Bootstrapper's Paradise

Accessing information will never be the same. 

Let's talk about what ChatGPT has the potential to change with its disruptive technological capabilities. 

If you want to reach product-market fit faster, sign up for my free 5 day email course here - https://nxtstep.io/fit/

Episode Transcript
Hey, folks, Sean here and I am

so geeking out about ChatGPT.

I want to talk to you about what I think

are the most disruptive potential use cases and how it

could change the way we access information forever.

So if you don't know what ChatGPT is, it's

essentially an AI bot, but one you can have a

conversation with and access information in a completely new way.

Comes from the folks at OpenAI, and they've been

working on this for years, training this thing over

and over again and releasing multiple versions of it

over time, as they've been testing in order to

make the results better and better.

And their most recent release, which came out around

the November time frame, is starting to make its

rounds around the world and it is leaving a

dramatic impression on everybody who's experienced it so far,

especially as techies like me, that we're just geeking

out thinking about the possibilities.

I have heard so many cool different stories

from so many different people about what they've

used it for that has made a dramatic

impact to the way that they do things.

So I want to talk about what some of

those are because I've been reading articles and hearing

the stories and all that kind of stuff, but

I want to talk about what I think ChatGPT

has in terms of potential to majorly disrupt.

The way we access information, which I think is by

far the coolest use case, or at least the one

that has the potential to be the most disruptive.

Now, for me, what I think is the problem

ultimately that I will solve, which could be the

biggest problem experienced by the largest number of people,

because that's usually where I'm focused.

I'm always looking for what I call

these problems worth solving, or using different

frameworks, like jobs to be done.

If you're familiar, as in what's

the obvious unmet need here?

How can we apply technology to solve a problem that

is the largest problem experienced by the largest number of

people that will provide the strongest ROI and the most

value and all that kind of stuff, right?

That is the potential to help the

most people and generate the most value

for a company that's providing the technology

that's ultimately going to solve that problem.

And for me, I think it's the way we access information.

So if we think about the way this happens

for most people today, myself, for example, I go

to search engines, I go to Google to try

to access whatever it is I'm trying to find.

However, most of the time I'm

left frustrated with that experience.

And I'll give you my use case.

If I want to find something through Google, I've got to

get the exact key phrase in terms of whatever it is

I'm looking for exactly correct, or else I'm not going to

wind up finding what it is I was looking for.

And what I think is so frustrating about that

experience is if I don't get that key phrase

exactly correct, I have to start all over again.

That's what's frustrating to me is like, it's not more of

a conversation and that's really what Chat GPT is, which I

think so far has been the coolest experience with it for

me, as I can start with a conversation about I live

in the Philly area and I'm a bit of a sports

buff, so I follow the Philadelphia Eagles.

But I was on a group call with

a number of my friends recently and we

were geeking out about it and its potential.

So we're asking it questions like, tell us about who

the top players on the Eagles were, then just kind

of stop there and see what it comes up with.

And we wondered, is it going to fill in the gaps?

Is it going to know what we mean by Eagles?

And short answer is yes, it did.

It filled in the gaps there and it

listed what was the top players based on

certain categories for the Philadelphia Eagles football team.

So it inserted some information that we

didn't feel the need to specify or

we wouldn't have in conversation format.

And I think that is the coolest thing of it that

it provides so far is it enables us to access information

in a way that we naturally would want to as humans,

as opposed to thinking like a search engine.

I get to think like a person, which sounds weird

to say, but it is a much more pleasant experience.

And the results thus far are also more effective, as

in I don't have to guess and think like a

robot, like, figure out what the keywords are, Philadelphia Eagles,

best player, so on and so forth, and then see

what might come up in terms of results.

I can ask a question like I would

to a person who might be super knowledgeable

on the topic and then get the kind

of information that I'm looking for almost immediately.

That's what's super exciting about it as well too.

And most of the people that I'm talking

with are talking about the time save that

the technology is providing them for the use

cases that they're attempting to solve problems with.

So that, I think is really exciting about Chat GPT

and what it can do in that it enables us

to access this information in a different way conversation format,

which is how we think and act naturally as humans.

As opposed to trying to figure out how to kind

of game or work a different system, which today the

leading one for most people is probably the search engine.

But the use cases are unlimited here.

And that's where I'd love some feedback from you in

terms of, like, what you think are the coolest ways

this technology has the potential to disrupt the way we

do things, because the possibilities are seemingly endless.

And I think that's one of the other

coolest things about researching this technology right now

is you're figuring out all the cool things.

