I wanted to take a moment to say why I chose to work at Facebook but it requires a little bit of background. The little start up that I was working at failed to raise an A Round of funding, and the seed-salary was starting to feel a little painful. I could have stayed there while looking for a job but I didn’t want to eat into the money they had remaining and I thought I might be able to find something interesting if I left before I knew what I wanted to do next and spent most of my time job hunting instead of doing it on the side.

In the end I made a spreadsheet of about 60 companies in the bay area that looked interesting. Of those, I really spent time looking into about 10 or 15. And of those a very small handful seemed like they needed someone who could do what I can do, had a decent culture fit and had a mission that I was interested in.

My list of priorities included great people (aka no assholes), a great culture of both product and engineering, and a platform that people need to build on. There were also a lot of other things as well – salary, commute, office, etc. But I knew that I wouldn’t want to go to work every day at a company where the people and products weren’t something I cared about, so I knew the decision would start there and work back.

That list of priorities reveals why I ended up at Facebook. The people that I interviewed with were amazing. Really, really amazing. The culture seems to be excellent. The products they build are used by hundreds of millions of people and are creating change in the way that people lead their daily lives (and I’m personally a very passionate user – this helps!)

I feel privileged to have had the choice to work at a number of different places. (I am very in touch with the fact that a lot of people don’t have the same breadth of opportunities that I do.) But I’m pretty excited to have the chance to help out at a company that is filled with such amazing people and has such a broad impact on how people lead their lives.

Onward!

We talked about a bunch of possible ideas around the product, who it might service, some of the things that it might or might not do, and within that context what’s really important. But in the end, it really came down to a framework for how to think about prioritizing that is actually the thing that matters. After all, it’s his project, not mine.

I thought it would be worth it to share the way that I tend to think about this kind of problem. None of the ideas here are particularly original, but they can often act as a decent place to start from when thinking about your product’s important features and if you know you’re ready to actually bring something to market. More senior product people would probably have a lot more to say about strategy and context, but here’s a set of things that I think anyone can use to approach getting into the right mindset for building good product.

Go talk to your customers.

Seriously. Go talk to them. Get out of your chair. Make a call. Or walk down the street. Or trade email. If you haven’t talked to them about the problems that they are having and how you might be solving them then you’re missing the cheapest feedback that you can get.

Even better, have someone along with you to act as a wingman. Someone who listens very well and can ask the right questions at the right time. It’s even better if the person that’s with you isn’t a programmer and has a decent design sense. When I say design I don’t actually mean “an artist” I just mean someone who can hear the words that people are saying and actually see the problem at hand with a lot of empathy. – it’s not a common skill, and one that’s very undervalued. (Ever been tested for empathy in a job interview? Yeah, I didn’t think so.)

Remember that old software rule that says that bugs are cheaper the earlier they are found? That’s the same here as well, except you get to find your problems before even writing any code. Huge!

What’s the minimum thing you need to solve the problem at hand?

Another phrase for this: minimum viable product. What’s the smallest thing you can build that you can release and it will solve problems for your customers? What’s the thing that you can put out the door that gives you a platform to learn from? I think that people are very concerned about building something that’s perfect and beautiful on the very first iteration, but that’s not always the most important thing. If you’ve got time and capital to burn, then sure. But most people are just trying to get something done and time matters so it’s more important to ship and learn than it is to have something perfect.

Note that I’m not saying that you should ship crap. Don’t ship crap. People won’t use crap and since brands are sponges that negative impression can follow you around for a long time. But shipping is still better than perfect.

You pick your customers.

I’m going to start with an assertion: A product that’s extremely useful to a small number of people is a product, too. Lots and lots of people want to be the next google or the next facebook. But you don’t have to be that guy. Think small – a small set of people that are passionate about your product and can support the business are going to be infinitely more engaged and useful than a large number of people who could care less.

This is why I say you pick your customers. The thing that you build and what it does will cause people to self-select into your product. This means that picking a set of features is exactly the same thing as picking a set of customers.

