🐘 How figma won its market & more / PM Snacks 64
🐘 How figma won its market & more / PM Snacks 64
Discover how Figma won the market and designer's hearts, how to prioritise better, how to react to unfair feedback and learn more on AI
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1️⃣ How to Eat an Elephant, One Atomic Concept at a Time
Feb 2021 • 20 min read • #strategy #mustread
Figma sold itself to Adobe for 20B$ (2x its previous valuation, 50x its 400M$ ARR). Sigma broke almost all the traditional rules of building great products: they started with a new technology (WebGL), then brainstormed what product to build, and spent 4y building the MVP. Despite that, how did they manage to make it this big?
In PM Snacks 26 I shared an enlightening article about the “atomic” concepts that Adobe missed. They could never compete (Adobe XD peaked at 15M$ ARR)
1/ they missed new specialised use cases like designing for UX/UI
2/ designing when you're not a designer: templates & community features, compounding into a network effect
3/ designing in teams: not manipulating pixels or vectors in a file but components in projects
4/ being useful beyond designers: making features for developers and others teams like the inspect mode, comment system or Figjam (digital whiteboard)
2️⃣ Product Prioritization: Feature Buckets
Mar 2019 • 5 min read • #strategy #execution
This is probably my favorite prioritisation tactic:
1/ Create buckets that account for the strategy of the company. Buckets can be metrics movers, customer requests, customer delight and strategic initiatives, according to the author.
2/ Decide relative importance between the buckets (= % or number of weeks) and/or team organisation (= number of squads). Even better if it’s discussed between execs.
3/ Only then prioritise specific features in each buckets with any framework that suits you.
PS: you can read more on this topic in the editions #61 & #49.
3️⃣ Unfair, But Valid Feedback - The Seeming Contradiction
Sept 2022 • 6 min read • #selfimprovement #inclusivity
In this article, Deb Liu articulates how we dismiss feedback that feel unfair, even though they could be valid. Instead of doing this, she suggests that we should question the feedback, then eventually choose how much you want to react to it. More importantly, this article gives a voice to women and people of color by validating how often they could have been the receiver of very unfair or biased criticism. On the other hand, it’s the perfect opportunity to question our own behavior in the workplace and try to deliver feedback that never feel unfair to anyone.
4️⃣ Generative AI: A Creative New World
Sept 2022 • 9 min read • #tech #inspiration
To conclude this edition, I’m sharing an overview of the recent advancements in AI technology, specifically generative ones like GPT-3 (ability to write text based on a prompt) or DALL-E (ability to draw based on a prompt). Just know that some of these models have been made free & open-source like StableDiffusion (DALL-E competitor), leading to a big acceleration (this happened in only 30 d)!
And who knows… it may even have had an impact on the Figma deal 😉
⏳ How Big Tech Runs Tech Projects and the Curious Absence of Scrum
Jan 2021 • 17 min read • #execution #agility
Most clicked link, shared one year ago in PM Snacks 46.
This article is a bit long but easily skimmable. I highly recommend you to read it, at least to find out Skype's history:
"When I joined Skype in 2012, the company had gone all-in on Scrum (...) And the move to Scrum was seen as a success at Skype. We went from shipping the flagship Windows app once-a-quarter at best, to monthly shipping (...) However, while Skype moved over to Scrum, a competitor was executing ruthlessly: Whatsapp (...) they built a more reliable messaging experience than Skype, and ultimately won the battle of messaging and communication apps"
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Thank you for reading this far.
Have a great week!
Olivier Courtois
10y+ in product, co-founder of 🥕 uku.wtf, coach & advisor
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