Gone are the instances when the sketch on a serviette out of your lunch was sufficient to safe your organization Collection A funding. Within the present economic system, traders are far more fastidiously evaluating the place they may make investments their capital.
When you handle to catch their consideration, ultimately within the course of your complete firm goes to bear a due diligence. When you’re a software program product firm, your product and it’s growth will obtain plenty of consideration. Consideration that may be utterly new and overwhelming to any product chief.
Throughout spring 2022, we went by way of the precisely such analysis and we efficiently secured $40 million in progress capital. And since there’s little or no data on-line about what you may anticipate from such a course of, I’ve determined to share our expertise. On this article, I write about what inputs have been required from us through the very detailed product analysis, my steered define, and my suggestions and finest practices for every half.
Even when your group will not be trying to find an funding for the time being, having a transparent understanding of the areas described on this article (and even higher, having them documented) is — for my part — completely essential for any present or aspiring product chief.
Let’s dig in.
Objective: In below half-hour showcase your product’s distinctive worth proposition, key capabilities, and move to individuals who doubtless haven’t seen it earlier than. And who will doubtless get entry to the demo setting later for deeper exploration.
Proposed define: Begin really exterior of your product and put together 2–3 intro slides. Clarify the demo settings and what are the primary subjects that you simply’re going to cowl. After which dive straight into your demo setting.
My suggestions: Go sluggish and keep away from frantic clicking round. Use a cursor highlighter. Describe what you’re doing, spotlight the primary worth factors, and don’t be afraid to pause and summarize the previous couple of steps. Do not forget that that is doubtless the primary time your viewers sees the product in better element. And don’t neglect to file it — it might turn out to be useful later.
Objective: Display how do you concentrate on the way forward for your product. Showcase that you’ve got plan lasting longer than subsequent 6 months. Present confidence in your product’s longevity and nice future.
That is crucial a part of the due-diligence course of that may be delivered by you as a product chief.
That is the place it’s a must to be assured and shine. Don’t underestimate this half below any circumstances.
Urged define:
- Product roadmap inputs — What has affect over your product roadmap? What are the inputs and qualifiers?
- North Star metric — What’s the single metric that finest captures the core worth that your product delivers to your prospects?
- Lengthy-term imaginative and prescient & differentiation— What’s your plan to win the lengthy recreation? How do you intend to face out within the crowded market? What’s your technique? What’s your distinctive worth proposition in the long run?
- Product core values/pillars — What are the core ideas your product stands on?
- Roadmap outlook — A visible overview of your roadmap. This actually is determined by you and the way do you’re employed together with your roadmap. Do you may have a characteristic based mostly roadmap? Theme or OKR based mostly? Now, subsequent, later? Showcase it right here. In all instances, you will need to put issues into time perspective. And you’ll make sure, that this slide is the place all stakeholders can pay consideration probably the most.
- Particulars on the product initiatives — Whereas itemized timelines are nice for visualization and placing issues into (not solely time) perspective, they inform solely half of the story. That’s why I like to recommend to dedicate a number of slides for extra rationalization of the gadgets out of your roadmap. It doesn’t need to be exhaustive rationalization, however don’t go away an excessive amount of room for misinterpretations.
My suggestion:
Pay further consideration to this portion of the due-diligence and inform your product story — the place you’re coming from, what you wish to obtain, how you intend to get there and what’s important in your success. When you don’t know how you can construction your pitch, I like to recommend this text from Andy Raskin.
Objective: Showcase the maturity of your product growth group by explaining the steps a person product enchancment goes by way of from the concept to the discharge.
Extra feedback: That is the second most essential a part of the product due diligence because it exhibits how wholesome your product growth is. Don’t underestimate this half. Furthermore, very doubtless you’ll want to mix your inputs with these out of your friends on the Engineering facet of your product group to offer a holistic view.
Urged define:
- Product necessities strategy — How, when, and the place do you accumulate product necessities? Is there any methodology in place? Any specialised software program? How do you analyze the necessities and share them with the remainder of your group? How are the necessities remodeled into growth duties?
- Product group — How does the construction of the product group appear like? What are the roles and the way do they cooperate? How many individuals are fulfilling these roles?