So pick a set of people and build it for them. Don’t build something for everyone.

Think outside-in.

You really need to be thinking from the customer’s view point. (Remember what I said about empathy?) You’re deep in bugs and you want to prioritize. It’s easy to think about what you need for your launch or what you need to get to the next set of people, but you have to always balance that with what your customers need today. You need to see it from where they are, and how they will experience it. If you do that, priorities become easier.

(Pro tip: If you find a good designer (not a visual designer) then their main skills will be the ability to see things that others can’t combined with the ability to communicate the problem and solution. They can see things outside-in in ways that most people can not.)

Iterate.

This is the actual goal. No, really, it is. If you’ve talked to your customers and you’ve got something that does the minimum thing that they need, you’re going to want to start iterating as you learn how they are using it and what they are saying. Do regular updates. Continue to talk to your customers – in person, if you can. Once you’ve solved one set of problems for them you might find that there are other complimentary problems you can also solve. And that can be included in the next version of the product. Just keep going. Fix bugs, make things faster, add more functionality. These are all things that people value and the best way to deliver them is over time in small increments.

So I’ll tell you a secret: If you’re being deliberate about iterating and learning, if you’re seeing things from your customer’s prospective and you’re also solving problems for people in the real world, you’re executing a design process. You might not be a visual designer, but this is the thing that makes good design work. Learning, empathy, solving problems.

So that’s the short list of things that I think about when I’m thinking about product. There’s an even longer list than this, mostly about competition, monetization and go-to-market strategies (especially around marketing), the role of metrics, etc, but this is a good start if you want to be thinking in terms of product.

What else?

Are there other things that you would add to this list? I love to learn from others, so please add to the comments.

Want to follow our team? You can find us on Facebook

A few weeks ago, my team and I took part in the 2012 Arse-Sweat-A-Palooza Lemons race. This 24 hour endurance race for $500 cars was a true 24 hour race, run from 10am on a Saturday to 10am on a Sunday. Our number #55 car placed 6th out of the roughly 140 entrants, which is a pretty great finish for a bunch of people who only race in Lemons. Just for context, all of the cars that finished ahead of us have actually won races and we finished on the same lap as the Eyesore racing team, who has won a large number of races.

We worked hard in order to finish as well as we did, and I thought that I might give some insight into what it takes to do well at a race like this.

One note on Lemons racing in general: Although it doesn’t take itself too seriously, and we don’t try to take things too seriously as a team either, it’s real racing. It’s wheel-to-wheel, there’s blocking, there’s strategy and people try to win. They also try to have fun. The people at Lemons races tend to be quite nice to each other and the culture seems to make overly-serious assholes remove themselves from events. Some of the nicest people I’ve met since I moved to California have been through Lemons racing.

Making a Team

The most important thing on our team is the fact that we’re having a good time and we’re taking care of each other. Fun and safety. We listen to each other, we push each other and we try and maintain a shared goal such that each of us understands what we’re trying to do at any particular race. We’ve done a fair number of races together (this was my 8th Lemons race) and it turns out that when you’re running a race with the same set of people over and over again that you learn a lot about each other. The prep and the actual race are a serious pressure cooker. You learn when your team mates are stressed, when they aren’t doing well, when they disagree and the key thing is to make sure that you make the time for everyone to have a say in how things are done. As the team captain, hard decisions are left to me, but I always try and leave space to listen to what others are saying. And I’m always willing to admit I was wrong.

We’ve had some guest drivers come and go, and the feedback that I’ve heard is that our team dynamic is excellent. We know how to work together. So if you’re thinking about building a team, this is the thing that I would focus on. No assholes, everyone is able to show up and help with car prep at least some of the time and that everyone is focused on the same set of shared goals. Oh, and be honest with each other and listen to each other. That helps a lot, too.

