https://longform.asmartbear.com/predict-the-future/
TLDR:
- Have a strategy, even though the world is unpredictable.
- Decide quickly → get customer reactions quickly → learn quickly → make new decisions quickly.
- Upgrade the strategy by following customer behavior.
- Product “abuse” is a strong signal for updating the strategy.
- The strategy must include building a moat or two.
- The strategy must create optionality in how to succeed (or avoid failure) so that single failures aren’t fatal.
- The strategy must leverage your existing strengths, building a product for a market for which you are already well-suited.
- Either keep it simple, form coalitions, or do something completely novel.
- Bet on things that won’t change, rather than predicting how things will change.
- Do your homework, but don’t stall in analysis paralysis. Map future possibilities, to mitigate possible things and to better notice when your assumptions turn out to be incorrect.
Predicting product is extremely hard
- Slack, WhatsApp
- A strategy is required, even when it’s wrong.
- The customer (behavior) is always (directionally) right
Strategies to defeat unpredictability:
Build a moat
Have more than one way to succeed
Optionality defeats unpredictability:
A product that is very low cost to create has many options for pricing, and therefore more likely to find effective pricing. A product in a large, growing market has many niches and personas and channels to potentially target, and therefore it’s more likely you’ll find some combination that works. Some indie developers build multiple small products, then pour their effort into whichever one happens to take off.
Leverage your assets
your capabilities, knowledge, network, (professional) friends, and accumulated assets
Intentionally reactive
Truly embracing and living the idea of constant delivery, constant feedback, constant learning loops, constant adjustment of hypothesis, quick decision-making, quick updating of prior decisions, no ego tied up with who was right or wrong about what, treating all doors as two-way doors, more than lip-service but encoded into the DNA of the organization, can overcome unpredictable barriers
Hedged bets
- Multiple vendors for same service
- Multiple brands
- Multiple simultaneous solutions
- Redundant systems
- Disrupt thyself.
Extreme novelty
-see Zappos, Airbnb, Uber, SpaceX, Tesla, Bitcoin, OpenAI
Form coalitions
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together —African proverb
Expand the scope of prediction
The “pre-mortem” is an increasingly popular workshop for accomplishing this, in which you brainstorm answers to the following question: “It’s 12 months from now, and the project is a disaster. What went wrong?” The idea isn’t to solve everything you can imagine, but rather to pick a few things to intentionally mitigate, and intentionally leave the door open for mitigating other things if they come to pass.
Stay simple
simple things can be more predictable. A simple product, with a simple value proposition, in a simple market, has fewer dependencies that require prediction, and thus are more likely to succeed.
Bet on what will not change
Example from Jeff Bezos: “low prices” and “fast delivery”