Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of Startup Universal, a free content platform covering technology startups and opportunities globally with a focus on emerging startup ecosystems — ecosystems that have the potential for scalable growth, but that are currently under-covered and underserved. Our mission is to uncover and broadcast technology opportunities around the world.

The platform includes in-depth Country Guides featuring ecosystem overviews, insights from ecosystem leaders, local industry & company info, funding & hiring activity, and available community resources. It also includes locally sourced news and expert commentary covering the latest developments, trends, and things to look out for in each country’s startup ecosystem.

Startup Universal serves as an information source for ecosystem builders, both locals and foreigners, looking to:

• Start tech startups (Entrepreneurs)
• Fund tech startups (Investors)
• Join tech startups (Talent)
• Cover tech startups (Journalists)

The Story

Startup Universal was born out of a journey around the world. In 2017, I embarked on a year-long trip traveling the world with my wife Zoe. While traveling through Asia, Africa, Europe, and South America, I began a passion project to meet with entrepreneurs and technology startups in each of the countries I visited, and wrote about my experiences as a contributing writer for Forbes. This journey made me appreciate the incredible talent and technology around the world, but also the lack of accessible, quality content covering technology startups in many countries, especially those with emerging and developing startup ecosystems. That’s why I decided to create a platform: Startup Universal.

Over the past year, our team has worked with ecosystem leaders around the world — including founders, investors, and thought leaders — identifying the types of information that would be most valuable to them and capturing their insights. We then translated this information into a digestible and actionable format, culminating in the launch of our pilot, featuring Country Guides for 23 national startup ecosystems across 5 continents, and newsfeeds covering over 100 countries. We’re continuing to add countries to the platform and understand how best to serve the members of each ecosystem.

The Need

The platform addresses the lack of understanding and recognition among international entrepreneurs, investors, and tech community members of the accomplishments (what has already been achieved) and opportunities (the potential for future growth) in emerging startup ecosystems.

Existing global tech news sites and ecosystem maps typically overlook ecosystems outside of the Western world, and while there are localized tech news sites covering the ‘other’ countries, these sites often lack the resources and reach to showcase their ecosystem internationally. This situation perpetuates the uneven globalization of startups and venture capital. According to data published by the Center for American Entrepreneurship, “just 24 cities account for three-quarters of global venture capital investment, despite housing just four percent of the world’s population.”

Ecosystems in the ‘rest’ of the world, lacking the capital and experience found in more mature markets, must attract these assets from other countries in order to grow. These developing ecosystems depend on the transfer of information to showcase them. On the flipside, the world’s most mature ecosystems have become oversaturated, leading to the overvaluation of startups and challenging investor returns. As a result, entrepreneurs and investors in these mature markets are more actively exploring opportunities abroad. By shining a light on what’s happening around the world — specifically in ecosystems that are growing, but do not yet have a presence on the global stage — we aim to facilitate increased communication between tech communities and more effectively realize global opportunities.

The Approach

Startup Universal is a platform in the truest sense of the word: a stage for those with a story to tell. It provides an entry point into startup ecosystems, and presents foundational rather than exhaustive information about those ecosystems. The platform is unique not only in terms of the countries it focuses on (the where), but also in terms of the way it generates content (the how):

The Where: As mentioned above, Startup Universal focuses primarily on ecosystems where it can provide significant value: emerging ecosystems in underserved markets with fewer existing resources and less coverage. The pilot site includes insights and news covering countries across Asia, Latin America, Africa, and parts of Europe. Each pilot country was selected based on its location, current traction, and potential for scalable growth.

In addition to the emerging ecosystems, the platform covers a selection of more mature ecosystems such as China, Singapore, Sweden, and Spain. These ecosystems are included because of their roles as feeders for other ecosystems, whether through capital or talent. For instance, China and Singapore serve as anchor ecosystems for Southeast Asia; Sweden’s ecosystem is connected to much of Northern Europe; and Spain’s ecosystem is connected to the Latin American markets, serving as a bridge between Europe and Latin America.

The How: Startup Universal aims to showcase the full extent of the world’s tech talent and opportunities through several phases:

• Phase 1: Cover (develop, aggregate, and package content for underserved startup ecosystems)
• Phase 2: Curate (build out a network of local partners and contributors to better qualify news and opportunities)
• Phase 3: Connect (facilitate connections between interested parties to pursue opportunities)

For each country, we collaborate with local leaders and use a mix of branded and user-generated content. We enlist the help of a country “Guest Editor” — a well-known local investor/founder/thought leader with deep experience and knowledge to offer their insights and perspectives. Additionally, we source content from contributors/publishers on the ground in the countries they’re writing about, and offer anyone involved in the tech community the ability to submit content for consideration. This crowdsourced “wiki” model ensures the content is current and dynamic.

With this approach in mind, as we continue to build out the platform, we’re always looking for passionate tech community members to get involved and help spread the word. If you’re interested in helping transform your startup ecosystem, you can submit content for your ecosystem’s Country Guide, or you can submit a contributor post about your ecosystem.

Have a question or want to know more about what we’re building? Feel free to reach out: hello@startupuniversal.com. We’d love to chat.

