Des Traynor speaking at WebSummit 2018. We spend a lot of time talking about how companies can get to the point where their product resonates in the market. But this is not the only thing that matters.

1. What comes after product market fit?
@destraynor from @intercom

2. There is an epidemic of start-up advice
about finding product market fit.

4. Intercom started in 2011 with 4 people, $0
revenue and an ambitious $6M valuation.

5. 7 years later we’re 600+ people across 5 offices,
30,000+ customers and valued at over $1B.

6. It wasn’t all just product market fit

7. Sure, at the start, it’s just you and your product.
Here is where the “fit” is all that matters.
Product

8. Marketing
But if your product works, you’ll need
to start marketing.
Product

9. THE MARKETING STAGE
Market the Job to be Done
Practice effective testing
Learn the ways people buy
Solve from the inside out

10. Happy, paying
customer
Trialist
Active
user
Onboarded
user
Signed up
visitor
Visitor
Advert
clicker
Audience
The marketing funnel

11. We tend to look at funnels from the outside in
DEMAND GENERATION PRODUCT MARKETING ENGAGEMENT PRODUCT
Happy, paying
customer
Trialist
Active
user
Onboarded
user
Signed up
visitor
Visitor
Advert
clicker
Audience

12. The temptation is to start marketing here
DEMAND GENERATION PRODUCT MARKETING ENGAGEMENT PRODUCT
Happy, paying
customer
Trialist
Active
user
Onboarded
user
Signed up
visitor
Visitor
Advert
clicker
Audience

13. • It’s short term responsive
• It’s easy to experiment with
• It can be high impact
• There’s whole industries here to help

14. “If your customers aren’t
happy, engaged, profitable, and
sticking around for the long
term, then the last thing you
want to do is get more of them.”

15. The best
marketing
starts here
Happy, paying
customer
Trialist
Active
user
Onboarded
user
Signed up
visitor
Visitor
Advert
clicker
Audience

16. …and works
backwards
Happy, paying
customer
Trialist
Active
user
Onboarded
user
Signed up
visitor
Visitor
Advert
clicker
Audience

17. THE MARKETING STAGE
Market the Job to be Done
Practice effective testing
Learn the ways people buy
Solve from the inside out

18. Are you building what you sell?
Are you selling what you build?
Are you selling what they’re buying?
Are they buying what you’re selling?

19. Start by talking to your customers. Lots of them. All different types of them.

20. What are they looking for? What doesn’t work? What’s their definition of value?
How do they measure things? Where are we most solid? Why does the job go away?
You want a broad spectrum so you can define
the job that people are hiring your product to do.
SHOPPERS ACTIVE
NEW CHURNED TRIALING
INACTIVE

21. For each job,
we produce a card
that clearly
articulates the job,
what it’s more about,
what it’s less about,
and the journey
a customer goes on
when hiring Intercom
for that job.

22. Understand your competition
and why people should switch to you.

23. Know who you’re fighting with and why

24. existing
solution
new
solution
Know what angles to address
The 4 forces influencing a customer switch from or to a competitor
Reasons to switch
Reasons to stay
Problems with Current Product Attraction of New Product
Existing Habits & Allegiances Anxiety & Uncertainty of Change

25. This is why switching
is hard and your
product needs to be
~10x better

26. THE MARKETING STAGE
Market the Job to be Done
Practice effective testing
Learn the ways people buy
Solve from the inside out

27. They search by the
solution category
They want a better
version of what
they currently have
They want you!
CON:You have to sell
them on their problem,
your category, your
solution, and more
PRO: There’s lots of
them
CON:You have to
establish brand
dominance in a
category
PRO: It’s defined a
space
CON:You’re competing
on your competitor’s
terms in many ways
PRO: You just need to
beat one company
CON:It takes years to
get here
PRO: They accept no
substitute
They search by the
description of their
problem

29. THE MARKETING STAGE
Market the Job to be Done
Practice effective testing
Learn the ways people buy
Solve from the inside out

30. Default to redesign, not optimise.
A billion dollar company isn’t built off better button colours.

31. Sign up now Sign up now
We know that big calls-to-action outperform small ones.

32. Sign up now
Calls-to-action in the right location outperform ones in the wrong location.
Sign up now

33. Sign up now Sign up now
Calls-to-action that are visible outperform ones that are not.

34. Don't get sucked into black hole of tiny
optimisations. Know when to reset.

35. 1. How much could this experiment impact
the metric?
2. Given that impact, how long will you need
to run the test to get accurate results?
3. Is it worth the wait?
Before you experiment, ask yourself…

