Product Update #1

Arrive at the correct destination, not be on time at the wrong one...

Photo by JOSHUA COLEMAN on Unsplash

Our company’s goal for now is to experiment as much as possible to find product/market fit.

Achieving product/market fit is our obsession. It’s both the hefty hurdle we’re racing to clear and the festering fear keeping us up at night, worried that we’ll never make it and it's true that sometime, this phase looks like a "Drunken Walk."

At the moment, we just able to plan a few steps ahead — we don't have the resources or the data to do too much more. We can’t yet forecast what users will want six months ahead. We are just trying to get as close as possible to the ground.

In order to get there, we have hired a team of Junior profiles to preserve the cash and increase the runway but we are layering above them more senior profiles able to scale alongside the organization and get more strategic (basically 50/50).

Even with some delay (and a few nagging 🐛), we managed to ship the MVP as previously scoped internally. By the way, if you want to test the product with us, just send us an email at hello[AT]uncut.fm and we will share a beta link with you. This allowed us to test the product in real world scenarios, giving us a whole new set of invaluable insights.

Very quickly, it became clear that the current scope of the MVP needed to be adjusted (mostly expanded) before handing it over to our community of podcast hosts.

Expanding the scope of the MVP can be seen as a frustrating challenge, but as a team we need to keep in mind that an MVP isn't supposed to be a cheaper product, it's about smart learning.

Our current MVP allows us to do just that. Focusing on our RAT (Riskiest Assumptions Tests) to properly test out the following two hypotheses:

• Listeners want to listen to audio comments from the host and fellow listeners and for that, they are ready to listen to a podcast outside of their usual podcast playing app.

• Given the right features and UX, listeners will engage with a host's content.

So, what did we learn after first tests...

First, we realized that listeners needed better control of their playing experience, matching at least some of the basic player features.

• Add a more complete player controller with: skipping, scrubbing and speed control

• Improve buffering and loading of episode meta data.

Update: Design is complete and Eng. work is halfway through

We also witnessed confusion in the posting of audio comments flow that lead to long blanks, mic tests and overall poor quality comments.

• Improve flow to Post an audio comment

Update: Design is done and Eng. work started

We also decided to remove the "campfire" after realizing that in order to truly deliver the value we wanted from it, it required a lot more design research and more functionality around it such as: the host dashboard, the ability to pin certain conversations and more importantly, a more solid and realtime architecture on the Engineering side of things. So a simpler solution to replace it would require:

• Add a way to inform listener of past comments as a CTA when they return their attention to the player

• Add a way to view past/future Audio comments as a list

• Add a way to display new comments to listener in "playing mode"

• Remove the existing version of the “campfire”

Update: Design in progress

Finally, with all these changes, the episode cover have to be updated as well.

• View list of listeners from cover

• Redesign cover for navigation and account access

We are expecting to have this ready by mid September which is a slight setback in our plans to properly test the product with all of you. That said, we all agreed that the goal is to get to the correct destination, and not to be on time at the wrong one 🤓.

Carlos - founder and CEO