- Product growth course of — How are product necessities remodeled into the ultimate product? What’s the lifecycle of a person product goal? What are the phases? When do completely different roles take part within the course of? What methodology/strategy is utilized? What’s the product workforce’s method of working? How do you handle product backlogs? How do you handle product upkeep?
- Finish-to-end practices & High quality administration — How do you strategy product releases? What does your CI & QA pipeline appear like? How do you strategy QA in your product group? What’s your (automated) take a look at protection? What’s the degree of automation in the entire course of?
- Defects & Buyer Escalation strategy — What’s your problem/incident escalation and backbone course of? How do you categorize and strategy the decision of product points?
My suggestions: Every group has a special strategy to their software program growth, but they’ve many issues in frequent, so the satan is within the element — concentrate on what makes you stand out, what are you doing in another way, and what have you ever realized that works for you. You don’t want to clarify what Scrum is. You don’t must showcase your JIRA undertaking construction. Attempt to use visualizations each time doable (after-all one image is value a thousand phrases) as an alternative of prolonged texts.
Objective: Present a fast performance overview of your product. Usually instances might be joined with the architectural overview (Engineering due diligence).
Proposed define: One slide visible of your product’s general logical construction (performance areas). Then spotlight your high 3–5 most essential options.
My suggestions: Maintain it easy. You don’t want to enter a lot element, however present hyperlinks the place individuals can discover extra data if wanted. Make it work on 5 slides or much less.
Objective: Showcase you can holistically take a look at your product and its growth group, that you simply perceive the place it may be improved and what offers you a bonus available in the market.
Urged define: Don’t attempt to squeeze all the pieces into one slide as some templates recommend otherwise you’ll create an unreadable mess. As a substitute have one slide for Strengths, one for Weaknesses, and so on. Separate the 2 SWOTs into two recordsdata, don’t combine them collectively.
My suggestions: For every class choose solely the highest 3 gadgets. That’s greater than sufficient. Then for every merchandise present further context slightly than having them as an inventory of ambiguous bullet factors.
Objective: Showcase maturity of understanding your person base by explaining who’re the primary customers and what are their motivations to make use of your product.
Urged define: Maintain it easy. Briefly introduce on a couple of slides the primary personas, their classes, and illustration in your product. Then ideally mix this together with your particular person personas “overview” into one bundle.
My suggestions: A pleasant visible illustration of your key personas goes a good distance. Deal with their objectives, motivations, and frustrations slightly than on their demographic data.
Objective: Once more, showcase your maturity of understanding your person and base by presenting their journeys with key worth moments (= moments once they notice worth).
Urged define: This half is closely influenced by whether or not and the way you may have your journey captured. In our case, it was one slide with the visible of the journey and two slides with explanations of our key worth moments.
My suggestions: The content material of this half is determined by how you may have your person journey captured — do you wish to current a number of journeys for various personas or mix them into one? My suggestion is to with simplicity over accuracy (element), however not at the price of creating nonsense.
Objective: Showcase the maturity of your product design strategy by explaining the function of the design & analysis workforce in your group.
Urged define: Once more, maintain it easy. Showcase your Design & Analysis workforce group, their fundamental roles, and tasks. Clarify the way you strategy Person Testing and Analysis and spotlight a number of the analysis tasks. You must match inside 10 slides.
My suggestions: You’ll be shocked however many organizations don’t think about product design and analysis as essential. That is your distinctive alternative to point out that your product group is mature and data-driven.
That’s it. That’s what labored for us and helped us to safe the capital. Nevertheless, keep in mind that in your case the required data may be completely different as every investor and their strategy to the due-diligence course of is completely different. All the time tailor your displays to their necessities.
Nonetheless, you will need to take into account throughout the entire due-diligence course of that you’ve got often just one shot to make a great impression. Don’t waste it! Despite the fact that it looks as if plenty of work to organize all the pieces, make it rely. Spend money on good visuals. Get skilled assist with the slides, should you want one. It’s going to repay.
And even should you’re at present not elevating progress capital, it’s good to have the aforementioned data documented someplace in your group. They’re not solely an ideal on-boarding useful resource and so they’re generally required for numerous certifications (resembling ISO), but additionally their preparation will power you to consider your product group’s strengths and weaknesses.
Lastly, let me know within the feedback if I missed one thing essential — one thing that was required from you or one thing that made an impression. Let’s share the information!
