How to Avoid the Heroku Problem in Product Development

The billing product is designed to allow customers to grow and not leave you. It's always easier in a lot of ways to do the prevention off of you versus win someone out of the gate. The center of gravity is with you still; the user doesn't want to do the extra work. "It would have been much, much harder if we had to unseat somebody else"

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Tara Seshan is the Head of Product at Watershed, a climate platform that companies use to measure, report, and reduce their carbon emissions. Before joining Watershed, Tara was Head of Product at Stripe throughout the launch of Stripe Billing and Stripe Treasury. As a Thiel Fellow and experienced multi-product builder, Tara brings a wealth of experience with 0-1 SaaS products.

In today's episode, we discuss:

The different types of multi-product strategies.
Stories from Stripe’s multi-product success.
How to allocate resources across new and existing products.
How to structure teams for launching new products.
The best personas for building new products and the hiring tactics for finding those people.
Common challenges when going from single to multi-product.
How to assess and prioritize new product ideas.
How to measure success when launching new products.
The 12 questions Tara asks for better product reviews.
Tactics for collecting and interpreting user feedback.

Referenced:

First Round Capital's Newsletter: https://review.firstround.com/newsletter
The 'Wins Above Replacement' metaphor: https://en.as.com/mlb/wins-above-replacement-war-baseball-statistic-explained-n/
Zero to One by Peter Thiel & Blake Masters: https://www.amazon.com.au/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-Future/dp/0804139296

Companies Referenced: