Product Management Why you should stop using the word "Disrupt" The word “disrupt” is everywhere these days. In Silicon Valley today you can’t spend more than 5 minutes in a coffee shop without hearing someone describe how their company is going to “disrupt the industry.” Entrepreneurs and business school students are taught case studies of “disruptive” companies. It’s
Product Strategy Max Revenue [http://www.iamcharliegraham.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/CliffLooking.jpeg] [http://www.iamcharliegraham.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/wildernessculture-rei1440project-welltravelled-awesomeearth.jpg] Let’s say you are a CEO of a rapidly growing startup (or a VC deciding whether to invest in a rapidly growing startup). All the numbers look up and
17 The Limits To Viral Marketing [http://www.iamcharliegraham.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/wildernessculture-rei1440project-welltravelled-awesomeearth.jpg] For the last few years virality has been in vogue. Talk to almost any consumer or small-business-based startup and they’ll tell you that their marketing plan is to figure out how to grow by word of mouth, become viral
Apple Watch Observations and 5 Predictions for the Apple Watch [http://www.iamcharliegraham.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/watch3.jpeg] [http://www.iamcharliegraham.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/watch2.jpeg] [http://www.iamcharliegraham.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/watch3.jpeg]I’ve now owned an Apple Watch for around 4 months. I bought it because a) I wanted to live
Product Management Creating vs. Disrupting The word “disrupt” is everywhere these days. In Silicon Valley today you can’t spend more than 5 minutes in a coffee shop without hearing someone describe how their company is going to “disrupt industry .” Entrepreneurs and business school students are repeatedly taught case studies of companies who ended up
Keeping It Simple Do You Believe in Magic? [http://www.iamcharliegraham.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/sparkles.jpg] [http://www.iamcharliegraham.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/sparkles.jpeg] I have been helping a few startups try to reach product-market-fit and have encountered a common theme: everyone is too tactical. Discussions quickly digress into incremental benefits and features. Attend
Product Management Win, Play and Lose No matter what product you are building, you can’t be the best at everything. Spread your resources across all areas equally and you will be average at them all. So how do you figure out where to focus? One technique we used at Shop It To Me [http://www.
Misc Shop It To Me In Forbes and Hacker News Two fun news pieces for Shop It To Me today! 1) Forbes just posted a great Q&A about myself and Shop It To Me [http://www.shopittome.com]as part of their designer spotlight [http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesstylefile/2014/05/29/designer-spotlight-shop-it-to-me-delivers-a-way-to-shop-smarter/] series. Check it out! 2)
Misc It's Time To Get Emotional At Shop It To Me [http://www.shopittome.com] we are customer-driven so wethink about product [http://www.iamcharliegraham.com/2013/06/04/building-an-indispensable-product/] a lot. We’ve noticed that too many Internet companies today think about their product almost exclusively in terms of a functional experience. What need are
Misc Building An Indispensable Product At Shop It To Me [http://www.shopittome.com/], we believe a key way companies disrupt a market and have long term loyalty is by building not just a great product or a insanely fun product, but an indispensable product. Look at some of the services today with the most
Keeping It Simple Technical Debt -- when to deal with it? One of the key themes In the upcoming presidential election is what should we do with the US fiscal debt. Some argue we should stop everything to pay it down right now; others think we should put our resources into improving the economy and then pay it down later when
Product Management Smart Tips for better customer feedback My latest post, 6 Smart Tips for Better Customer feedback [http://www.inc.com/charlie-graham/customer-feedback-tricks.html], is now on the Inc.com website! Three of the tips are: 1. Keep customer support in-house and staffed by smart people. 2. Initiate customer conversations yourself. 3. Test constantly. To read more
Misc What our customers say vs what they mean My latest article on what customers say vs what they mean and what you should do about itwas just posted at Inc.com [http://www.inc.com/charlie-graham/what-customers-say-what-customers-mean.html ] ! Here’s a snippet… You know this meme: You hear one thing, but it probably means something else entirely. (Like
Misc How to build a culture of experimentation As you have probably noticed from my blog — at Shop It To Me, we are big fans of experimentation. I believe to succeed you can’t just treat experimentation with lip-service. It needs to be ingrained in your culture. For those of you who want to start experimenting in your
eCommerce Loyalty for Shopping Sites At Shop It To Me [http://www.shopittome.com], we interview people all of the time about their shopping habits, and with the exception of maybe Amazon, there currently really is no one major player among pure shopping search sites. When someone wants to search for an item or shop
Keeping It Simple First Impressions At Shop It To Me, we are constantly experimenting. It’s one of our core values. In fact, as of this morning, we have 24 different A/B experiments running on different parts of our site. Each week we probably add anywhere from 1-5 new experiments to our testing pool
eCommerce Personalization does not have to be “Creepy” On Sunday, The New York Times ran an article [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/technology/e-tailer-customization-whats-convenient-and-whats-just-plain-creepy.html?pagewanted=all] arguing that retailers’ personalization attempts are backfiring because they are becoming too personalized. The piece quoted several retailers who had tested sophisticated personalization tools with poor results. They concluded
Misc Why you should be user-testing...now. If you are developing a new product, chances are you want to wait to show it to anyone to critique until you have it mostly in place. Why? You have a great vision as to where the product is going and you want them to see the final realized product
Misc Business Lessons from my 10-month Old Just in time for Father’s day, I wrote a new article for Inc.com called “Business Lessons from my 10-month old”. Enjoy! http://www.inc.com/charlie-graham/business-lessons-10-month-old.html [http://www.inc.com/charlie-graham/business-lessons-10-month-old.html?nav=linkedin]
eCommerce Blue Oceans In my previous post [http://www.iamcharliegraham.com/2012/06/05/focus-what-is-your-product-going-to-be-awesome-at/] I talked about how having a focus is super important to a product’s success. The question comes, what to focus on? Here’s one angle. I have been a big fan of Kim & Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean
eCommerce Focus: What is your product going to be awesome at? One of the most important things to do when you are building a product of any size is to focus. Pick the few things you are going to be amazing at and the many things you will not be. It’s hard, but it’s the only way to succeed.
Keeping It Simple How we celebrate the little things Running a startup is definitely an emotional roller-coaster ride. You are going to have really good days (like when you are featured on The Today Show [http://thelook.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/17/11744571-what-to-wear-to-summer-weddings?lite] ) and a bunch of down days as well. Your product development will
Product Management How To Find Early Adopters For Your Internet Startup I recently came across a Brookings institute article onglobal happiness level [http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2010/01/03-happiness-graham]. The premise is simple (and well-documented from other books on the subject) — the human psyche towards happiness is incredibly adaptable. People even in the poorest, most war-ravaged parts of the
eCommerce 7 Email Marketing Mistakes Not To Make In case you have not seen it yet, my article on the 7 Mistakes Not To Make In Email Marketing [http://www.inc.com/charlie-graham/email-marketing-mistakes.html]is now online at Inc.com!
eCommerce I'm Back, Baby! I’m Back, Baby! Hi again! As you probably can infer from the title, I am going to start blogging regularly again, my wife and I now are proud parents of a cute baby girl, and I am a fan of double entendres/puns. The last year has been crazy,
