototype. It's still just a prototype.

Yeah, no, I hear you. All right, I like this question from Federico who's asking, is there a good timing for product strategy and iteration? Or I guess maybe the one thing to add to that, when Should the founder be iterating?

Yeah, yeah, I, I think, um, you know, if you have not done it, you should really start with the first iteration right away, um, and then you will see also based on the, uh, completeness of your canvas, you know, what are the things you never pay attention to or you still need to find information for. So the first one might be the hardest, um, but then what do we do? That's why we put it as a time box and we say Don't commit to like a year or two years and have these long Gantt charts with all of these commitments, because chances are that 99.9% it will change and you will not— and you will throw it away. What you will really want to commit to is more of like, what's the next most important things to do? And that's why we were talking about the now. What do we need to do now? I would, I would usually say to startups that You want to timebox it to somewhere between 3 to 6 months. Depends on your product, how much information you have, the access to users and all that stuff, and the size of the product. It's more about the size of the product than anything, mainly because, you know, less than 3 months, it's probably too short to get anything done and get real feedback. And more than 6 months is probably way too long I would say in the beginning I would try to do it shorter, like 3 months, so every quarter. And even if you— even if it's just to look at what you put together 3 months ago and to see where are you on this strategy. Am I still on track? Am I completely off track and I have to re-strategize? Or am I done with the now that I planned then and now need to create a new now for the next quarter? Or did I learn something completely new? So, so even if you're not changing anything, but you're still reviewing it on a quarterly basis, at least, I think it will be quite, quite successful.

I like that. So essentially, as you're running your sprints, go check in quarterly on the greater strategy and how, how close are you to that, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, that's a good way to approach it. All right, I like this question from Elizabeth from Hamburg, a little bit late for 7 PM, but she's asking about any correlation between the product lifecycle and its strategy and how does the strategy inform the roadmap.

Um, yeah, so what we're basically saying in this, um, in this framework is that they— it's one and the same, meaning that the entire product lifecycle, it's not just— it's part of this, the strategy, and the strategy is part of the product lifecycle, right? Um, so it's— and that's why I, I emphasized before that it's not just about deciding, you know, which features we're going to create and what geography we're going to put it in and who is the segment of users and, um, and what is our unique value proposition, but it's also about how we're going to do all of that in this lifecycle and which will put in context as well and will impact the decisions that we have to make on the products. So they're all interacting with each other.

Okay, awesome.

I hope this answers the question. I hope this answers the question.

Well, hopefully, like, folks, as I'm ans— as Moshe is answering them, give us a thumbs up so we know that how close we are to that. Uh, so Mikhail is asking, uh, if we're talking about the first loop "Then what are the markers for you to drop your idea without going forward?" And I really like this question because we tell this to founders all the time. It's like, hey, if you run an experiment and you've stress tested and like you're not seeing the results you want, kill it, kill the experiment, and then iterate on the idea. Sometimes it means killing the main function of the idea, but you know, from your 30 years, like what, like what are the Moshe guidelines around killing an idea?

Yeah, yeah. First of all, before I answer that, you have to remember that, The discovery and validation, they could be done also in very, very early stages that you just have an idea and you can create some wireframes or some very crude mockups or something like that. So you don't have to develop something very heavily to start working on that and start getting, you know, data from the market. So Some of the things I would look for to make a decision, you know, whether this is something to pursue or not to pursue, are signals from a very, you know, with a very focused group of users that will fit, uh, the, the mark, the segment that I'm trying to aim to. So I will not try— well, it really depends on the client, so maybe I'm thinking I have a bias maybe to B2B, which is like you're selling it to 3 to 6 big or whatever size of organizations. But with consumer products, it might be a bit harder. You need to be a larger size of segments to test it with. But you want to see that people are willing to pay for it. That's one of the things. You want to see that they are not just saying this will give me value, but they're actually using it. Instead of giving value statements like, yes, I will use it, this is really interesting, actually look for people that are using it. Quite quickly after that, you will see whether they're coming back or they just used it once. So I downloaded, and it probably happened to everyone here, you downloaded lots of apps on your phones, on your smartphones, and how many of them you really kept for a long time and came back to them? Uh, probably the majority is not. So, so you will see, and this is just an example of, of an app, right? But it's like that with every other product that people might get excited about the potential of it but then they may will not find value in it, right? That's why don't listen to what they say, we watch what they do. Um, uh, so we're willing to pay, actually using it, and, and not just saying they will use it. Um, and then the, the last one, and that's, you know, kind of like even better, is see that they're actually telling others about it. So they are, um, in, in situations they're actually recommending your product to other people, um, which usually is already when you find more product-market fit and they are willing to, to tell other people about it.