People are figuring out how to use it

or leverage it in order to move entire

industries forward, starting with solving small problems.

But those problems are getting bigger and bigger as

I learn about how people are leveraging this technology.

And I've seen everything from writing code, writing poems

about what different types of wild stories and stuff

like that, to actually writing code for folks.

I know people that are pretty advanced engineers that are

saying that it's saving them a tremendous amount of time

because whatever it is they want to whip up in

code chat, GPT is able to do it for them.

In like, seconds or minutes or it may not be perfect,

so it may not be, like, the exact code that you

would design perfectly or whatever, but how often do we really

need that in order to move things like that forward?

Right.

More often than not, there's a balance between efficiency and

effectiveness where if we can get what we need to

be effective sooner rather than later, that probably is going

to provide us with even more value than if we

were designed to perfectly from the ...

The type of product you choose to build has implications on everything from the customer experience to the pricing model.

Let's talk about the differences and why you might choose one or the other.

If you want to reach product-market fit faster, sign up for my free 5 day email course here - https://nxtstep.io/fit/

Episode Transcript
Hey folks, Sean here and today what I

want to talk to you about are the

different type of product companies you might build.

When I say different type, what I

mean is low touch versus high touch.

There are some key differences between the type of

experience that you might create for both your customer

and the type of product company that you're going

to build for both yourself and your team.

And I'm going to start by kind of categorizing each

in terms of what are some of the more important

or typical characteristics you might see in each of these

and then sharing some examples with you.

I also want to talk about how you can become

more of one or the other as and you don't

have to remain in either of those categories indefinitely.

So when I say low touch product

company, typically from a strategic perspective, what

that means is you're creating a customer

experience that is typically product led.

And when I say product led, what

I mean is your customer's first experience

with your product is typically the product.

As in they will go right into using

the software and that's kind of their first

experience with your product and your company.

Also from a pricing model perspective, low touch products often

leverage simpler models as in customers might pay the same

amount on a given month or year in order to

gain and maintain access to your product.

Now, an example of a low touch product I would

like to use is Calendly, something I've used for years.

I get a lot of value out

of it and it's relatively simple.

Calendly, if you're unfamiliar, helps you with essentially that

what can become a merry go round of trying

to figure out how to get everybody synced up

so they can meet at a time that's mutually

available for both of them.

So it helps you with managing your calendar but

the use of the calendar product is rather simple.

As such it fits well into

the low touch product category.

Now, on the other hand, a high touch

product from a strategic perspective, you're usually leveraging

a model similar to being Sales lead as

in your customers first experience with your product

is actually through your team.

So they will meet with sales team or

someone to figure out what onboarding them might

look like or qualifying them as a prospect.

Because a high touch product is typically

more complex, it's got more moving parts.

The whole experience is difficult to kind of

just dump a customer into and enable them

to be able to figure it out.

Also the product itself isn't the

only thing that's more complex.

Almost everything is the pricing model as well

as in gaining and maintaining access to a

high touch product typically involves multiple components.

Maybe an implementation fee may be ongoing costs.

There may be contracts with commitments

that may go beyond a year.

So the contracts may be

relatively inflexible and rigid.

So those characteristics typically speak to what we

consider to be a high touch product.

An example of a high touch product in

this instance might be something like Salesforce.

If you've never used Salesforce before,

it's a heavy duty CRM.

But they as a company own a

ton of other products as well too.

So navigating kind of their

environment gets complex fast.

As such, some of your early contact with a

company like Salesforce, if you're interested in a product

like that, is usually with someone on their team.

Now, like I said earlier, just because your

product is delivering one or the other of

these type of experiences or falls into either

category, either low touch or high touch today,

doesn't mean it necessarily needs to stay there.

I've seen products make a successful transition from

one to the other and you'll often see

products trying to do that as they are

kind of figuring out product market fit.

So the most straightforward way to think about

it, if you would like to be one

or the other that's why I described those

characteristics and some examples of each first, because

depending upon your experience with those products or

your ability to familiarize yourself with them.

That may or may not be.

It might become clearer for you in terms of

the type of product you'd prefer to build versus

the customer experience that you're looking for and the

experience that you'd like for yourself and your team.

There are different implications depending upon which of

these two paths that you choose and you

don't need to wait to choose this.

I think more often than that makes

the most sense to think about this

almost essentially right out of the gate.

But let's assume you have some traction and you have

an established product with paying customers as well too.

Transitioning from one to the other or taking advantage

of the respective strengths of each is also possible.