Startup Universal: Uncovering and Broadcasting Technology Opportunities Around the World was originally published in Startup Universal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In late 2018, I interviewed one of Europe’s top venture capitalists, Pär-Jörgen (PJ) Pärson of Northzone, and published an article detailing his 2018 takeaways and 2019 predictions for European tech. This year, I’ve expanded the year-end European tech survey to feature the insider perspective of not only Pärson, but several of Europe’s most notable investors, including Harry Briggs, Managing Partner at OMERS Ventures based in London, and Simon Schmincke, Partner at Creandum based in Berlin. These investors operate at the forefront of venture capital in Europe, and represent a trust of decision makers shaping the state of European tech. Additionally, their respective firms had landmark years in 2019, with Northzone launching a new US$500 million fund, OMERS launching a €300 million fund, and Creandum closing a US$300 million fund, all of which focus on European startups.

Each investor presented his European tech takeaways from 2019-what happened and why-and what’s next in 2020-where to focus.

What Unifies The European Tech Ecosystem?

Before diving into the takeaways and predictions, it’s important to briefly define the term “European tech.” The question of whether European tech can be analyzed as a single entity is complex. In reality, the region is less a single entity and more a collection of hubs, each with its own culture and regulatory environment. That said, these hubs are connected based on their close proximity by a migration of talent and capital. While details such as the product design and development process or work attitudes vary between hubs, European startups, now more than ever before, think of Europe as a single market.

Key Takeaways From 2019

The slowdown of funding didn’t happen…yet (Pärson & Schmincke): Many anticipated a macro-level market correction and a slowdown of VC funding in 2019. On the contrary, European startups raised a record US$34.3 billion in venture capital since the start of 2019, according to a recent report from VC firm Atomico. This figure far surpasses the US$24.6 billion raised in 2018. Furthermore, the European VC industry is extremely well-capitalized. A large number of funds were raised this past year, and the gaps in the funding chain from angels to late growth, which have hampered the European ecosystem in the past, have shrunken. Also, there are emerging hubs that manage to give birth to great tech companies outside of regional leaders the UK, Germany, and France in cities like Lisbon, Bucharest, Belgrade, Warsaw, and Dublin. Despite the grim macroeconomic outlook, Creandum’s Simon Schmincke doubts we will see a slowdown looking ahead to 2020, while Northzone’s Pärson is less optimistic, and cautions that founders should prepare to have more cash burn flexibility in their operating plans.

The Americans are coming (Schmincke & Briggs):US funds have finally discovered Europe. While Series C rounds, and sometimes Series B rounds have historically seen the eventual American participation, Series A and Seed rounds in Europe were historically reserved for European investors. This trend changed in 2019. With Dealroom reporting a €60 billion pipeline of European unicorn exits to come, it’s no wonder investors from beyond Europe’s shores are coming in to take a closer look. This is compounded by the fact that intense investor competition in Silicon Valley emphasizes the value of European opportunities relative to local opportunities. With large multi-hundred million dollar West Coast venture funds like Sequoia and Lightspeed Venture Partners exploring the European Seed and even Pre-Seed landscape, European entrepreneurs have an abundance of funding providers to pick from. As Schmincke noted about this development, “we are excited and skeptical at the same time. Excited about a massive group of friends who we can work with early on. Skeptical about what it means for some of the entrepreneurs who raise too much too early, or get left behind if a Seed investor from San Francisco doesn’t put the same attention into his European investments as he does into his local ones.”

European companies are going global faster (Briggs, Pärson, and Schmincke): European companies have always had to think global sooner than their US-counterparts, because of the size of their local markets. But this past year, European startups reached new heights when it comes to the pace of scale and global growth. Seed companies chose the Asian or the American market as their second market right away; Spanish companies skipped Europe to take on Latin America; Swedish companies expanded to the US right away. Moreover, the European ecosystem has companies with nine-figure-revenues that are still growing at breakneck speeds-companies like N26, Transferwise, UiPath, Monzo, Revolut, Klarna-with founders who have ambitions to rival the most successful Silicon Valley based companies. 2019 was the year of bigger markets and bigger opportunities driven by larger aspiration and more guts.

Regulations must evolve to enable continued growth (Pärson): This is a point PJ Pärson introduced in last year’s survey of European tech post, and it still holds true. Many European markets have yet to implement stock option incentive schemes geared towards startups. This limitation continues to make the playing field for top talent uneven versus the United States. Moreover, immigration rules for skilled workers need to be updated. Europe needs access to great global talent and must be able to effectively attract that talent.

Industries To Focus On In 2020

Healthtech (Briggs, Pärson, and Schmincke): Healthtech startups will reach a tipping point in many markets in 2020 as reimbursement models are getting clearer and treatment efficiency starts to show. Europe has 3 of the world’s top 5 health research universities. The “magic triangle” between London, Oxford and Cambridge has a unique combination of research, talent and technology-with an increasingly mature funding ecosystem around it-and it’s starting to pay off. A principal challenge to growth is university spin-out rules. Namely, universities are still demanding too much equity from startups, and companies get bogged down in negotiations with university tech transfer offices.

Machine Learning (Schmincke, Pärson, and Briggs):Artificial intelligence has become inextricably tied to machine learning, and pureplay AI will become increasingly commoditized in 2020. Machine learning is becoming the core of most successful business models, while funding into standalone AI applications will diminish. This trend is natural for almost all new significant technology trends, and shows that the technology has finally arrived in the startup mainstream.

