The 10x Opportunities
I find myself looking for ways to grow our business through 10x opportunities. These type of opportunities will not take three months of development time. Yet, they are the kind of opportunities that greatly impact the business. For example, we immediately asked the user to rate the app right after completing a transaction. This simple ask got us a lot more ratings and a lot better ratings. All it took was a simple tweak to 10x our reviews.
A Beneficial Trait to Have for Product Launches
The other thing that I’ve learned through launching various products is that it’s helpful to have a healthy dose of skepticism. This trait allows you to understand where all the places that you can fail are. Therefore, you can address those problems before you launch, and grow this sense of success for the product. As we all know a lot of product initiatives don’t succeed. So by going in with that healthy bit of skepticism, you uncover some of those open issues that might, later on, become a bigger impediment.
How Behavioral Economics Relates To Consumer Products
In the last few years, I’ve been really interested in behavioral economics. I follow a lot of the leaders in that realm like Dan Ariely or Tyler Cowan. I also like to read The Economist because so I can understand macro shifts in the world. For instance, last week The Economist had this technology review on aviation.
I know nothing about aviation but it was really interesting to see the outlook on the industry and that helps. As a PM, you need to understand that there is this a broader world out there. Inevitably you’ll find ways to connect your product to that world. I think that just helps you understand that the world is much greater than just what you’re working on
I think economists are super interesting people because they look at different behaviors and trends in society. A big reason for my interest in them is because I am focused on consumer products. In fact, there is a good deal of behavioral economics interwoven with consumer products. I think that’s just the reality of today’s world.
