90: How Solo Entrepreneurs Can Improve Their Products and Businesses with Ben Foster

You may own a small business, some rental properties, or are just tinkering with a new idea. Regardless of where you’re at in your entrepreneurial journey, you’re most likely trying to make something that will not only resonate with customers, but allow them to solve a problem in their life. So how do you make a product that accomplishes this to the fullest extent?

Today we talk to Ben Foster, founder of Prodify and Chief Product Officer at WHOOP. Ben has been in this space for a long time, working with big names like eBay and Opower. After his initial success at corporate he founded his consulting firm, Prodify and has since then worked with 70+ different companies all tackling a common goal: make a great product.

If you’re just starting out in your business, you may think the best course of action is to tack on as many useful features as possible into one product, but Ben warns against this. Companies that tend to do well with products are the companies that have a core competency and then build out from it.

Great products also take market input from the customers that matter most. That doesn’t mean only the top 10% of users for an app, that means the bulk majority of customers who use the app. This is where many product teams get it wrong, and as you’ll see in the interview, there are a lot more caveats in product management than originally meets the eye.

If you’re interested in product marketing, engineering, management or anything else related to building a great product, check out Ben’s book Build What Matters and of course, listen to this episode!

In This Episode We Cover:

What product management really is (and what the goal should be for teams)

The difference between products for sale and product management

What makes a great product team 

How to achieve (and go after) product market fit 

When to release the initial version of your product

Which opinions matter most when collecting customer data 

Building an infrastructure so products can succeed from the start

Bad product traits to avoid when building out your product

And So Much More!

Links from the Show

Opower

E-bay

Dropbox

Mint.com

Intuit

WealthFront

Microsoft

Amazon Hello

Polar Watch

Garmin

LinkedIn

Tesla

LeapFrog

Check the full show notes here: https://www.biggerpockets.com/bizshow90

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