Cloud Gaming (Schmincke): In Schmincke’s words, “what Google and Microsoft are planning is no less than a revolution in the gaming space and we at Creandum couldn’t be more excited about it. Multi-device enablers, optimized streaming, independent hardware gaming solutions that we’ve never seen before will enable new business models and create more immersive experiences. We already see new development studios popping up for these cloud gaming platforms.”

Industries To Approach With Caution In 2020

Virtual Reality (Schmincke):Virtual reality is a technology which, based on movies and mainstream expectations, has extremely high hurdles to climb to satisfy the mass market. The expectation that video conferences, work rooms, and also gaming will move at a high pace into virtual reality is something Schmincke doesn’t believe will happen in 2020.

Voice (Schmincke & Briggs):There are limits to the value of the consumer market for voice technology (not to mention privacy issues). With the amount of funding and the quality of founders banking on voice as the new interface, this area is ripe for success. Unfortunately, there’s a disconnect between the quality of products in the market today, and how it is being adopted. Of course there is room for improvement, but it seems that users are not ready to adopt voice in a broad form yet. Just like virtual reality, the expectations seem to be too high right now.

Men’s Wellness (Briggs): 2019 marked the emergence of brands driving men’s wellness and personal care. However, in the eyes of Harry Briggs, with a few exceptions, it’s not possible to create a valuable, sustainable “brand” by repackaging a generic product and selling it on the internet. Current models simply use the internet as a sales platform.

Developer Tools (Pärson): Developer tools have seen a massive expansion in a number of funded deals over the past years. According to Pärson, this will cool off in 2020.

Hubs To Focus On In 2020

Amsterdam (Pärson & Schmincke): The PayPal mafia has demonstrated how a group of successful founders and executives who have witnessed hyper-growth and success can create a whole avalanche of successful companies. With the IPOs of Adyen and Elasticsearch in the second half of 2018, Amsterdam will begin to benefit from a group of angels, new founders, and role models coming out of those two mega successes. A newfound distribution of wealth should boost the Amsterdam ecosystem.

Eastern Europe (Briggs): The flagship successes of the likes of UiPath and Transferwise suggest a huge opportunity for Eastern Europe and the Baltics, particularly in light of the unrivaled engineering talent in the region. We’re going to see more great companies emerging in Eastern Europe and the Baltics, as engineering-focused diaspora tire of the Silicon Valley craziness and are attracted to a more developed ecosystem back home.

Closing Thoughts

There’s no doubt that this past decade marked a new, more mature phase in the development of the European tech ecosystem. In the last five years alone, Europe has seen 10 exits valued at more than US$5 billion. By comparison, between 2000 and 2010 there wasn’t a single exit meeting this criterion (the Skype & Yandex exit events happened in 2011). The present represents a time of great excitement for Europe’s entrepreneurs and investors. But, as the global appetite for European tech startups increases, it’s crucial for European entrepreneurs to not lose sight of building fundamentally sound businesses, and for investors to devote the proper time and diligence in identifying opportunities that align with their strengths and goals. In other words, it’s critical for European tech to maintain its competitive advantage-high capital efficiency-in 2020.

Originally published at https://www.forbes.com.

Europe’s Top Investors Reveal What’s Next For European Tech In 2020 was originally published in Startup Universal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How are Southeast Asia’s leading startups overcoming this challenge? Which have been able to succeed where others have faltered, and why? Here’s a guide to staking a claim for Southeast Asia’s tech riches, including first-hand insights and lessons from executives of many of the biggest startups in the region.

Expand Early

The first and foremost lesson is to expand early — to develop and activate a market expansion strategy from the onset as opposed to waiting to scale and becoming entrenched in a single country. The reason this is crucial is because so much of the experience of a startup scaling in Southeast Asia is determined by the rate at which it expands across multiple countries, from its relationship with regulators, to its partner network, to its product development (more on these topics later).

Southeast Asian e-commerce giant Lazada and transportation/financial services super-app Grab are two prominent examples of companies adopting a regional mindset and scaling from day-one. Founded in 2012 by European venture builder Rocket Internet, Lazada launched as a regional company from the very beginning with e-commerce sites across Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. This ‘big bang’ launch afforded Lazada the chance to grow each market individually, while applying learnings between markets to optimize the overall model. It also granted Lazada the infrastructure needed to support key differentiators like offering users 2-day delivery.

This strategy attracted China’s Alibaba, which acquired a controlling stake in Lazada in 2016 and has invested US$4 billion into the business in recent years. As a former Rocket Internet executive noted to me, the fact that Lazada had established roots in many Southeast Asian markets at the time of the Alibaba acquisition and was operating across cultures and geographies made it easier for Lazada to adapt successfully to a ‘foreign takeover’ by the Chinese firm and continue to grow.

Grab similarly scaled quite early in its journey, an approach largely responsible for its rise to superapp — its rapid growth not just in other countries, but across different services and products including ride-hailing, fintech, and delivery. GrabTaxi launched in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in June 2012, and rather than expand to other Malaysian cities, founder Anthony Tan made the decision to quickly expand to the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam all within the span of two years.

