Collaboration Tax
Getting two or more product groups at a megacorp to collaborate on creating a seamless end user experience is the hardest problem in computer science.
(I am not joking)
If you’re a Startup trying to compete with a Megacorp—the 800-pound Gorilla in the space—you need to understand the tax inherent to being a Gorilla
And then you need to make that tax work against the Gorilla—with your product's positioning & features
A thread on Gorilla taxes👇🏾
Collaboration Tax
Getting two or more product groups at a megacorp to collaborate on creating a seamless end user experience is the hardest problem in computer science.
(I am not joking)
Calendly exists because the Gmail team & Calendar team haven’t worked together on creating a more seamless experience for that use case.
Loom might succeed because the Gmail, Video, Meet teams at Google are probably too busy with their own goals.
If you can create meaningful value by seamlessly integrating features of two or more distinct Gorilla products, you will typically have a lot of runway before the Gorilla can get its act together and eliminate its Collaboration Tax.
Denominator Tax
Once a Gorilla’s product reaches massive scale (i.e. the denominator for its metrics gets very large), the pressure of OKRs & incentives will often force the Gorilla’s product teams to prioritize breadth of usage more than depth of usage.
Google Docs, which needs to work across a tremendous breadth (basically everyone) vs. Dropbox Paper, great for engineers & product people
Coda/Notion/etc. benefit from both the Denominator Tax (more focused) & the Collaboration Tax (more integrated)
Attack the Gorilla’s product by first tackling high-value verticals or use cases that won't meaningfully move the Gorilla’s “raw numbers”. The Gorilla won’t attack back even if it is well aware of your existence (and is losing some business to you).
Novice User Tax
A Gorilla has a lot to lose if its products appear to create friction for its novice users. The friction might be pricing, a steeper learning curve, seeing advanced features, etc. That's why a Gorilla’s products are typically quite suboptimal for power users.
There’s a high demand for Superhuman because Gmail doesn’t offer an interface that’s optimized for power users of email.
(Note how Gmail itself launched & grew as an email service for power users vs. the leading email services at the time)
Consider positioning your product as a power user alternative to an existing Gorilla product.
This has two distinct benefits
1) Association: users will easily grok what your product does
2) Differentiation: your target users will readily try & promote your product
The User Retraining Tax, a corollary to the Novice User Tax:
Getting a Gorilla to significantly revamp its UI is the second hardest problem in computer science.
The massive user backlash from UI revamps ensures that the revamp happens too slowly, too late, or never.
Business Model Tax
A Gorilla will often find it hard to change or augment its business model or pricing model with an entirely new one, especially if its current model provides high margins and scale.
Twitter primarily has an advertising business model (with high margins & scale), so it will find it difficult to adopt an additional business model that helps its creators monetize natively within Twitter.
Enter Substack, Patreon, etc.
Dogma Tax
A Gorilla will convert a belief—which may have been valid at a certain point—into long-lasting dogma whose validity fades with time.
Examples:
Google Hangouts (everything in the browser) vs. Zoom
Microsoft (mobile is for serious business) vs. iPhone/Android
That’s why strategy isn’t just a big company thing
Shrewd strategy is vital for Startups competing against Gorillas
Strategy+Speed➜Success
All the best to you👍🏾
If you\u2019re a Startup trying to compete with a Megacorp\u2014the 800-pound Gorilla in the space\u2014you need to understand the tax inherent to being a Gorilla
— Shreyas Doshi (@shreyas) November 26, 2020
And then you need to make that tax work against the Gorilla\u2014with your product's positioning & features
A thread on Gorilla taxes\U0001f447\U0001f3fe pic.twitter.com/rk7H4zmIpV
While this thread is addressed to Startups, it's equally relevant for the people working at Gorillas, in 2 ways:
1) You can use the vocabulary here to name & tame your org's taxes
2) If you're competing against another Gorilla, play against its taxes just like a Startup
"A newcomer adopts a new, superior business model which the incumbent does not mimic due to anticipated damage to their existing business."
https://t.co/bJTtjnzqpD
https://t.co/smxNmSpOwx
A thread of my most popular threads:
— Shreyas Doshi (@shreyas) September 8, 2020
https://t.co/th9ciAKnik
Product Strategy\u2014in 1 tweet.
— Shreyas Doshi (@shreyas) May 17, 2020
What:
Rigorous treatment of where to play & how to win
Why:
Drastically improve odds of product success
Create org-wide clarity
Outlook:
3-5 years
Components:
Situation assessment
Target customers
Differentiation pillars
Roadmap
Brief action plan
You are left-of-𝑥, Gorilla is right-of-𝑥. The framework:
https://t.co/NhHy911Cwp
There comes a point in a company\u2019s life when it becomes its own largest customer.
— Shreyas Doshi (@shreyas) November 29, 2020
This is the crossover point in the \U0001d465-pattern below.
Left side of \U0001d465 is largely about Produce work. Right side largely Organize+Self-promote work.
Crossover is inevitable, but defer it if you can pic.twitter.com/xapPXvNDqO
More from Shreyas Doshi
A thread of resources for aspiring & new Product Managers:
(should also be useful for Eng, Design, Data Science, Mktg, Ops folks who want to get better at PM work or want to build more empathy for your PM friends ☺️)
(oh, and pls also share *your* favorite resources below)
👇🏾
1/
Product Management - Start Here by @cagan
(hard to go wrong if you start with Marty Cagan’s
2/
Tips for Breaking into PM by @sriramk
(I’ve recommended this thread in my DMs more often than any other thread, by a pretty wide
3/
Top 100 Product Management Resources by @sachinrekhi
(well-categorized index so you can focus on whatever’s most useful right
4/
Brief interruption.
