Hey.com: A MasterClass on what it means to “Start with the problem”
If you had an hour to solve a problem how much time would you spend thinking about the problem before thinking about solutions ?
Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
Recently the World of Product got to witness something that fit the above description like a glove, as Basecamp launched their new email service which might in-fact be the best SaaS launch in years.
Hey.com’s launch and the product has so many great lessons, I am sure it would be dissected and studied a million different ways and learnings would be derived across the spectrum. Every function, every department, every team, building great products would be able to take something away and apply it to their product, be it Copywriting, Storytelling, Positioning so on and so forth.
One learning that got reinforced for me personally from Hey.com’s launch has been their masterful application of the maxim that often gets referenced, by the teams building great product and that is — Start with the problem.
Start by deeply understanding the problem we’re solving. Continually evolve this understanding, and persistently return to it to ensure you haven’t veered off course. — Intercom
Start with the problem, not the solution. It is tempting to dive right into solutioning, but we are often wrong about the underlying problem. A well formed problem statement is the key to a successful project. — GitLab
It is also something that I have come to embrace and Internalise as a Product Leader over the years and at this stage It is hard for me to imagine going back to doing things any other way.
I believe there are several benefits that come along when we Start with the problem:
First, You open yourself up to all sorts of possible solutions(both Logical, and Seemingly Irrational(Psycho-Logical ones) allowing you to steer clear of of any pre-disposition you might have for the solution, also sometimes referred to as The Innovator’s Bias.
Second, It can provide a strong foundation for all sorts of downstream activities, be it building a compelling narrative or creating a persuasive Product Walk-Throughs(more on that in a bit).
Third, It can be very useful for post launch prioritisation of your customer feature requests as most feature requests tend to be framed as solutions, not problems. And customers are often not good at devising solutions — even to their own problems. Although in some ways it is an extension of previous point. I believe it requires a special mention.
I also don’t think the World of Product is first to realise the relevance to Start with the problem. In fact Albert Einstein is famous for saying:
If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions
TL;DR: Starting with the problem matters! Eventual success of your solution, really comes down to your understanding of the problem.
Hey.com: A MasterClass
One of the first artefacts Basecamp released long before they launched the Hey.com email application was a note on their website announcing the Launch of Hey.com starting June 15th, 2020.
It’s no longer on the website but below is the snapshot of the same. In case you are curious:
At fist, you might have been tempted to dismiss it as some mediocre Storytelling at best, until you realised that it was just the part of opening salvo and the real punch was packed in the link at the bottom on the text.
The link was to the webpage outlining 25 fundamental issues with email. The link to that is also not active any longer, but below are the issues/problems they had identified and had started out to solve. In case you are curious:
Email’s great, but it needs some love. Below, we’ve shared 25 fundamental issues we see with email. HEY handles all of them on day one.
You screen your calls but you can’t screen your emails.
If you don’t start the thread, you’re stuck with other people’s terrible, non-descriptive email subjects.
Some emails are worth your immediate attention, but most are definitely not.
Files are attached to emails, not the other way around.
You don’t need to be told when to check your email.
People write you now, but you often want to reply later.
Emails are either in your face, or hidden from view — there is no middle ground.
Companies track which emails you open, how often you open them, and even where you were when you opened them.
Conversations about the same thing are often split across multiple threads.
You have to read emails one at a time.
You can’t reply in peace.
Anyone who emails you a lot tends to dominate your inbox.
Sending big files via email is a hassle.
Long threads may only contain one important paragraph.
You don’t know if someone you really wanted to hear from just emailed you.
Everyone else can put stuff in your inbox, but you can’t.
Conversations may start in email, but they may continue somewhere else.
Giving your email address out inevitably leads to receiving a bunch of stuff you didn’t want.
Many emails need to be kept, but never need to be read.
Inboxes are an absolute intertwined mess of messages in different states.
Mail rules are hacks, and symptoms of a configuration over convention mindset.
The “in” in inbox is the problem.
Cleaning up, or getting to zero, is a constant, wasted effort.
Read or unread is irrelevant much of the time.
Counts create anxiety.
That was not all though, the document outlining the problems with the email was just that, a Start. They went on to build their entire Narrative, Storytelling and Word of Mouth(WoM) on Social Media and elsewhere around that. The absolute stunning display of this was the Product Walk-Through video they put out at Launch.
I would highly recommended viewing Product Walk-Through video to get the full understanding and context, but here is quick Lowdown:
On the video one could literally draw out 1–1 mapping of the problems they had outlined months ago and features that they eventually launched and found worthy to talk about in a Product Walk-Through video.
For instance
The Problem #2: If you don’t start the thread, you’re stuck with other people’s terrible, non-descriptive email subjects.
Led to
The Feature: Ability to click on the subject and rename subject.
Similarly
The Problem #8: Companies track which emails you open, how often you open them, and even where you were when you opened them.
Led to
The Feature: Spy pixel blocking — HEY’s spy pixel blocker stops people from snooping on your activity.
In fact the entire video was a point by point demo of features that could be mapped neatly to the Problems outlined and shared in the document long before the launch. Such was the importance and significance of Starting with the problem.
The jury is still out on how does Hey.com fare and would it eventually be able to command the space they have been able to occupy at launch, but, given the thoughtfulness to the fundamentals like Start with the problem and their record of Operational Excellence over the years. It would not exactly come as a total surprise!
P.S Now that you know What Start with the problem means, Why does it matter and How successful companies apply it to launch products. You might wonder, why don’t all companies “Start with the problem”. Well, that is because it is easier said than done and there are number of challenges pertaining to embracing Start with the problem discipline, but that is whole another post in itself. If you would like me to write about it. Let me know in the comments.
imo if they really started from first principals they would have not simply built another email client. They started with all of the "problems" that already exist in email and did a good job of improving those. this is a 1 -> n improvement.
If they really thought from first principle and the "problem" they would have made a 0 -> 1 improvement in communication protocol. Although this is a much harder problem to solve. Not that what they did isn't valuable, but imo there's more to be done here