Grab’s early expansion enabled its team to understand how each local market worked and importantly how to stitch operations together. As Russell Cohen, Grab’s Head of Regional Operations, explained: “we employed a regional lens from day-one, which is what has allowed us to scale and roll out hyperlocal services quickly and effectively.” From a technology perspective, Grab operates at a regional level, although its technology is built to allow for localization in each market, as is its marketing. Grab’s tech teams determine which portions of its stack are localized and handled by in-market engineering teams and which are centralized and handled by Grab headquarters.

This approach serves in stark contrast to the approach taken by Grab’s competitor Go-Jek, an Indonesian ride-hailing company that waited nearly eight years until 2018 to expand beyond its native country. For many years, Go-Jek’s product, team, and operational structure focused exclusively on Indonesia, making it increasingly hard to adapt and successfully expand into different markets.

The results of these disparate approaches speak for themselves. By many third party accounts, Grab is the region’s true super-app: by far the most regularly used ride-hailing service across the region, it is the number one regional food delivery provider in several markets, and is on track to be two to three times larger than any competitors in this space by the end of the year. Go-Jek has had immense success in Indonesia, but has struggled in its new markets. In Vietnam, the local chief executive and chief growth officer stepped down only months after the country launch. Potential driver earnings have also been cut by more than 20% in markets like Singapore.

Expand Wisely

Expanding early does not mean companies should expand to countries at will without properly researching which markets make most sense. As mentioned above, localization is particularly pronounced in Southeast Asia. Each country contains its own version of regulation, consumer habits, and geography. For instance, consumer spending power in Singapore is radically different from that in Myanmar, and geography in Vietnam is radically different from that in Indonesia — an archipelago of hundreds of islands leading to significant logistical challenges for certain industries.

Carousell, a mobile-first marketplace for consumers to buy and sell items akin to Craigslist, has had great success in its native Singapore since its founding in 2012. Its second-hand marketplace business model fits extremely well in a country like Singapore — a market with limited living space and a developed economy in which people constantly buy and sell possessions (although are not always willing to buy new possession as the cost can be expensive).

This dynamic does not hold true in other markets Carousell has entered, such as Indonesia. In a developing market like Indonesia, people do not have excess items to sell. Moreover, many things people buy are produced cheaply and are inexpensive, making them difficult to sell second hand. Within Indonesia’s vast population of almost 270 million, there is surely a niche of consumers who find value in a product like Carousell. However, the value proposition is much less compelling than in a market like Singapore, making the Indonesian market not nearly as competitive for the company. While Carousell remains near the top of the app charts in Singapore across iOS and Google Play, it is far lower on the Indonesian app charts as reported by App Annie.

Particularly for companies based in Southeast Asia’s less developed markets with fewer resources and capital, it’s crucial to be capital-efficient and make sure they are getting the greatest return for each dollar spent. With this in mind, selecting the right markets for early expansion has far reaching implications for scalable company growth.

Engage With Regulators

Each time a company enters a new market or rolls out a new service, it should engage in a dialogue with national regulators in advance. One of the primary benefits of expanding early is it allows a company the opportunity to build trust with regulators and develop a relationship rather than reaching out after the fact.

Grab and Go-Jek both have complicated histories with regulators. Grab took advantage of the chance to grow relationships and long-term engagement with regulators across Southeast Asia given its early expansion. Because it expanded as a relatively small entity, it did not attract nearly as much attention as Go-Jek did when it expanded regionally as an established unicorn startup with multi-billion dollar funding.

In the past, Grab had particular success working with regulators in Singapore to roll out and pioneer new technologies. As Russell Cohen detailed: “we’ve tried out many of our new innovations in Singapore, like JustGrab (our dynamic pricing solution for taxis), and GrabShuttle, (our on-demand shuttle service). In fact, GrabShuttle was made possible thanks to a partnership with the Government Technology Agency of Singapore. These innovations are now available in many of our other markets.”

However, this relationship took a hit in 2018 following Grab’s acquisition of Uber’s Southeast Asian operations. Regulators in Singapore, Vietnam, and the Philippines all scrutinized and delayed the deal, questioning Grab’s pricing model given newly implemented pricing changes. Had Grab been more communicative earlier, these issues could have been avoided. Go-Jek has also run into regulatory issues lately, having had its ride-hailing license rejected twice by regulators in the Philippines, thwarting its expansion plans.

The difference between success and failure in scaling to new markets could very well boil down to transparency and mutual understanding with national regulators — to the trust that a technology is secure, that it promotes the best interests of users, and that its goals are aligned with national objectives.

Embrace Partners

Maintaining a positive relationship with regulators is vital to launch a new market or service. However, for a company to then grow that market or service, especially considering limited resources, it’s imperative to leverage local businesses rather than starting from scratch and building everything in-house. Partnerships facilitate rapid market growth and allow companies to roll out services more efficiently in each market. Conversely, building in-house takes longer and is oftentimes more expensive.

Establishing partnerships is particularly valuable in Southeast Asia given its diversity as a region. Because each market is unique, it’s impossible for a business to know and build everything optimally. Rather, companies should partner with either best-in-class global companies or national companies. This is another area in which Grab and Go-Jek diverge. Grab has always employed a partnership-driven approach to growth, building technology through an open platform — GrabPlatform — and collaborating with partners like Booking Holdings (accommodations), HOOQ (entertainment) or Ping An Good Doctor (healthcare services) to launch relevant services in the region. Conversely, Go-Jek takes a different approach, developing technology in-house, acquiring companies to fill gaps, and building its own brands including Go Tix (event tickets) and Go Life (lifestyle).