Now, the easiest way that I typically think about

how to do that really is the core component

of that is the product experience, as in how

complex is it to use your product.

In order for a high touch product to

become more of a low touch product, you're

going to have to simplify the experience.

So you might need to do things like cut way back

on in terms of what your product is capable of.

That might mean removing features or building

a new version of your product that's

actually dramatically simpler than it was before.

This isn't necessarily a bad strategy.

There's obviously some engineering involved here.

But what you can do is if you kind

of got out of the gate with more functionality

than you were expecting to and you have some

early traction, what I'd recommend you take a closer

look at is where are you having that traction?

As in where are your customers the most active with

using your product and what are they getting the most

value out of soft, circle those features and essentially do

a quick mental calculation in terms of what percentage of

what your product is capable of.

Are those features where they're getting the

most value and using the most frequently?

And can you create a simpler

product experience around just those features?

If you can, that's where you have

great potential to convert essentially a high

touch product into a low touch product. I know that.

On the other hand, if you have a low touch

product and you kind of want to go beyond where

you are, some often may want to do that.

Depending upon if they want to raise their prices

or they want to scale their product company, things

like that, low touch products are less likely to

go further in that direction, so to speak.

If that's the case, then you want

to have a better understanding for how

you want to contin...

Hyundai and Kia have decided to leave out a key anti-theft device from their vehicles.  As such, there's now a growing social media trend where people are joying in recently stolen vehicles.

This is a great lesson in what can happen if your product doesn't include key features that your customer is expecting.

Article - https://fortune.com/2022/09/22/hyundai-kia-cars-stealing-hack-thieves/

If you want to reach product-market fit faster, sign up for my free 5 day email course here - https://nxtstep.io/fit/

Episode Transcript

Hey, folks, Sean here.

And today what I want to talk to you about

is how to ensure that your product is meeting minimum

expectations with your customers to deliver the right experience.

And this is a story that comes from

a growing social media trend where Kias and

Hyundai vehicles are being stolen and joyrided because

they're missing a key antitheft device.

The antitheft device that's missing from Hyundai and

Kias is referred to as an immobilizer.

It's essentially a chip that matches your

car, is key to your ignition.

If you don't have it, it makes

your car ridiculously easy to steal.

Now, this is super embarrassing for Honda and Kia,

and one of the most embarrassing elements is that

most immobilizers were rolled out to most passionate vehicles

back in the 1990s, nearly 30 years ago.

And what this means is that Kia and Hyundai

owners were expecting it to be included as well.

Pretty important feature, you might add.

Really changes the experience if you don't have it.

So, in terms of what the usage and the

inclusion of this feature looks like across other vehicles

and essentially who Hyundai and Kia are competing with,

over 96% of passenger vehicles have this immobilizer installed.

The vast majority of Hyundai and

Kias do not, dramatically changing the

ownership experience, as you might imagine.

So let's talk about the impact that missing.

This key feature causes owners of these

vehicles and the company as well.

So, from the ownership experience, it's probably

relatively obvious because this key antitheft device

is not included in these vehicles.

They're being stolen at nearly twice the rate of

the national average, and it's all over social media.

So the problem will probably continue to get worse.

Making matters worse, it's not really an

easy thing to retrofit because they've missed

this key feature and include some hardware.

So you've got tons of vehicles out on the

road that all need to be fixed and are

all subject to being stolen at the moment.

So the whole thing has just become such a mess.

Now, I'm sure that some part of the

decision was in terms of cost savings, right?

However that's led to this disaster.

So was it really worth it?

More than likely, no.

And I'm sure if they could take

that decision back now, they would.

But that's not you don't really

get credit for that, right.

What you should be doing instead.

And this is me getting around to talking about

what this might mean for you and your product

company and make sure you don't wind up being

or experiencing some equivalent of this disaster than Honda

and Kia is going through.

Is to ensure that your product essentially has a key

set of features that your customers have come to expect.

Now, what do I mean when I say that?

Well, this is when they're obviously expecting.

Now, when people are searching whether or not to

purchase a particular vehicle, I'm sure they're not asking

whether or not the vehicle has an immobilizer included

or antitheft device as specific as that. Right.

They want to make sure that

the car isn't easy to steal.

That has become an expectation

over the course of decades.

As in, it's just assumed that it

will be included in most product experiences. Right.

So they would hope that they wouldn't necessarily need to

verify that, but apparently you still might because Honda's and

Kias for the most part don't include them.

But that should be incorporated in a minimum

set of expectations that your customer is going

to get when they're using your product.

