Insight
Barnett: Startups should not make a product manager their first hire
“Don't go build all the processes in day one. Don't make your product manager your first hire, muddle through. It's like, you don't make your sales go into the first hire.”
Insight
Barnett: Shipping Two Baseline Features Outvalues Polishing One Feature
“The total value of me doing stages one and two on two features versus doing stage one to three on one is going to be higher for the end user, and therefore they'll stay along when they spend more money and will grow faster.”
Insight
Barnett: Founders should charge as early as possible
“Personally, I think you should charge as soon as possible. I've never seen a founder charge too much of a product or charge too early.”
Insight
Barnett: Founders should not run product as startup grows
“Being a founder and running products as you grow is not a good idea. Because one side of the business is going to suffer. You're either going to get not as much time on products or not as much time on, like, you know, stakeholder management and everything else…”
Insight
Matt Barnett: Software Builds Monoliths While Physical Design Retires Products
“Maybe the main difference is that if you're building real world tangible products, you are more likely to build Product suites. So you'll be building new products and new products and new products, and the older products will be like ultimately chucked away af…”
Insight
Barnett: Startups fail by jumping to solutions instead of exploring alternatives
“It's one of the reasons why a lot of startups fail. It's not that they've got the problem wrong, and the problem is often there, but by jumping to the solution, they've missed more obvious solutions, easier to build solutions, and better solutions.”
Insight
Barnett: Spending more time researching upfront gets product out faster
“If you spend more time on the problems initially, and you spend more time scoping, and you spend more time researching and investigating, it actually ultimately gets you stuff out the door faster. Because it means you're not necessarily making mistakes down th…”
Insight
Barnett: Delay Delight Features Until Core Functionality Is Validated
“When you first build features and test features, forget the delight factor, because this is like the icing on the cake. When you know it works, and it's going to go ahead, come back and do that as well.”
Assertion Supported
Barnett: Most B2B software products use free trials over freemium
“Most B to B products are not freemium. Most of them have a free trial and then paid.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Barnett: Biteable has 127 custom plans from monthly pricing tests
“I chatted to a company the other day called Biteable, who are a much bigger video platform. They said they have a 127 different custom plans from all the pricing tests they've done over the last three years. And they're like, well, we can't calm it down, but t…”
Insight
Barnett: Hire first product manager at 5 to 6 team members
“Product management probably starts to come in when your whole product team starts to get to five plus, six plus. Starts to be a good idea to start to think about this.”
Insight
Barnett: Showing mock-ups too early biases product conversations
“So if you're already showing the mock-ups, you already bias the conversation”
Insight
Barnett: Founders must solve hard problems at peak mental energy
“Solving problems Is the hardest thing you can do in the company. It takes the most brain power. So if you come in in the morning and you get straight into emails and you get straight into stakeholder management, you get straight into hiring and everything else…”
Disclosure
Barnett: Bonjoro had to rebuild its platform twice early on
“We like rebuilt that platform twice, which I wish we hadn't done.”
Disclosure
Barnett: Bonjoro has changed its pricing roughly nine times
“We've changed our pricing, I think, nine times.”