A partnership success story worth noting is the partnership between Hong Kong-based logistics startup Lalamove and popular chat app Line in Thailand starting in 2016. Combining forces to power LINE MAN, Line leveraged Lalamove’s delivery network for its first foray into the delivery space, while Lalamove leveraged Line’s over 30 million Thai users to effectively scale in a new market.

Adapt The Product

While the ‘when’ (expand early) and ‘who’ (regulators, partners) of scaling across Southeast Asia must be top of mind, companies cannot lose focus on the development of their core products, and specifically the adaptation of those products in each market. Often, companies that are focused for several years on a particular country take a narrow view of product development and do not invest the budget and time to properly differentiate the product experience within new markets.

Chinese chat startup WeChat is a primary example of a company that fell into this trap. WeChat, which was developed by Chinese tech company Tencent, has an incredibly strong product in China with over 1 billion monthly active users. In 2013–2014, the company invested heavily in international expansion. However, because of the product’s huge success in China, the WeChat product owners were resistant to implement any product adaptations in new markets that would detract their focus from their top priority — the Chinese market. As a result, users in new markets such as India had a hard time using the product, including frequent reports that users could not identify how to add friends on the app.

As a former senior Tencent employee involved in the international expansion told me: “the International Business Group (IBG) of Tencent had no say over the product…so lots of features were very much catered to Chinese social needs…IBG team had challenges comprehending local markets [as] many of their country managers were based in Shenzhen, China instead of the destination market.” Because of these shortcomings, WeChat has not experienced anywhere near the success of its home market in other countries, and in many cases has lost out to Facebook’s chat apps.

The aforementioned Hong Kong-based logistics app Lalamove, which has successfully scaled operations across several Southeast Asian countries and recently raised a US$300 million Series D round, avoided these pitfalls by separating its product development in each market. From its early stages, Lalamove focused on both China and Southeast Asia. As Blake Larson, Lalamove’s Managing Director of International, noted: “We only really scaled Mainland China and SEA (Southeast Asia) once we were profitable in a couple of cities. This gave us the confidence that we could focus on opening more cities without also wondering whether we would run out of funds. I might call our approach pragmatically aggressive.”

What distinguishes Lalamove is that it has always employed separate market product and tech teams. This translates to distinct end-to-end experiences, covering everything from name to logo to the user interface. As Lalamove has demonstrated, having a separate product/tech team and product strategy focusing on each market avoids the pressure of forced market prioritization, and allows for nimble and fast product development.

Invest In Talent

The last lesson surrounds experienced talent, which is hard to find in Southeast Asia. When a company expands to new markets, it becomes paramount to invest in solid senior talent. As Professor Guoli Chen, Professor of Strategy at INSEAD, noted: “the leader who manages the new market is very critical, needs to be cross-culture sensitive, know the core competence of the original business model, and be vigilant enough to learn from the local market and respond accordingly.”

The goal is to successfully blend local leaders with market knowledge and international leaders with experience given the shortage of native experienced tech leaders in Southeast Asia. Lazada struck this balance and from the beginning made use of both its Rocket Internet management team from Europe and its local Southeast Asian talent. Grab has also taken a hybrid approach to talent: all of its country heads are local apart from Vietnam’s lead who is Singaporean. At the same time, the company has invested in recruiting global talent by opening up three global research & development centers outside of Southeast Asia: one in China, one in Bangalore, and one in Seattle, Washington.

These lessons provide a path to startup success in Southeast Asia, including the key factors that determine a company’s ability to operate across multiple countries concurrently. The challenges and considerations referenced above will only become more complex as more companies attempt to scale regionally, and as they compete in each other’s native markets. The good news is that in a dynamic region like Southeast Asia, the sky’s the limit for those who are able to create and scale technology the smart way — the right way.

Originally published at https://www.forbes.com.

Scaling In Southeast Asia: Lessons From The Region’s Biggest Startups was originally published in Startup Universal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Over the past year, I traveled to 19 countries across Asia, Europe, Africa, and South America, meeting with global startups and researching startup ecosystems. Along the way, I learned not only about the unique opportunities in each place, but also the challenges — the reasons why startups falter and aren’t able to scale.

Conventional reasoning surrounding startup failure points to a lack of support or a lack of experience — a lack of funding networks or of people who have successfully built and exited startups. These are absolutely valid reasons, however I suggest a different perspective: one rooted in products and markets rather than money or people. The real reason it’s hard for startups to scale internationally is the same reason many of these startups are initially able to gain momentum domestically: developing a product that fits the needs of their specific market.

Product-Market Fit

The foundation of any successful startup is attaining product-market fit, a concept coined by Wealthfront CEO Andy Rachleff and summarized by tech investor Marc Andreessen: “being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.” In order for a startup to scale, it must meet both requirements in the above equation: the market requirement and the product requirement.

But many startups, especially those with a limited support network or those in less mature markets, are forced early on to either pursue a wide market definition or pursue a product that deeply satisfies a need in their home market in order to gain enough momentum to navigate the formidable obstacles confronting early-stage companies. This tradeoff is the reason it’s so difficult for startups to scale internationally. Pursuing each requirement on its own — a good market or a tailored product — hinders a startup from achieving the other requirement. Therein lies what I call “the startup localization paradox.”