It’s important to understand your preferred learning style and go all in on that learning style (vs. struggling / procrastinating as you force a non-preferred learning
(should also be useful for Eng, Design, Data Science, Mktg, Ops folks who want to get better at PM work or want to build more empathy for your PM friends ☺️)
(oh, and pls also share *your* favorite resources below)
👇🏾
1/
Product Management - Start Here by @cagan
(hard to go wrong if you start with Marty Cagan’s
2/
Tips for Breaking into PM by @sriramk
(I’ve recommended this thread in my DMs more often than any other thread, by a pretty wide
Breaking into PMing - a \U0001f9f5 // A question folks from eng/design/other functions often have how to become a PM in a tech co.
— Sriram Krishnan (@sriramk) April 14, 2020
It can seem non-obvious and differs with each company but here are some patterns I've seen work. All the below assumes you have no PMing on your resume.
3/
Top 100 Product Management Resources by @sachinrekhi
(well-categorized index so you can focus on whatever’s most useful right
4/
Brief interruption.
It’s important to understand your preferred learning style and go all in on that learning style (vs. struggling / procrastinating as you force a non-preferred learning
There is no One Correct Way\u2122 to learn
— Shreyas Doshi (@shreyas) August 15, 2020
Don\u2019t feel pressured to read 70 books/year just becos Super-Successful Person X does that
Videos, Podcasts, Audiobooks, Discussions\u2014all are fine
What to do:
Understand your preferred learning style
Don't resist it, embrace it
Commit to it
🗓️Recap of March 2021 content
Includes:
Solve THE problem
3 types of product leaders
Levels of product work
Getting work done
“I don’t know”
Good people, bad managers
Customer segmentation
LinkedIn Envy
On communication
Important definitions
Life-changing books
& much more..
👇🏾
A story that often plays out when we are not rigorous enough about the importance of the customer problem our product
The 3 types / hats / modes of product
An extremely important observation about product
A thread on getting work
Includes:
Solve THE problem
3 types of product leaders
Levels of product work
Getting work done
“I don’t know”
Good people, bad managers
Customer segmentation
LinkedIn Envy
On communication
Important definitions
Life-changing books
& much more..
👇🏾
A story that often plays out when we are not rigorous enough about the importance of the customer problem our product
A B2B Product Management Story: on discovering problems that customers actually care about
— Shreyas Doshi (@shreyas) March 28, 2021
Very visual story thread\U0001f447\U0001f3fe pic.twitter.com/SQKpmLtBGC
The 3 types / hats / modes of product
3 types of product leaders:
— Shreyas Doshi (@shreyas) March 26, 2021
1) The Operator
2) The Craftsperson
3) The Visionary
It is important for you as a startup founder or CEO, product manager, or a product leader to deeply understand these types, as you make decisions on whom to hire or whom to work for.
Thread\U0001f447\U0001f3fe
An extremely important observation about product
There are 3 levels to product work
— Shreyas Doshi (@shreyas) March 12, 2021
(1) The Execution level
(2) The Impact level
(3) The Optics level
When an individual & their team are fixated on different levels, often there is conflict.
E.g.
PM is fixated on (2), Team on (1)
PM on (3), Team on (2)
PM on (2), Team on (3)
A thread on getting work
How I like to plan my work:
— Shreyas Doshi (@shreyas) March 17, 2021
Limit meetings
\u21d2 Long scheduled work blocks
At end of the work day, plan next day
\u21d2 Easier to disconnect, be present
Fit the next day's tasks in calendar
\u21d2 Forces prioritizing
Plan next week on Friday evening
\u21d2 Go into weekend with a clear mind
More from Business
Should we go into the details of these 125 years?
SA is built on the exploitation of labour. That labour has functioned on alcohol unfortunately. Very few people consume liquor purely for enjoyment unfortunately. When SAB opened its doors 1895 workers were paid in alcohol- the dop/tot system. 2 years into SAB's establishment
The Prohibition Act is introduced. This means black people are barred from buying your wines, beer etc. So SAB's products are exclusively for white people. But during this period beer brewing by Black women is the norm. Ayinxilisi ncam ke this type of beer. Apparently it had some
Nutritious elements to it. Now some of the context around drinking culture during this time is migrant labour to the mines, further land dispossession, the Anglo-Boer Wars, Rhodes corruption (our first state capture commission if you will) which leads to his resignation.
This context plays a role in how our cities and small towns are constructed, how they lead to the confinement and surveillance yabantu. Traditional beer brewing is identified as a threat because buy now mining bosses have identified that there's money to be made here.
SAB has formed part of the fabric of SA for the last 125 years & we've stood behind the nation through its triumphs & challenges. After much consideration,SAB has decided to approach the Courts to challenge the Constitutionality of the decision taken to re-ban the sale of alcohol pic.twitter.com/40rWpJSW5b
— SABreweries (@SABreweries) January 6, 2021
SA is built on the exploitation of labour. That labour has functioned on alcohol unfortunately. Very few people consume liquor purely for enjoyment unfortunately. When SAB opened its doors 1895 workers were paid in alcohol- the dop/tot system. 2 years into SAB's establishment
The Prohibition Act is introduced. This means black people are barred from buying your wines, beer etc. So SAB's products are exclusively for white people. But during this period beer brewing by Black women is the norm. Ayinxilisi ncam ke this type of beer. Apparently it had some
Nutritious elements to it. Now some of the context around drinking culture during this time is migrant labour to the mines, further land dispossession, the Anglo-Boer Wars, Rhodes corruption (our first state capture commission if you will) which leads to his resignation.
This context plays a role in how our cities and small towns are constructed, how they lead to the confinement and surveillance yabantu. Traditional beer brewing is identified as a threat because buy now mining bosses have identified that there's money to be made here.
