ProductSchool_Udemy_2018

Question 1

Criteria for evaluating competitors

Answer 1

how long have they been doing it and what capabilities have they acquired over the years in terms of user data, IP, customer loyalty, better user base, product design, brand, how quickly can they get a product to market, capital in the bank, recent acquisitions.

Question 2

what are different types of competitors

Answer 2

direct, indirect, potential, substitue

Question 3

what are different criteria for looking at competitors

Answer 3

target customer group, problem being solved, ways of solving the problem

Question 4

different phases of product development lifecycle

Answer 4

conceive, plan, develop, quality, launch, maximize, retire.

Question 5

different phases of the product lifecycle

Answer 5

initiation, growth, maturity, decline

Question 6

what are different times you would talk to a customer and why

Answer 6

vague idea of a product (exploratory), solid idea of a product (validating), post launch (satisfaction), late post launch (make it more efficient)

Question 7

what should you be careful about while defining a metric?

Answer 7

define a rate or a ratio

Question 8

What are the parts of a value propositon framework

Answer 8

product - benefits, features, experience

customer - wants, needs and fears

Question 9

what are the parts of a business model canvas

Answer 9

partners, activities, resources
customer relationships, channel and segments
value proposition, cost structure, revenue streams

Question 10

How would you break down the engineering effort during product development?

Answer 10

goals, initiative, release, epics and requirements

Question 11

What are the 4Ps of product launch

Answer 11

Product (MVP or full)
Price (competitor pricing, ensure profits)
Place (channels to reach personas)
Promotion (how will you grab their attention)

Question 12

what are the elements of a customer pain hypothesis

Answer 12

who has the pain? what is the pain? while doing what? because of what limitation? what is the gain they’ll get? what cost are they willing to pay?

Question 13

Different ways you could validate a hypothesis

Answer 13

A/B testing, MVP

Question 14

4 internal validation questions to ask when you have an idea

Answer 14

in line with company vision and goals? Can we execute well on it, i.e. aligns well with strengths and minimizes weaknesses? Will it make u profit or benefit us in some other way? DO we have access to the channels for customers?

Question 15

different levels at which you can define metrics

Answer 15

company, product, features.

Question 16

what are the different levels of design

Answer 16

informational (how to model and organize data)
Interaction (how will customers interact with the product)
GUI (how will the product actually look)

Question 17

what are the different criteria for generating metrics? (HEART) framework

Answer 17

Monetization (if money is the goal - may not always be the case), engagement, adoption (include activation if applicable), retention and task success. (happiness is the bottom line usually determined by social media sentiments, etc). Not all metrics will apply to all products of features. E.g. if retention is the goal of the product then adoption metrics may not apply.

Question 18

A tactic to generate metrics

Answer 18

what must be true for this to happen? what event/ phenomena? How would you measure that phenomena.

Question 19

DIfferent types of media to deal with

Answer 19

paid media (sponsored content)
owned media (self content)
earned media (others commenting, etc)

Question 20

what model would you use to get people to use a product more

Answer 20

hook model

Question 21

what are the elements of a hook model

Answer 21

trigger, reward, action, investment

Question 22

elements of good design

Answer 22

honest/does it’s job (whatever the job was), makes the product easy to use (at least for purposes it was designed for) and understand, thorough to last detail, innovative, aesthetic, envrionmental friendly.

Question 23

what are two types of assesment you do after launching a product

Answer 23

internal and external

Question 24

what would you do in an internal assesment of a prodct

Answer 24

retros - having the right amount of people

Question 25

what would you do in an external assesmment after a product is launched

Answer 25

forums, groups and personas (although you should wait for the product to settle down)

Question 26

what factors would you consider in deciding the price of the prudct

Answer 26

1. what alternatives do customers have (either from competitors or otherwise)? How does this feature differ from competitors?
2. whats the cost of developing the product for the company
3. sale? upsale later on? trying to capture market share?
   Upgrade path?
4. Can you perform a DoE to get the demand supply curve and see what the customer is willing to pay?`

Question 27

What is the approach to fixing pricing

Answer 27

lower limit (based on bill of materials - may be difficult to asses marginal cost)
upper limit (based on competitors - don't be afraid to charge more if our product is better)
other factors -

Question 28

what varibles to consider when assesing the impact of a price change

Answer 28

initial - no of users, revenue per user and price per user
get the abive variables after price change
calculate the profit in the first case and then the second case and take delta

Question 29

what are elements of a market you would keep in mind while analyzing it?

Answer 29

size, growth, profit margins and other trends

Question 30

what are the stages of customer decision making process to buy products?

Answer 30

attention, interest, desire, action

Question 31

list 6 strategies from a company’s strategy cheat sheet

Answer 31

reducing reliance on a key buyer or supplier, diversifying revenue sources, building barriers for entry, being low cost dealers, being one stop shop, testing a new market.

Question 32

what are common pricing models

Answer 32

Free (ad supported, free trial, some features free)

Tiered - group features and sell or ala carte

Question 33

for online ads what are the various pricing models

Answer 33

pay per impression, pay per click, and pay per action.

Question 34

How do you calculate CPM - the cost to have your ad shown to 1000 users given the cost per click (CPC) and click through rate (CTR)

Answer 34

1000 * CTR * CPC

Question 35

How do you calculate the profit expected when 1000 users view the ad?

Answer 35

1000 * CTR * conversion rate * profit per conversion

Question 36

how do you decide it’s time to retire a product?

Answer 36

does not fit with company’s vision, fundamentally better products in the market to the extent that incremental changes are insufficient, metrics declining.

Question 37

Planning a graceful retiring of the product

Answer 37

Customers - alternative, closing the acquisition funnel

Product - can parts of it be leveraged by other products? Any related assets that can be re-deployed?

Question 38

Troubleshooting metrics- what would you observe?

Answer 38

• Time (season, gradual vs sudden) and place: region, season,
• Customer cohorts: new vs returning, age, gender
• Competitor and other similar products

Question 39

Troubleshooting a profit issue (entire chain)

Answer 39

profit = revenue - cost
cost = supplier cost
revenue = new customers (adoption) + retention
adoption = look at the sales funnel - ads shown, etc

Question 40

what are different ways to evaluate the size of a market?

Answer 40

1. top down - start with the world/ US population and continue
2. bottom up - start with a smaller data point or an experiment you can reasonably perform (e.g. number of iphone users coming into a store room for an hour in the morning
3. lateral - look at competitor product and similar situations and adjust based on difference between you and the competitor.

Question 41

ways to come up with top of the funnel (acquisition) marketing funnels?

Answer 41

find out where do people spend time, especially when they have a particular use case?