The Startup Localization Paradox

The startup localization paradox posits that barring a select few exceptional countries, in many ways the path to growth within a company’s native country precludes growth outside of that country and vice versa. If a company is launched and built as a localized company (i.e. a Peruvian company targeting the Peruvian market) without also looking outside of the country for capital, resourcing, and importantly, additional customer populations, it likely won’t be able to get the support, investment, or addressable user population needed to sustain itself in the long-term. This holds true particularly in countries that are either underdeveloped, or those with smaller populations. Furthermore, even if a localized startup is able to grow its user base and revenue domestically and has the support to expand, its model likely will not be nearly as relevant or transferable to additional markets. Because of these constraints, startups by definition must think beyond their home countries from the onset and adopt a multi-country market approach if they are to scale effectively.

If, however, a company initially foregoes a deeply localized product approach to cater to the needs of users in several countries at once, it’s likely the company’s product won’t get the initial boost of domestic engagement and adoption needed to get it off the ground. The product could be killed before it even has a chance to scale because it will be diluted to the lowest common denominator between its multiple target countries, and won’t be differentiated enough for consumers in the home market. Bottom line: it’s a formidable path to scale a company internationally, and it’s important for both founders and investors to carefully consider the tradeoffs involved in thinking locally versus globally to give a startup the best possible chance to succeed.

The Benefits Of Localization

In an era of globalization where giants like Amazon, Uber, and Google are expanding internationally and have their sights set on emerging markets, local companies starting up in these emerging markets must use every advantage at their disposal to gain traction and stay competitive. Before they attempt to scale, they must attract enough momentum to survive — to validate their product and prove their model. Consequently, many startups naturally focus on creating localized products that capitalize on their advantages, namely time and space.

Home Court Advantage

Time refers to the head start these companies have to establish themselves in their native markets before global companies enter and begin to capture share. Space refers to the deep knowledge local companies have about their country and its consumers — a knowledge that typically takes global companies several years to amass.

Having a head start as the first-mover allows local companies to establish a foothold and capture share early on. For example, Amazon entered the Southeast Asia e-commerce market in 2017, introducing its Prime Membership program in Singapore. Since entering, the company has faced stiff competition from entrenched regional players like Lazada and Shopee that dominate market share and have significant capital backing (Lazada is backed by Alibaba and Shopee is backed by Tencent). For now, these regional platforms are growing at a much faster pace than Amazon, and as of 2018, Amazon had not expanded its presence beyond Singapore. Even in India, a more consolidated market with one main leader, Flipkart (majority owned by Walmart), Amazon has had to invest an incredible amount of capital and resources just to catch up.

Additionally, following a localized product approach allows local companies to exploit their deep market knowledge to attract consumers by offering a highly customized product. This is a key differentiator for companies like the Vietnamese browser and search engine Cốc Cốc, which has challenged Google’s growth in Vietnam using a localized feature set. The Cốc Cốc platform factors in Vietnamese language tones and accents, focuses on locally relevant search results, and embraces a video-first approach given local consumer affinity for video content.

Local knowledge is also what enabled Southeast Asian ride-hailing startup Grab to successfully hold off Uber’s growth in the region, resulting in Uber selling its regional operations to Grab in 2018. For instance, while Grab always offered a cash payment option for users given the cash-heavy economies in Southeast Asia, it took Uber over two years from the time in entered the region until it updated its app to include cash payments.

Finally, home court advantage is a crucial benefit when it comes to government/regulatory support. Examples of local governments supporting the growth of local companies and challenging the growth of global companies include recent policies proposed by the Indian government dictating how foreign e-commerce companies like Amazon and Walmart operate in the country. These policies mirrors policies set by the Chinese and Vietnamese governments. Local governments in Latin America have also pushed back hard on Uber’s expansion in the region, and despite its rapid growth, the ride-hailing company remains unregulated in much of the region.

Using these advantages to create a localized product and user experience, one that fulfills the second requirement of product-market fit — a product that satisfies the market — is the best option for local companies in many countries as it is the only way the companies are able to gain enough traction and attract users in the face of increased competition.

The Drawbacks Of Localization

While localization is key to achieving traction in country markets, most country markets are not able to support startup scaling on their own. Even if a company succeeds in capturing substantial market share in its native market, many times it hits a growth barrier and can only reach certain scale without expanding abroad. This is because most individual countries are not “good markets” as referenced in the earlier product-market fit definition. As startups look to expand their market scope to support scaling, those with truly localized products are at a real disadvantage.

A Good Market

A “good” market, one with a large number of potential customers, is incredibly difficult to achieve. Consider that for a market to contain a viable user population, it must not only be home to a large population, but also a population of like-minded consumers or businesses with a similar need, and with the ability to pay for a solution addressing that need. If one of these criteria is lacking, others must overcompensate. For instance, for a customer population in a smaller market to remain viable for a startup, each customer must be willing and able to spend more money on the product or service. Conversely, particularly in developing countries whose consumers have less income, many more active customers are needed to support a startup’s growth.