Yeah, I really like that, um, getting folks to actually use the product and refer it, right? That drives up your NPS and everything, um. Here, maybe like a rapid-fire question from Alex. They're asking, can a product strategy replace a business plan? Keep in mind some of the people out here are founders, so should they only be looking at a product strategy plan versus a business plan?

Um, I think it really depends who your goal is for to present it to. Um, business plan might be something you will be requested by some VCs or whoever. I'm not a VC, so I can't tell you. For me, absolutely, I will probably not read your business plan. So if you will have a document, it is like 10, 20 pages long, and I've seen business plans in my past, I've been involved in writing business plans in the past, um, I think a good strategy that is very, um, concise, um, etc. is, is, uh, probably much more actionable and shareable with other people than a long business plan. And when I'm thinking about business plans, usually that's what I'm thinking about. So maybe there are other formats, you know, that are a bit better. Um, but again, it depends on the audience. So if your audience is specifically asking for a business plan, you might need to create that. Uh, just make sure that they are aligned. Um, the business plan might be a bit more also on the business vision and strategy, where a product strategy is more on the product itself that derives from the business plan, right? So in the business plan, you might have higher-level items that are not on the product strategy. For example, if you are planning to build multiple products to get to your vision, then that's, you know, eventually your, your business plan will be a bit different than your product strategy.

Perfect. Yeah, the reason I wanted that— it's a very unusual question, but I think it's very relevant as well, because as a founder, like, where should my focus be?

Absolutely. No, absolutely.

Business is pretty much one-to-one, right? It's like, well, yeah, Moshe says the business plan will include like your GTM motion and it will include your financials.

Yeah.

But the product strategy can be more on the persona, the— and like what features you're actually trying to build to accomplish specific problems, right?

So the lifecycle that you're going to build it at. Yeah, exactly. And that— but this is actually, um, the interesting thing for me always when I work with founders, that, um, I see how many synergies there are between product management and founding, um, you know, a company that builds a product. Because there are so many things that are really similar decisions that we have to make. That's why I always love helping founders and seeing that through product management eyes.

No, perfect. I appreciate all the support you guys, uh, that you give to a lot of the founders and stuff. Uh, we have time for a couple more questions, and then I want to make sure that we have enough time for networking. Um, I like this question from Arjun, uh, who's asking, hey, one product might have multiple canvases or iterations. How do we keep track of everything? So do you have like a sprint tracker? Is this all in Asana, like Notion? Like, what's your, what's your go-to?

Yeah, it really doesn't matter. Whatever, you know, you're comfortable with, your stack of operational stack, right? So, um, you know, you could even use it as, um, files inside your drive if you're using Google, or if you're using, uh, you know, OneDrive, you know, from Microsoft with a version control over it, meaning like just version 1, version 2, version 3, whatever it is, it really doesn't matter. We are actually— I was planning, and we didn't have a chance to do it for this presentation today, but I was planning to create it as a Miro board, Miro template. I love Miro, so that's my go-to tool. And, you know, we can publish it as a template over there and then share the template so everyone will be able to search for it and copy it over and start using it. Um, when you use it as a Miro, uh, board, um, you can, you can copy it from one to the second to the third and just create the overall versions over there as well. So there are really many different ways. Um, if you use Notion, for example, you can create a Notion, uh, file from that. Um, I didn't create one, uh, but You know, because I don't use Notion, but that's on me, that's on me. But many people I know, they use Notion. So it really can be used in any place. It doesn't really matter which tool you use it as long as you do it.

