CASE STUDY - Product's Success Quotient (PSQ)

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Product's successes ought to stick on for long. But what it hinges on is a broad question with a broader answer: ➼ user centricity, a prominent factor perhaps⁉️ What if you could actually quantify the chances of that success? #productmanagement #growth #success #insight 1/n

My latest article talks about identifying factors that could set a product up for success & it is a direct correlative of the depth / immersion of research & discovery thus conducted. Entitled “MATH of Positioning" here's the link: mgmtinc.substack.com/p/math-of-positioning 2/n

Over this thread here we'll teardown a popular product identifying each factor that could add up to it's success over determining all of these: ▶️ 1. DS - Delighter's Scale ▶️ 2. IMPACT & ▶️ 3. POSITIONING ▶️ 4. PSQ - Product Success Quotient Onto the CASE STUDY now. 3/n

For today's case study - let's consider INSTAGRAM. Dubbed "INSTA" it is a widely popular social media app that is used largely by people to share a slice of their lives over a variety of media with their larger audience world over. Let's go stepwise over those 4 parameters 4/n

▶️ 1. DS - Delighter's Scale a) Right Product (✔️) OCT 2010 - INSTA was launched as a photo / video sharing app at a time when Facebook already had a giant share. There've been periodic updates to improve the UX like: - #hashtags - explore (find relevant photos) 5/n

b) Right Users (✔️) - Facebook had most of its users drawn to liking, sharing & commenting on photos - Flickr was a similar platform INSTA was stacked up against FB & trying to snatch a slice. Result: - DEC 2010: 2 months post launch - INSTA had 1Mn.+ downloads 6/n

c) Right Problem(✔️) - FB had acquired Orkut's users - it seemed like there were few takers for TEXT messages - most users were bent towards photos / videos INSTA focused solely on sharing media with hashtags whilst consistently building more features to enhancing photos. 7/n

d) Right Timing(NA) INSTA the photo sharing App could have faced chin music from FB back then with the latter already claiming monopoly in the social media space But, there still could have been stiff resistance & it was a big bet they set out to take. 8/n

e) Right Price(NA) INSTA was offered for FREE & it still is unless one is looking to promote something on the App. So, DS = 3 (No. of ticks ✔️) - it fared OK / Neutral on the Delighter's Scale - the main reason was it had no clear advantage over its competition 9/n

▶️ 2. IMPACT INSTA when launched wasn't the first to get into photo sharing There were quite a few others who were doing just about the same thing, FLICKR, FOURSQUARE, FACEBOOK, PATH, PICASA from Google to name a few. So, they had to look to some other route for impact. 10/n

Pain Points: - looking back at the content floated around all those apps back then, they were all REAL - there were a large percentage of user photos needing some kind of tinkering to make them look better That's how FILTERS became a befitting solution. IMPACT = HIGH (4) 11/n

▶️ 3. POSITIONING INSTA started in San Francisco as "Burbn" - it was meant to be a mobile-check-in app - photo-sharing became the focus later - branding it INSTAGRAM was going by the logic: "instant camera" + "telegram" (inset: INSTA 2010 logo) 12/n

Also: - INSTA was a Mobile-ONLY App - it was made available only for iPhone (iOS) LEVER: - the fact that the Apple iPhone was getting so hugely popular & it's sales was almost on a 45° upward slope was used as a great lever POSITIONING = GOOD (4) 13/n

▶️ 4. PSQ - Product Success Quotient DS = 3 IMPACT = 4 POSITIONING = 4 We have all necessary figures needed for the calculation of the PSQ, we just have to plug them into the equation. 20,736 is splendid. Remember, PSQ > 1,000 could be stacked up well for virality. 14/n

ANNEXURE: For all you data scientists & math fans in particular, here is a simulation calculating PSQ for every one of those possible cases (covering all permutations & combinations) for those 3 variables: - DS - IMPACT - POSITIONING 15/n

That's it folks! How did you like this? - comments / feedback is welcome 1. Retweet the first tweet at the top 🔝 marked "1/n" 2. Follow me on @bgpinv for daily product musings 3. Subscribe, like & share my newsletter - mgmtinc.substack.com/ Thanks for reading 🙏

SUMMARY: Don't leave the success of your product all to chance over utopian assumptions. You can quantify the chances of success by gauging 3 parameters: ▶️ 1. DS - Delighter's Scale ▶️ 2. IMPACT & ▶️ 3. POSITIONING & use it to calculate PSQ (Product Success Quotient).