The U.S. market, with more than 300 million relatively homogenous people many of whom have disposable income, is truly exceptional given its mixture of size, uniformity, and wealth. There are other countries with large populations and strong cultural identities, such as China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Russia, and Mexico, but these countries are less economically mature than the U.S. Moreover, even these leading emerging countries can be considered exceptional when compared to the vast majority of world nations that don’t have close to multi-hundred million people populations, let alone multi-hundred million people populations with a tightly bound cultural and consumer identity.

Because most countries are not independently “good markets” for startup growth, at a certain point startups must look outside their home market and define a larger market — a better market — if they are to scale. The drawback of product localization is that when it comes time to scale, startups with localized products are in an incredibly difficult position because localized products are far less likely to effectively transfer and be adopted in other markets.

M-Pesa, an African digital payments product launched in Kenya in 2007, is a prominent example of a product that achieved remarkable success in its initial market but failed in its attempt to scale to South Africa because of market differences. M-Pesa took Kenya and other parts of East Africa by storm following its launch, and quickly revolutionized personal finance in Africa, offering a smartphone payments solution serving Africans without access to formal banking services. In less than three years the product had 10 million users, and in 2010 swiftly expanded to the South African market. This proved a significant misstep, as in the six years that M-Pesa was operational in South Africa until it was shut down in 2016, only an estimated 76,000 users actively used the product.

Among the reasons M-Pesa failed in South Africa was a misunderstanding of how the product could and would be used in the South African market. In East Africa, it served large portions of the population who were lower-income and did not have access to any alternative financial services. On the other hand, the product served much less of a need in South Africa, a country with significantly higher banking penetration and stringent banking regulations. Furthermore, Vodacom, the company behind M-Pesa, partnered with South African bank Nedbank, a bank catering largely to the middle and upper classes.

The Uniformity Myth

Why did Vodacom make the decision to expand to South Africa, and why do many companies miscalculate in determining their “good market?” There’s an incorrect assumption that markets within the same geographical region are similar and that products are transferable between them.

There are certainly similarities between different countries, especially within the same region. For example, most of Latin America is connected through a shared language and cultural norms, and both Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern countries possess cultural similarities. But, these similarities can be misleading, and can perpetuate a myth of uniformity — an artificial sense of connectedness when in reality the similarities exist on a surface level. It can be very dangerous to rely solely on perceived similarities in determining an addressable product market.

In reality, countries within large regional markets like Southeast Asia or Latin America that are thought of as consolidated can in fact be quite distinct and fragmented. What works in one country cannot be assumed to work in other countries.

What’s the Solution?

Scaling a startup is extremely difficult regardless of where the startup is based. To face the hurdles surrounding scaling a company head-on, startup founders and investors must be vigilant and thoughtful in their product research from day-one. This means using market research and customer research as a point of departure, and technology solutions and products as a destination.

The key is planning. Founders must employ a regional if not global mindset from the onset. This does not mean they should launch a business in multiple countries at once, as they might favor a localized approach at the start, which in many cases is a favorable approach as shown above. Rather, they must clearly identify which countries are part of their “good market” for future growth. These countries must be evaluated with local country management teams, and eventually R&D centers on the ground, understanding country similarities and differences. For both founders and investors, it’s critical to determine which countries share similar needs. If a common need exists across countries, a product can be tweaked to reflect small cultural or consumer differences (i.e. country specific layout or content). But, if there is not a common need across countries, a product that is localized to one country cannot and will not scale to another country. Taking the time to plan and define a market upfront is the best way, and the only way, to fully achieve product-market fit and build a company that’s scalable.

Originally published at www.forbes.com on February 28, 2019.

The Real Reason It’s Hard For Startups To Scale Internationally was originally published in Startup Universal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Parson is uniquely qualified to speak about 2018 European tech takeaways and 2019 predictions, based on the pivotal role he played in the success of European tech this year: as Spotify’s first external investor and a member of the Board of Directors at Northzone portfolio company iZettle, Parson had a career defining year thanks to Spotify’s successful US$26 billion IPO and PayPal’s acquisition of iZettle for US$2.2 billion. Here are Parson’s insights on how far European tech has come in 2018, and where it will go in the year ahead.

2018 Takeaways & Success Factors

Reaching critical mass: 2018 is the year that European tech showcased what it’s capable of on a global stage. The regional ecosystem has scaled and its member countries, many of whom were not in a position to support large-scale startup growth just a few years ago, continue to mature.

The increasing number of well-oiled technology startup hubs have undoubtedly contributed to the global success of European startups in 2018. With Amsterdam-based payments startup Adyen and Lisbon-born fashion retail platform Farfetch both achieving successful IPOs, Europe’s startup success is no longer confined to London, Berlin, Paris, and Stockholm. A recent report released by investment firm Atomico recognized that founders in Europe today feel more equipped than ever to build companies in their own countries, with 64% of surveyed founders stating they would build their company where they are now. Furthermore, the connectedness of hubs throughout Europe drives the success of the region as much as the development within each hub, through the migration of talent as well as operations and capital.

