Former Slack Head of Product Merci Grace recalls how early competitors Flowdock and HipChat had more features than Slack, yet Slack still succeeded.
Insight
Grace: Software purchasing decisions are driven by emotion, not logic
“People don't make purchasing decisions because they have really, you know, logicked it out in their mind, even though we'd like to pretend that that's the case. Virtually all decisions that we make are really emotional in nature”
Insight
Grace: Big-tech PMs often fail at early-stage startups
“I have seen just hard fails from people who kind of like have that Silicon Valley passport that you're looking for. Oh, three years at Google, and then four years at Facebook. Fantastic. Not for your 20% startup. That person, especially people from Facebook th…”
Insight
Grace: Candidates spending 10 hours on take-homes show valuable commitment
“If someone is really motivated to be at your company, it's okay if they spend 10 hours on it, because that's actually a great signal that this is someone who really gives a and is really gonna, you know, is a craftsperson who really cares and is gonna put a lo…”
Insight
Grace: Sales teams cannot replace user researchers for product feedback
“My sales guys are bringing back information to HQ. You, but they're not really listening. They're selling. And they're listening for the name of the competitor, for the problem that matches the use case, because they have that great line about this feature, wh…”
Insight
Grace: Product teams should ignore competitor moves and features
“Definitely ignoring everything else that's happening is the best thing to do. Competition can be very distracting and it's easy to look at someone else and sort of assume that, like, they're more successful than you are, or that the flow that you went through …”
Insight
Grace: Nail SMB and end users before expanding to enterprise
“If you are selling to both enterprise and SMB, then I think just like anything else, nail the hell out of SMB first before you try to scale up into enterprise, because that is actually where the truism of, you know, like, oh, just follow the end user and don't…”