11. Use Beta to create
a killer launch
Prachi Wadekar
Product Management at Mixpanel
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12. ● Not an accidental Product Manager!
● Graduated from Carnegie Mellon University
● Started career as an Analyst at BlackRock
● Moved to Lendup
● Now a Product Manager at Mixpanel on our Data Team
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About me
Twitter
@wadekarprachi
Linkedin:
www.linkedin.com/in/prachi-wadekar
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“Leaders start with the customer and work backwards.
They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust.
Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they
obsess over customers.”
- Amazon’s Customer Obsession Principle
14. ● A Product Manager’s goal should
be to focus on customer needs
● What great PMs do?
○ Create opportunities that solve
customer problems
■ Listen to their customers
and gather feedback
■ Respond to the feedback
■ Measure outcomes
■ Iterate!
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Stay customer obsessed
Data
Patterns
Causes
GoalsTests
15. Use data to find
dissatisfied customers
Metrics, Funnels, Cohorts and more
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Looking for customer problems
Review product gaps Talk to customers
1 2 3
18. ● Then (pre digital revolution)
○ Product development largely driven by internal stakeholders
such as senior management, engineers, project managers and
QA
○ Longer launch cycles
● Now (post digital revolution)
○ Product development is largely driven by the customer
○ Launch cycles are shorter, more iterative and much faster 18
Evolution of the product launch process
19. ● Ready for internal testing
● Minimum Viable Product
● Unsure if you’re approaching
the customer problem with
the right approach?
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When to
launch an
Alpha
20. ● Ready for external testing
○ Known gaps and bugs
● PM is confident product will
not radically change
● Typically customers can opt-
out of a beta
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When to
launch an
Beta
21. ● Who are beta customers?
○ Early adopters of your products
○ Play with your products in their early stages
● Customers can self nominate
● PMs can build a generic pool of beta testers
● Ensure you cover every type of user or persona
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How to pick customers for Beta
22. ● Incentives are required when
○ You aren’t offering value to customers
○ You aren’t listening to customers
● How we thank our Beta testers
○ Offer the product at no cost when we launch
○ Opportunity to be in the internal advisory board
for future product development
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Incentivizing your beta customers
23. How we do this at Mixpanel?
○ Customer Success Managers and Account Executives nominate
customers for research calls and actual betas
● Use betas to close deals
● Helps build customers relationships
● Give early access to high value customers
○ PMs reach out to customers who report product gaps
○ We also post on Mixpanel Community forum
Internal tools to whitelist new features for beta testers
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Beta how-to
24. Private beta
○ Give access to a restricted audience (AKA “closed beta”)
○ By invitation only
○ Smaller sample size >> Qualitative feedback
Public beta
○ Open to all customers (AKA “open beta”)
○ Anyone who has access to the product, can access the new feature
○ Larger sample size >> Quantitative feedback
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Private vs. Public Beta
26. 1. What’s a beta not about?
i. Releasing poor quality software
2. Not an excuse to ship a substandard product
3. Administration overhead
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Beware!
27. 1. Helping your customer navigate a new product/feature
2. Who owns this?
• Product Managers
• Engineers
• Support
3. Establish feedback channels
• Direct access
• Fast solutions
• Customer empathy!
4. Keep internal training limited
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Support during Beta
28. Staying data informed through your beta
○ Pick your goal
○ Pick metrics that tie back to your goal and measure
○ Leverage user behavior tools to track metrics
○ Talk to your beta testers
○ Keep track of any customer reported bugs
○ Move fast!
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Measure outcomes
29. ● Beta label can stay anywhere
between 4-6 weeks
● When product solves customer
problem remove the label
○ Feedback
○ Product intuition + gut
● Rollback the product otherwise
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Going off Beta
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You’re ready to ship!
Launch Checklist
○ Press release
○ Product update email
○ Social media posts
○ Messaging & positioning for sales
○ Tracking plan and success metrics
○ Pricing updates
○ Training for internal staff
○ Targeted outreach to influencers
○ Blog post
○ FAQ/Release notes/Help center
○ All hands demo
32. 1. Stay customer focussed
2. Pick a customer problem
3. Create value by launching a great product
1. Move to the next customer problem
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Summary
● Alpha + Beta releases
● Learn, act and iterate
● Land on problem-solution fit
● GA your product
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“Achieving product/market fit requires at least 40%
of users saying they would be “very disappointed”
without your product.”
- Sean Ellis (GrowthHackers.com)
#FOODFORTHOUGHT
35. www.productschool.com
Part-time Product Management, Coding, Data Analytics, Digital
Marketing, UX Design and Product Leadership courses in San
Francisco, Silicon Valley, New York, Santa Monica, Los Angeles,
Austin, Boston, Boulder, Chicago, Denver, Orange County,
Seattle, Bellevue, Washington DC, Toronto, London and Online