Because like I shared already, greater

than 96% of vehicles have them.

So if yours doesn't, that causes a potentially huge

issue for you if and when that impact like

we're seeing now really starts to come to light.

So if your product is not including minimum set of

features like that, it could ruin the product experience and

it could cause untold amounts of brand and reputation damage

not to even include what it's going to cost them

from an insurance perspective if there's legal action and all

this other kind of stuff.

I mean, so what might this look like if you

have, for example, like a B2B SaaS software product?

This is the equivalent of not having

proper authentication, storing passwords and clear text.

Any of these things that can cause

you significant liability if they come to

light or you ultimately get exposed. Right.

There's a minimum set of expectations for the type of

experience you need to create for your users and your

customers and it's something that they've come to expect.

If you're not meeting those minimum expectations,

it could be glaringly obvious that they're

not going to be interested in doing

business with you or purchasing your product.

That's one problem that comes out of this.

Or if it ultimately comes to light that whatever it

is that you've left out of that experience ultimately has

caused major issues for customers and other users, then that

brand and reputation damage is potentially going to affect who

purchases your products in the future.

Like for example, here, which is a question I have for

you is would this issue with Hyundai and Kia prevent you

from purchasing one of their cars in the future?

I know it would affect my buying decision because and

immediately where my mind goes if they've left something like

this out to try to cut costs is what else

are they leaving out of the equation?

Do I have all my airbags?

Is the structural integrity of this

vehicle like sound and Safe?

I have other concerns if they're going

to leave out something so glaringly obvious.

So the lesson here is to make sure that

your product includes a minimum set of features to

meet expectations for your users and your customers.

Especially if those features are something that are

very important to your users and customers and

it's something they're going to use rather frequently.

Plus if it's offered by all of your competitors,

but you are missing it in your product, that's

going to cause a lot of trouble for you.

That could turn into a disaster that

it's been for Honda and Kia.

But more than that, is it's

ultimately going to potentially prevent them

from purchasing or using your product?

Because you don't have those key features.

So you don't want the brand reputation, you

don't want to incur anything anywhere near what

Hyundai and Kia are going through.

That risk is just too high.

So you need to ensure what those minimum expectatio...

Product companies that get caught in the build loop often get trapped in a death spiral.

Let's talk about what the build loop is so you know how to avoid it and the approach you should be taking instead.

If you want to reach product-market fit faster, sign up for my free 5 day email course here - https://nxtstep.io/fit/

Free Email Course - https://bootstrappersparadise.com/course

Private Coaching - https://bootstrappersparadise.com/coaching

Bootstrapper's Paradise - https://bootstrappersparadise.com/

Brian Casel is a software company owner and founder with a background in software product design and web design. 

Brian has found, operated, and sold 4 different businesses and is now focused on his company ZipMessage, a tool for swapping video, audio, or text messages with clients and customers asynchronously.

Brian started out as a professional designer for the web, offering this as a consultant to a variety of businesses before leveraging these skills to design and build products that power businesses he starts up and operates.

Brian also regularly hosts podcasts where he shares notes about his work in the software and design industry, and hosts conversations with friends in this industry. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Product Launch:

• The decision process involved in selling a business.
• How to work on multiple businesses at the same time.
• The differences between working on multiple businesses compared to a single business.
• The benefits of working on multiple different businesses.
• How coaches can automate their workflows.
• Different approaches to finding a product market fit.
• How to research your ideal client profile.
• The problems with real-time meetings.

Resources:

• ZipMessage
• Bootstrapped Web
• Audience Ops
• Restaurant Engine
• Slack
• NxtStep
• Podcast Chef

Connecting with Brian Casel:

• LinkedIn

Connecting with the host:

• Sean Boyce on LinkedIn
• Sean Boyce by Email

Quotables

• 05:02 - “In 2021 I essentially sold 6 different businesses but some of them were tiny just a couple of thousands of dollars, others hundreds of thousands of dollars so that was over the course of 5 or 6 months there I exited everything other than ZipMessage.”
• 13:08 - “You’ll hear a lot of advice out there like yes you have to just focus on a single business and even though that’s what I’m doing today I don’t necessarily agree that’s the right advice for most people in their career especially if you’re earlier in your career I think you’re actually much better off doing multiple things whether they’re small products or service business, plugin products, SaaS products, courses you gain so much experience and just chops when it comes to copywriting, or putting up websites, or talking to customers, or doing sales, these are skills you’re going to need no matter what business you settle into.”
• 14:22 - “I’ve really enjoyed being able to experience working on multiple things because it enables me to make progress more quickly and figure out the right overlap of passion proficiency demand of what it is I really want to focus on so like you said as you get a little bit older and little bit more experience that stuff starts to become clear and then you can always focus from there but you’ve got that experience and a lot of these skills are really important in product.”
• 22:19 - “I do research in a number of different ways and sometimes it’s different at different phases of the business and I’ve launched multiple new businesses over the last 10 years and at the very beginning when it’s a brand new business may be in a pre-launch mode before the product is even ready I usually start with a landing page that has an email capture for an early access and after they enter their email it goes straight to a survey with a bunch of detailed questions where I’m asking them to freeform write and after reading every one of those survey responses I usually invite people to interviews based on their responses to the survey and that’s usually how I start with early market research for a new potential product.”
• 27:00 - “There’s a bigger benefit to using asynchronous, it’s not just that it’s more convenient and we can do it across time zones and things like that it’s also having space in between our messages gives us that space to prepare notes, I often put a list of talking points on the screen before I hit record, we have the ability to pause and continue, we have the ability to edit a message before sending it back, you can discard it and re-record it if you want to say it a little bit tighter, I’ll receive a customers question or some feedback and then I’ll go take a walk or maybe respond the next morning so I’m coming back to them with a much higher value response and I’m getting the same back from them.”

Free Email Course - https://bootstrappersparadise.com/course

Private Coaching - https://bootstrappersparadise.com/coaching

Bootstrapper's Paradise - https://bootstrappersparadise.com/

Salesforce has avoided giving future revenue guidance which is rare for them. 

They are blaming it on economic conditions, but are there bigger problems at the world's most successful SaaS company?  Let's find out.

Techcrunch article - https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/18/salesforce-ends-2022-in-an-unusually-turbulent-position

Reddit thread - https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1001pd3/salesforce_ends_2022_in_an_unusually_turbulent/

If you want to reach product-market fit faster, sign up for my free 5 day email course here - https://nxtstep.io/fit/

Free Email Course - https://bootstrappersparadise.com/course

Private Coaching - https://bootstrappersparadise.com/coaching

Bootstrapper's Paradise - https://bootstrappersparadise.com/

Southwest Airlines has just given us the perfect example of how not to manage technical debt. 

Let's review what happened to see what we can learn from it.

NY Times Article - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/31/opinion/southwest-airlines-computers.html

Open Letter From The Union - https://makeitrightswa.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/President-Remarks-March-2022-RH-ed.pdf

If you want to reach product-market fit faster, sign up for my free 5 day email course here - https://nxtstep.io/fit/

Free Email Course - https://bootstrappersparadise.com/course

Private Coaching - https://bootstrappersparadise.com/coaching

Bootstrapper's Paradise - https://bootstrappersparadise.com/

The Metaverse has had a rough go of it so far.  The project has incurred more than $18B in losses and the company stock has fallen 70% in a year.

Besides that terrible performance on paper, I feel there's something obvious they are missing and if they don't fix it, I think the whole project is likely to fail.

Seeking Alpha article - https://seekingalpha.com/article/4547009-meta-why-the-metaverse-fail

Do you feel like the Metaverse solves a problem?

If you want to reach product-market fit faster, sign up for my free 5 day email course here - https://nxtstep.io/fit/

Free Email Course - https://bootstrappersparadise.com/course

Private Coaching - https://bootstrappersparadise.com/coaching

Bootstrapper's Paradise - https://bootstrappersparadise.com/

Product-Market Fit is often thought of as this elusive ambiguous concept, but I feel most people overthink it.

There are two important dimensions from which to measure Product-Market Fit: Qualitative and Quantitative.

Allow me to explain how I measure each using my own product company StaffGeek as an example.

If you want to reach product-market fit faster, sign up for my free 5 day email course here - https://nxtstep.io/fit/

Free Email Course - https://bootstrappersparadise.com/course

Private Coaching - https://bootstrappersparadise.com/coaching

Bootstrapper's Paradise - https://bootstrappersparadise.com/

Customer Discovery and User Research both provide critical benefits to your product.

Let's talk about the impact and benefits of each so you can make sure you are doing everything you can to find and keep product-market fit as quickly as possible.

If you want to reach product-market fit faster, sign up for my free 5 day email course here - https://nxtstep.io/fit/

Free Email Course - https://bootstrappersparadise.com/course

Private Coaching - https://bootstrappersparadise.com/coaching

Bootstrapper's Paradise - https://bootstrappersparadise.com/