That was the title of last week’s Texchange event on the timely topic of Product Development.   A panel moderated by Tom Hale, Chief Product Officer of HomeAway and including Mike Svatek of Bazaarvoice, Ash Maurya of Spark59, and Sam Heywood of uShip drew a capacity crowd in the AT&T Center ballroom and was assisted by a dozen discussion leaders at the dinner tables.

This is an issue that almost all the startups and early stage companies in my view are grappling with.  It’s one thing if you have a going business with multiple product lines and the luxury to expand or kill any particular one as you choose; it’s quite another issue if your livelihood totally depends on bringing that first product to market.

One of the key statements in the opening discussion was that one person on a development team needs to be the “spirit” of the product.  When I think of that I recall Enzo Ferrari and his earliest post-WWII racecars (photo above).   He built a powerful high-revving 12-cylinder engine and wrapped a simple body around it with the sole purpose of maximum speed.  He had a very clear statement of his product intent:  “I don’t care if the door gaps are straight.  When the driver steps in the car, I want him to sh*t in his pants.”   Crude but elegant, and the high style that we associate today with Ferrari would come along much later on the basis of all the race wins that original philosophy delivered.

Il Commendatore was an example of tyranny in product design, and the panel seemed to agree that both democracy and tyranny have their places in a multi-person product team.  At some point the one person ultimately responsible may have to call the shots.   And, that may include even overruling the inputs of prospective customers.   There was largely a B2B audience at this event, but particularly with consumer products people may not know or be able to express their real feelings about a new concept presented to them.   I’ve always found focus groups in particular to be easy to manipulate to a desired answer.  And, with groundbreaking products of the type that have made Apple so successful, we clearly saw that one person’s instincts brought into existence shiny objects that far exceeded normal imagination.

Our table discussed the runaway product design problem.  When does that “spirit” go beyond the basic business requirements and result in runaway features and missed deadlines?  This was viewed as a very common problem in startups, and it’s one that affects funding as well.  Investors will almost never follow behind $Millions invested in a product that could have been monetized along the way but disdained customers in order to stay on a track toward the ultimate feature set.  I tried to help a couple of years ago with one such project where 43 different versions were created as demos for prospective verticals, but none were actually sold.   Technology is moving so quickly now that long development cycles may well result in the competition stealing the show or a product that is already “moldy” even when first launched.   There comes a time to button up whatever works and let customers have at it, and many entrepreneurs have a difficult time letting go.

Once a product is launched and is part of the fabric of a company’s offerings, the ability to kill it may be limited.  Someone brought up the practical issue that what seems to be a poorly performing product may the very one that a particular sales team is using to make its quota for the year.  Or there may be especially loyal customers that rely on that product and as a result buy others from your company.  Once a product is introduced into the price list, the interdependencies multiply rapidly.

Tom Hale closed the session by demonstrating the toy drone pictured below.   He used it to make the point that successful products can come from the most unexpected places.  In this case a French company that makes chips for very specialized purposes had one employee who realized that he could design a very stable 4-rotor drone using one of those chips as part of its control system.  If you’ve every played with a typical toy helicopter, you know how hard they are to fly, and this machine is easy to maneuver, knows to hover at about 4 feet if your inputs would throw it awry, and is just fun.   The inventor essentially developed the product, proved on his own that he could sell it online, and then it became part of the company’s offerings.  

So, it may not be a Rocket to the Moon, but even a clever drone can be an unexpected moneymaker if you let innovation rise up from your ranks.

<photo of Ferrari from Nerd Insurance>

 <photo of drone from Amazon>