from Hacker News

How to Start a Startup, Lecture 7: How to Build Products Users Love, Part I

by stasy on 10/14/14, 10:01 PM with 32 comments

  • by systemtrigger on 10/15/14, 5:12 AM

    Outstanding talk and q/a from a startup grandmaster. Kevin reveals wise strategy and insight repeatedly. In particular I liked the simplicity of everyone storing their self authored todo lists on the company dropbox and using these lists to hold one another accountable. Another point that hit home was the idea of respecting one another's time and what that means if you think it through. From the q/a I wonder what the other two YC companies are that have the same sort of disciplined remote working style that Wufoo has. Since only 3 YC companies have made remote working work, if Kevin Chris and Ryan had it to do all over I wonder if they would choose the remote approach again. My impression is yes, because of the efficiencies gained when remote work is done well.

  • by kevin on 10/14/14, 11:46 PM

    You can access the slides for the talk here: https://kivo.com/p/Ga9PIsNe

  • by _pius on 10/14/14, 11:56 PM

    Many gems in this talk. Loved the mindset of not only recognizing the value of first impressions, but recognizing that opportunities for first impressions are everywhere.

  • by graycat on 10/15/14, 2:29 AM

    Kevin, Nice lecture: Lots of good ideas backed with lots of good experience.

    In my start-up, currently I'm just doing the technical part of writing the code, etc. to get the product to work well, but a little before or after going live with a version 1.0 I will need to consider your ideas and likely use several of them.

    Your ideas, and experience, on managing a team, including people working from home, was terrific, by far some of the best team management ideas and experience I've heard.

    Some of what you are suggesting is close to at least three ideas in E. Fromm, The Art of Loving, e.g., that important qualities are caring, respect, and responsiveness.

    A fourth Fromm idea is knowledge, that is, for a couple to "give knowledge of themselves to each other". Since the relationship between a business and a user/customer is not really like a romantic couple, Fromm's idea does not fully carry over to a business relationship, but maybe some of it does: The company should try to get the customer/user to give the company, or at least the company's customer support, knowledge of how they think/feel about the product/service. Also, your idea of giving a user a list of product enhancements "since you were gone" (nice wording, suggestive of the caring, longing, pathos in the old movie Since You Were Away) can be viewed as the company giving knowledge of themselves to the user/customer. Nice.

    Some of your descriptions of your UX seem to want to give the company a personality, and I can't help but think of the guest post

    http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/02/guest-post-how-to-social.htm...

    by Fakegrimlock, robot dinosaur.

    A few weeks ago, Fred Wilson, of AVC.com, posted that post again and said that it was the most popular post on AVC.com or some such.

    Have you seen that post? Do you see some similar or different views?

  • by rajensanghvi on 10/15/14, 2:02 AM

    24 Quotes that I took away from Kevin's Lecture...all 140 characters or less.

    https://medium.com/how-to-start-a-startup/24-quotes-from-kev...

  • by wellboy on 10/15/14, 12:40 PM

    Awesome lecture. A summary of the points that hit home for me

    1. Really try create amazing first moments in your product

    2. There are many first moments in your product, every feature of your product has a first moment

    3. The little things that tell your users who is behind the company are VERY IMPORTANT, ROARRR tooltip, a little poem in sign up forms. It's the little things

    4. Deeply implement Support Driven Development in your company culture

    5. Let your users know what happened since they have been gone. --> set up a drip campaign, which reminds users who haven't logged in for a while

    6. Send handwritten thank you cards to your BEST customers is very valuable

  • by bigbang on 10/15/14, 4:50 AM

    Awesome talk. Really got me into thinking on paying more attention to design of login/checkout pages.

  • by albakes on 10/15/14, 3:19 PM

    Great lecture, Kevin.

    What is your opinion on using platforms such as oDesk.com for tracking remote workers?

  • by scobar on 10/15/14, 6:47 AM

    If you could redo the hand-written Christmas cards to show appreciation to customers, would you still send every customer a card at first, or would you start with the weekly schedule you transitioned to later? Thank you for the great talk.

  • by jonalmeida on 10/20/14, 1:42 AM

  • by withaspark on 10/20/14, 11:56 AM

    This was by far the most amazing lecture yet. Practical, actionable, and concise. Major kudos to Kevin Hale; this has helped me so much.

  • by purephase on 10/15/14, 1:14 AM

    Anyone know if you can get these in a podcast format?