A and I decided that it was finally time to schedule some office hours and chat with our Product Management professor. He’s an extremely interesting person and seems to have a treasure chest of stories and experiences, both professional and fun (mostly from traveling) and we wanted to hear them all!
We jumped around a lot of different topics, some of which was just really interesting conversation, and others solid life advice. One thing that we touched on was how to analyze risk. Sarah Rose from ModCloth brought up a good point at the Products Are Hard conference a little while back stating that the one secret no product manager wants to admit (but is always true) is that in the end, no matter how much research and testing and searching for validation that you do, the final step is always just taking that leap of faith and going for it. Which, in other words, means that every decision you make is always a risk.
So how do you analyze this risk exactly? Professor Ken said that some people tried to get nitty gritty into details, but that really wasn’t necessary. Especially in a startup environment, you point out the 5-6 main risks before product launch, and assess them properly in a table.
This table ends up being pretty straightforward, and you just guesstimate severity and probability. You want to watch out for the risks that have high/med severity and high/med probability, and prepare to deal with them off the bat (or perhaps even shift your product to avoid that risk completely).
We continued on to discuss a couple of case studies, main among them the rush of upcoming taxi-like services that have been disrupting the taxi (and taxi medallion) business. One of the biggest risks that we landed upon was regulatory restrictions.
As we brainstormed possible mitigations, Ken told us that the worst thing you can do is alert the authorities in any way. Because of the interesting nature of the taxi service, and the potential connection to powerful players (ex: In New York, one of the taxi companies is partnered to a bank) there’s a very slim chance of winning in that area. Instead, the most successful way is empathy.
If these companies can build a good enough user base who will fight to keep them alive, then the companies have a pretty good chance of not getting shut down by authorities. No one wants to look like an asshole, and authorities especially don’t want to anger the masses too much. And thanks to psychology and our naturally rebellious natures, the service will probably get a boost in popularity (and user base growth) because people will want to see what all the fuss is about!
In any case, the moral of the story is that every decision is going to be a leap with some risks, so be prepared to tackle any problem that arises if a risk occurs.