Investing in Drivers

One part that is not part of the $500 limit in Lemons racing is the drivers. You can invest as much money and time as you want in drivers. So we’ve done some of that. We take our cars to track events before the actual races. We test the race car ahead of time. We try and get a sense of the track we’re going to be driving on. We read and we listen to what people have to say. But mostly we just work on ourselves and take driver training seriously. We understand that we have limitations and other people know a lot more than we do and we’re always trying to learn from them.

Having a Plan and Learning From Mistakes

These two things are the most important parts of doing well at a Lemons race. My first race was two years ago, and since then I’ve learned a lot about what it takes to build a fast team. A lot of that has to do with seeing what other teams do at the track. But most of it is just learning from your own mistakes.

The thing that I think we’ve done well at is that we iterate after ever race. We try and do one or two big things better at each race. In the beginning that was basic reliability and car setup. Finding a good chassis, finding a good motor, figuring out all the electronics, etc. But as we’ve gotten better at the basics, we’ve started to focus on other things. How to fuel faster (while maintaining safety), how to prep the car so that things don’t come apart, how we test the car and make adjustments or find problems, etc.

This iteration is key to doing well. Patience, learning and listening are key. Every race you should be trying to do better in one area. If you’re doing that every time, you can only get better.

Prep Prep Prep

Lemons racing is about 90% prep and 10% racing. I can attest that for every hour on the racetrack there are 10 hours spent in the shop. In our case we try to not leave much to chance. We try and button up everything we can before we take a car to the track. Bring spares for wear items – oil, brake pads, rims with tires mounted. And check everything before the race.

One thing that I’ve learned to do, for example, is that before a race I put the car up on a lift and check every single bolt on top of and under the car. I check every suspension bolt, every brake bolt, all the brake lines for weakness or cracking, the fuel lines, the hoses, motor and trans mounts, the bolts that hold the brake calipers to the hubs, seat mounting bolts. I check as much of the engine as I can and listen for problems. And every time I do this I find something wrong. A cracked exhaust mount, a broken motor mount, a loose caliper bolt. This extra how of prep time makes a huge difference at the track. The earlier you find a problem, the easier and cheaper it is to fix.

Practice in the Pits

This race was interesting because we actually practiced doing things like tire changes ahead of time. We can’t do a full tire change in 2.3 seconds but we were able to get to the point where we could do a tire change in a minute or so. That’s not too bad given that tire irons and wheel lugs are involved. (We haven’t upgraded to studs yet, maybe this race!)

Race Day

OK, so it’s race day. You’ve done all this stuff to get ready. What do you tell the driver? Here are the things that we’ve worked on:

1. Clarity on Order

For previous races we’ve always had a list of times when people would be driving. But our fuel management and the occasional black or yellow flag meant that those times were always a little bit off and it doesn’t seem worth it to try and plan at that level. So instead we make sure that we have a driver order and we estimate how long our fuel supplies last. We can usually estimate in 10-15 minute increments. People know when they are up next and the next driver is always suited up.

2. Keep it clean

Don’t take risky passes. It’s trite, but it’s true that you can only lose a race in any particular corner. Don’t drive in your rear view mirror, but try not to cause accidents. Drive predictably.

The race is a long game, and good data helps you make good decisions. If the track has live timing this helps you understand when and where you should push, but it doesn’t mean that you should try and beat everyone. Choose who you are racing against. The best clue that you’re picking your battles well is that you’re racing against cars you can’t see. They are ahead/behind by a lap or two and you’re trying to beat them over the length of the race, not the next corner.

Driving at 9/10ths is good. Driving at 8/10ths is better – especially at our skill level. At that effort you’ve always got something left over to cover up for your mistakes – and you will make mistakes. The best drivers drive at 9/10ths every single lap over and over with predictable times. If you need to turn it up, you can because you’ve got some margin. We’re getting there, but we’re still not quite that good yet.

Don’t pass under Yellow and respect the track workers. If you do get pulled into the penalty box, it’s your fault. Period. Even better, don’t end up in the penalty box.

