A lot of times founders end up giving up before they can make users experience the core value they have already built. Building with a growth mindset is more important than building the complete core value.

It is often said that if you will build, they will come but is that true.
But I would like to add a phrase to it, “so that they get it”.

🎁 “if you will build it, so that they get it, they will come.”

Not otherwise.

Here is an excerpt from the shutdown notice of Neeva.

Founder mentioned about building is not a challenge but, convincing users to switch when the habits are long form, is the main reason for them not able to continue.

Their core value cannot be experiences as it has friction points. The friction point can be due to:

When we are suffering from the first type of problem, we become so fixated on the core value that we try to persuade our users to spend more time experiencing it. We use automated communication workflows, employ stronger messaging, and even provide product demos. However, we are often hesitant to change the core value so that users can experience it all at once.

For example, I led the growth of a product that allowed users to send rewards, incentives, or gifts to their team members or external contacts. To experience the product's core value, you need to verify your business, choose a recipient, occasion, type of gift, provide payment details, and send it. Even if I close all my tabs and try to do this, it will still take more than half a day. We had various forms of communication, including email, in-product walk-throughs, and product demos shared with prospects. We always struggled with quantum of people who could experience the value. 

We built a micro value loop that allowed users to choose a gift for themselves and send it to themselves. Since it is their money and they will receive it, we could bypass all the steps, and the value could be experienced in just 10 minutes.

Micro-values that can be experienced in a single sitting are better than having a big core value that nobody experiences.

When faced with the second type of friction, that needs support from other people to experience the first time value. This is a product decision that are a multi-player decision as it impacts multiple parties. Here, we can come up problem points of a single player and build micro value proposition around that. The idea is not to convert the multi-player decision into a single-player one, but look for specific problem points that can help us build advocacy internally.

For instance, deciding on employee engagement software is a multi-player decision that usually takes longer to make. But if we start by measuring how likely employees are to promote working at a company through an e-NPS survey, we can create a module that allows anyone to conduct such a survey with minimum friction points. This can help them experience the value of the software in a single setup, and facilitate the decision-making process.


Third is the most challenging one, and mostly seen in cases of single player setups as well. Here, the current habit is stronger and it closes the user to the idea of trying something new. However, there are a certain type of situations, where the value becomes evident or the intent to solve the issue is more than the friction from current behaviour.

Here two things work,
First, Law of habit transfer. Every product is built off the back of another channel by transitioning habit. Build your product to ride on the existing habit. Your users have an existing habit of an existing alternate way that they do things. Our goal is to plug ourselves into their places to establish a habit for our product. Example of Airbnb did this by riding on the existing habit of posting on Craiglist.

Second, build an intuitive product with limited supply to kick in the initial set of users and look for possibility of loops. New user > Performs an action > leads to an output > leads to the next set of users. There are three variables to consider here, natural point of collaboration or communication, branching factor and conversion rate.


You have to keep on fuelling the loop with

Authentic content that creates brand fanatics

Understand who influences who in your area of play. I have written more about creating a an authentic narrative by giving sneak peak into how you run your business. Basecamp and Arc does it very well. Read Story is your strategy to know more about it

Examples of a few plays like were, App developers at Apple. Boosters at Arc, Youtube link of the video can be embedded.

The best part of building smaller packages of values for certain contexts is that once they find out that you have build something for them, they cannot believe it and they will not be able to keep calm, and go tell everyone about it. Specific contexts creates the right condition for the intent to be higher than the friction from the habits of today. 

In case of a product where the value can be experienced a single player setup (individually), growth is a mindset that a product team has to carry. it is not a different function or a team. Products where the value can be experienced in a single player setup: Browser, Calendar scheduler, Personal finance, Food deliveries, Doc repository / Wiki, design tool ( Not saying these products cannot have multi-player value statements),

Only in cases where there are a friction points for which I need contribution from others, you can build micro versions of products that helps experience the value in a single event. Here the core business is not the micro version of the product but in order to move the product faster in the decision making cycle, you build these value packets that can be experienced without or with least friction points. People who experience this value become your advocates to push the overall decision to experience the core value at an org level.

Products where the value needs to be experienced in multi-player setups - CRM, Employee engagement, Billing and Spend management, Ad revenue optimization

Growth PM is not a different position, but a mindset that a PM should carry.