Building Products and Platforms for Greater Good

Jul 11, 2024

Lecture Notes: Building Products and Platforms for Greater Good

Introduction

  • Speaker: Naveen Atresh
  • Focus: Insights on building platforms and products from 23 years of experience.
  • Goal: To inspire and guide budding entrepreneurs to create impactful startups in India.

Speaker's Background

  • Graduation: UEC, 1999.
  • Career Journey:
    • First job at Tata Consultancy Services.
    • Early switch to startups, joined iDrive (Employee 1).
    • Scaled iDrive to 160 people.
    • Experimented with ApkaVideo.com, a YouTube clone.
    • Worked for various startups and major companies: iPass, Capillary Technologies, Flipkart, eBay, Rakuten, PayU.
    • Current stint at Match Move.

Key Focus Areas of the Talk

  1. Building startups and product startups.
  2. Scaling startups to growth startups.
  3. Taking startups to Enterprise scale.

Life Lessons and Key Principles

1. Empathy, Values, and Integrity

  • Empathy: Understand and solve end-user problems.
  • Values: Integrate strong ethical principles in product development.
  • Integrity: Prevent misuse and ensure products are built for the greater good.

2. Choices and Decisions

  • Choices: Think carefully about options before making a decision.
  • Decisions: Important for personal and organizational success; linked to product and startup development.

3. Persistence and Passion

  • Building products and companies requires continuous effort and dedication.
  • Learning is a crucial part of the journey in various roles and companies.

Building and Scaling Startups

  • Initial Phase: Experiment with startups early in career.
  • Scaling: Focused and strategic scaling (e.g., iDrive, Flipkart).
  • Enterprise Focus: Leveraging learnings to build enterprise-scale platforms (e.g., iPass, Rakuten).

Customer-Centric Approach

  • Product Discovery: Conduct hands-on customer research and build products based on real needs and insights.
  • Building for Longevity: Aim for sustainable and impactful product development.

Platform Companies and Flywheel Effect

  • Examples: Amazon, Uber, Flipkart, Salesforce.
  • Amazon's Flywheel:
    • Focus on customer experience: selection, low prices, fast delivery.
    • Flywheel: Customer experience → Sellers → Selection → Lower costs → Customer satisfaction.

Key Takeaways

  1. Platform Product Discovery:
    • Talk to end users, empathize, and gather insights.
  2. Work Backwards:
    • Start from customer pain points and build solutions.
  3. Engineering as an Enabler:
    • Technology supports the solution; it is not the starting point.
  4. Prioritization and Decision-Making:
    • Ruthlessly prioritize features and process steps.
  5. Collaboration:
    • Teamwork is essential for building successful products and companies.
  6. Missionary Mindset:
    • Focus on the mission and core values for the greater good.

Conclusion

  • Build products that are valuable, usable, feasible, and viable.
  • Maintain focus on core values and purpose.
  • Naveen Atresh encourages continued innovation and ethical entrepreneurship.