3. Run until you run out of fuel

When we started racing we usually did 40 minute to 1 hour stints. Part of this was because we wanted everyone to get a turn in the car because it tended to be unreliable so I wanted to make sure everyone got a chance to drive. It also was at the limits of what we could handle – racing is tiring.

But as we’ve gotten better at this, we can handle longer stints. We’ve learned to trust our car and each other, and we can physically handle the stress of driving for that long. I know that I can do a 2.5 hour stint pretty easily now. I can relax during the race and think about what I want to do next. What’s the strategy for getting around the next car? How can I do it safely? Is this line better than this other line I’ve used before? As you get better at something you free up other capacity to stop thinking about tactics and start thinking about strategy. As you do more races you will find that you have the same experience.

4. Strength in the pits

Races are won and lost in the pits. This is as true in Lemons as it is in other racing series. We’ve gotten much better at fueling, for example, which is key to running a fast pit in lemons. (Fuel canisters are limited to DOT-like 5 gallon containers.) We’ve got an OEM fuel tank, which means we can’t fuel as fast as other teams who have fuel cells. And we can’t carry as much fuel. So we’re always making sure that we run our pit stops as quickly and efficiently as possible.

We plan our pits, everyone has a job. Two people are always suited up in the pits to handle fueling and we try not to rush too much, but we certainly try and do things quickly and safely.

5. The Coordinationator

Related to the previous comments about running the pits, the thing that we’ve learned is that it helps to have someone who plans and runs each pit stop. This person assigns duties (right driver, left driver, fueling, holding the fire extinguisher, etc) and doesn’t really have jobs of his own to do. He also is on the radios all the time and tells the driver that he can only go 10mph in the pits, what that driver’s duties will be (if any), and keeps track of when drivers go out so you can estimate when the next pit stop will be, etc.

This turns out to be one of the most important roles in the team, and that person shouldn’t be driving.

6. Good Data

While the race is going it’s good to have data if you can. Recently, live timing for everyone has become available via Race Monitor and other tools. This lets you know who is chasing you down, if you’re actually getting laps registered (is your transponder actually on the car?) and if there’s a chance you can chase another car down. We used this extensively in the last two hours of the race when we were trying to figure out if we could maintain a top-5 position. (Our top position during the race was 4th. We figured out pretty quickly that the best we were going to do was 6th. Good data kept us out of 7th.) But having this data and knowing how to use it turns out to be pretty critical to understanding how hard your driver should push and when he should consider blocking someone.

Also? Don’t skimp on radios. Get good ones. And make sure you have at least three of them, including the one in the car. Being able to talk to the driver is key.

That’s About It

This is high-level, but I thought that it might give some insight into the kinds of things we’ve been iterating on with our race team. It turns out that a lot of what makes or breaks a particular team is how they work together and very little to do with the speed of the car. Our car is certainly pretty fast compared to others and well set up at this point, but most of what we’ve changed has to do with the drivers, not a bigger motor or a fuel cell or anything else.

Your car can’t make up for your failings as drivers and mechanics, but you can make up for a lot of your car’s deficits by being a better team.

You made it this far. Here’s a video:

Chris Farley is amazing.

WTF.

There’s an exception to this, of course:  HBO.  I’ve been a big fan of a bunch of their shows – Carnivale, Game of Thrones, etc.  And I would love to pay for access to that content so I can get it when others do.  But the fact that I can’t do that without a cable subscription is really frustrating because I have no interest in paying for the rest of cable when I won’t use it.

The main issue here is time.  I’ve watched a lot of HBO content, but always once it comes out on DVD.  (Unlike a lot of people I don’t torrent TV shows or movies.  I live in a world that needs copyright to survive, so I try and respect other people’s copyright too.)  There’s a lot happening online and in common nomenclature that’s driven by these shows – a tribute to their success, to be sure.  But being cut off from that is pretty painful, and I for one would love the chance to join.

But that’s really up to HBO to offer.  I’d like to add my voice to the list of people that would happily pay for an HBO subscription but isn’t interested in paying for cable.  I have a data connection – that should be enough to get access.