36. Sign up now
Time to implement: 2 hours
Time to test: 68 days
Total time: 70 days
Percentage improvement: 1.4%
Sign up now
CONTROL SIGN UP FLOW TEST SIGN UP FLOW

37. Time to implement: 15 days
Time to test: 13 days
Total time: 28 days
Percentage improvement: 9%
CONTROL SIGN UP FLOW TEST SIGN UP FLOW

38. Marketing
Getting Product and Marketing right
are the first steps to Product Market Fit.
Product

39. Marketing
But it gets complicated from here onwards
Product
Customer
Support
Finance
Sales
Analytics
Brand
Design
Content Public Relations
Infrastructure
Security
Compliance

40. THE SCALE STAGE
Evolve how you build
Beware of dogma
Maintain your edge
Evolve your roadmap

41. What got you here won’t get you there.

42. Early product companies work off
intuition, inspiration, gut, feel, etc.
This doesn’t scale.

43. Even if it did scale, it’s not a good idea.

44. Develop your roadmap process

45. Roadmap
Current
customers
Product
iterations
Voice of sales
Competitive
landscape
Churn
reports
Product
health
New ideas

46. Current
customers
Product
iterations
Voice of sales
Competitive
landscape
Churn
reports
Product
health
New ideas
How you allocate your time here is crucial

47. Current
customers
Product
iterations
Voice of sales
Competitive
landscape
Churn
reports
Product
health
New ideas
Some will flare up, some you have to earn

48. THE SCALE STAGE
Evolve how you build
Beware of dogma
Maintain your edge
Evolve your roadmap

49. Innovation and problem solving
are different modes of work
Addressing problemsIterations & new ideas
Speculative
Open ended
Failure is acceptable
Opportunity to differentiate
Well understood outcome
KPI driven
Failure rarely acceptable
Follow best practices

50. Every piece of product work needs a revenue hypothesis
This work will…
Help Sales close more deals
Help us sell at higher prices
Decrease customer churn
Improve our site conversion rate
Give us a unique position in market
Decrease costs to serve our customers

51. But adding features just to close deals is easy.
It leads to consulting-ware long term.

52. Feature Feature Feature Feature Feature Feature
%ofcustomersthatuseit
Most products have a few important features…

53. Feature Feature Feature Feature Feature Feature
%ofcustomersthatuseit
Feature Feature Feature Feature Feature Feature
“Just this once”
“Look at the ARR tho!”
“Said they’ll quit”
…but adding features that are only used by a few customers
is how your product becomes a bloated mess.

54. This isn’t some product purist bullshit.
You pay for that complexity in your
Marketing, Customer Support, Success, etc.
It’s “easy” to build everything customers want.

55. Act on your customers’ behalf, not their request

56. THE SCALE STAGE
Evolve how you build
Beware of dogma
Maintain your edge
Evolve your roadmap

57. How to think about you vs your competitors

58. You
If you have a successful product, you’ll get customers

59. Your competitor
Then you’ll get a competitor who will start to attract your customers
You

60. So what do you do?
You Your competitor

61. If you begin to copy their features…
You Your competitor

62. …they’ll begin to copy your features.
You Your competitor

63. You’ll end up looking and talking like your competition.
You’re now a commodity.
You Competitor

64. Beware of prioritising product requests
that make you more like your competitor.

65. “We need be much more like them”
will soon turn into
“We need to be very different to them”

66. THE SCALE STAGE
Evolve how you build
Beware of dogma
Maintain your edge
Evolve your roadmap

67. All opinions in your software cost you customers,
so they better be worth it.

68. • “We don’t think we should collect email addresses up front”
• “We have specific ways we want our customers to speak”
• “We think the messenger should always ___ and never ___”
• “We think there’s only ‘X’ ways you can set up permissions”
• “Our bot Operator should always sound like a ____”
Real examples from Intercom:

69. When an opinion is costing you
more than it’s earning you, it’s dogma.

70. • Attract a set of target
customers
• Inspire your team
• Fuel your marketing
• Reduce your product
scope
• Simplify your product
• Block sales
• Confuse your team
• Are only surfaced in
product
• Paint you into
corners technically
• Confuse your users
Good opinions vsBad opinions

71. “But we’ve always done that”
“I remember back when…”
“But on the blog it says…”
“I found this Google Doc and it said”
“Des once said at an all hands that…”
Opinions should expire

72. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

73. Either you kill your dogma, or your dogma kills you.

74. Thanks
slides:intercom.com/blog
from @intercom@destraynor