Yeah, I think like it's the habit more, right, than the data capture and analysis and going into your standups and your retros and stuff.

Yeah.

All right, cool.

Maybe a good habit to have is to put in your calendar every quarter to do a couple of days of really, you know, putting time into it as a founder or as a founding team. Um, or if you already have, you know, some other, uh, team members, you can use, uh, team leads or everyone. Um, and just, and just do it.

Gotcha. I'm gonna do one, maybe two more questions, and then we'll wrap up. This question, you answered this a bit, but like maybe if you wanna go deeper because this has come up like in the chat as I see is like, you know, what are some early indicators that your product strategy is headed for success or failure? I think you briefly talked about the failure side, but like what does that success look like? And like should you start doubling down and kill the rest of your other experiments? And like, and what does double down look like in your books? And like even before they hit traditional metrics like revenue. Joe from Central India.

Yeah, revenue usually is, um, um, it's, um, a trailing indicator. They're not leading indicators. So what you want to look at is those leading indicators that are going to tell you if this happens, then in the future you will— this will happen, right? So, so this is like one of the things we're always trying to find, leading indicators. It's not that easy, especially in the beginning. What usually you will want to look for is, you know, user retention in the product and see that people are coming again and again to use the product. Then based on your product, you will be able to look into what are different flows or specific things they do in the product that shows you that they will come back or they will tell other people or that will increase their usage. Then you really want to look for those patterns. Those patterns will help you focus on these patterns to bring other users that don't yet behave that way to behave in that way. This is usually more of leading indicators that will indicate if X, Y, and Z happens in the product for the users, then more chances are that there will be a successful result. Like I said, it's hard to do in the beginning because you might not have enough data in there. That's where one of the things to focus on is to look for those things. You need to have instrumentation and ways to collect this data so you can actually be able to collect that. But, uh, and you need to be mindful to actually do it. So you want to look over time to see what are those specific things that drive retention and drive increase in usage.

Okay, perfect. Um, just want to confirm, uh, John from, uh, San Mateo, he's asking, the canvas file will be in the ebook, correct?

Uh, yes, it is in the ebook, so you can download that. It's a PDF, I believe it's a PDF, uh, and you can print just that one page, you can print the entire thing, and also the example that we share over there from Airbnb. Um, and, um, yeah, cool.

So I'll bring it, put it on stage once again just so people can download it. Uh, all right, I want to make sure we have time for networking. Mostly, this has been great. We've had, I think, close to, we're at 150 people now, but earlier we were close to 180, 190. So I'm sure a lot of people got value from this. There's people who are gonna watch the recording that will get even more value from it. Really looking forward to having you back on. But yeah, audience, please show Moshe some love and follow him on LinkedIn. He produces a lot of great content within the world of product. Go ahead, follow Root Cause, and we'll drop in all the URLs in the chat. But what we're gonna do now is we're gonna break out for networking. I guess before we do that, Moshe, I'd like to end this on positive notes. What's the one piece of advice you have for aspiring founders?

Just do it. I know that I'm stealing from a very known company that I'm not sponsored or anything, but without trying to do something physically or putting it down in some ways, it's very hard to move anywhere. You know, things are in our heads. I would say write it down, start doing it, and the things will happen.

Perfect. Awesome. Folks, we're going to break off for networking. Don't go anywhere. You'll see a bunch of virtual tables. Moshe will have his own table. It's probably going to get full very fast. But try to be mindful and just network and join other people, talk to each other about the different stuff you've learned. Um, but yeah, Moshe, we'll see you on the tables. Everyone, thanks for joining in from around the world. Pleasure.

Thank you so much, Ian. Take care.