Proven success model: many European startups that have scaled over the past several years and experienced success in 2018 have followed a similar blueprint. Take the three companies with exits in 2018 of over US$5 billion — Spotify, Adyen, and Farfetch. These companies differentiate themselves and provide value through business model innovation and product design more than cutting edge product creation. They offer users a superior experience, but one that is within a familiar technology space. They target large industries with large markets, specifically those industries wherein incumbents have not been able to keep pace with the rate of digital disruption, from entertainment to financial services to retail. Moreover, each of the above companies has been around for over 10 years, and took time to thoughtfully scale and mature, ultimately choosing to go public rather than exit through acquisition at an earlier stage. This build-to-scale mentality — of risk tolerance, patience, and long-term vision — is characteristic of a more seasoned European ecosystem.

Access to talent: apart from the maturation of startup hubs throughout the region, and a shift in founder mindset from short-term growth and disruptive product development to long-term growth and business model innovation, a key success factor for European tech in 2018 has been improved access to talent. Technology recruiters today are able to attract a different caliber of candidates compared to just a few years ago, including talent from top engineering and business programs. This results from a shift in the perception of risk inherent to working in a startup environment weighed against the potential reward. Today’s growth-stage startups offer greater stability and greater upside compared to 5 years ago. That said, a portion of the talent that has served hubs like Berlin and Stockholm came from Southern Europe during periods of slow growth. Much of this talent pool has already been absorbed, and a steady stream of post-graduate talent is needed going forward to feed demand in the region’s hubs.

Capital efficiency: European startups received substantially less capital than their counterparts in the U.S. in 2018: US$23 billion invested in European startups v. around 4x that amount invested in the U.S. Additionally, institutional capital is currently lacking in the European tech market. However, The European tech market is far more capital efficient than the U.S., as judged by exit values relative to funds raised. In the U.S. market, with its plethora of capital options, startups often get priced-up and end up overvalued. This proves dangerous in times of capital market volatility, when the financial health of an overvalued company is particularly susceptible to market fluctuations.

These factors all contributed to the success of European tech in 2018. But, what will success look like next year, and will the ecosystem live up to the hype it has just generated?

What To Look Out For In 2019

Experienced advice & capital: given the success of European startups in 2018, there will be a new wave of innovation and investment in 2019 driven by repeat entrepreneurs and angel investors who invested in or worked at Europe’s startup success stories. These individuals will not only invest their knowledge and capital into their native startup hubs, but will also serve as role models and examples for emerging founders and startups. This wave of re-investment must not be undervalued, as it can ignite exponential growth in the years to come. The Stockholm startup hub offers a clear example of this development.

Inroads in healthtech: healthtech is primed for disruption in 2019, with an emphasis on integrating artificial intelligence into healthcare products and platforms. Most European countries have a single payer insurance system, so if and when healthcare tech startups are able to gain traction by convincing this single party of the value they create, they are able to scale very quickly. Additionally, healthtech is starting to play a more prominent role in legislative discourse surrounding ways to improve the public healthcare system. One example of a prominent European healthcare tech startup on the rise is BenevolentAI, a British company applying artificial intelligence to the drug discovery and commercialization process.

Impending market correction: Parson predicts unrest in capital markets in 2019, and has advised Northzone companies to raise money when they can in anticipation of this correction (Northzone companies raised more than US$800 million in 2018). Historically, capital market unrest has led to a slow down in funding activity.

Incentivizing success: many European markets have yet to implement stock option incentive schemes geared towards startups. In Sweden, for example, employees are taxed heavily either through market priced options requiring employees to pay upfront (and which are taxed as capital gains), or employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs). Estonia is the only country that has effectively fixed this issue. A better solution is sorely needed to attract and retain top talent.

With a memorable 2018 wrapping up, the time has come for the European tech ecosystem to demonstrate whether it can sustain its momentum and growth in 2019, and whether the successes of this past year will accelerate a new generation of tech entrepreneurship in the region.

Originally published at www.forbes.com on December 27, 2018.

Top Investor Reveals European Tech Takeaways And Predictions 2018–2019 was originally published in Startup Universal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In my time traveling around the world to learn about global startup ecosystems, I have been struck by the quantity and quality of successful businesses I’ve come across whose origin story started with members of its founding team studying or working abroad, and in some cases, whose business model was directly inspired by experiences that occurred during a founder’s time abroad.

I set out to uncover what’s behind this trend, and how going abroad can impact business creation and development. Here’s what I’ve learned, including examples of high-growth startups I have encountered throughout my travels.

Problem Seekers

Entrepreneurs and founders learn through experience, and those who are successful share an ability to extract insights from their experiences — insights about what is broken, and how to fix it. The pursuit of problems represents the start of an entrepreneur’s journey, and for many aspiring entrepreneurs, seizing the opportunity to study or work abroad is a first and valuable chance to accelerate their journey by introducing fresh and different experiences into their lives.

Venturing abroad has several overarching personal and professional benefits, including cultivating an international network of both peers and mentors, learning to be resourceful and to adapt to new and unfamiliar situations, and questioning previously accepted behaviors and beliefs, all of which contribute to the development of a clearer sense of self.

On a practical level, the rate at which these new and unfamiliar experiences confront those who go abroad each and every day means these students or workers are regularly forced to react and consider whether or how to make sense of them. This hyper-awareness naturally corresponds to an enhanced grasp of surrounding day-to-day problems that would not have been possible to discern otherwise. Living in a place different from home constantly produces points of comparison and judgments: ‘these processes/products/solutions are worse or better or different than what I’m used to.’ Whether intentional or unintentional, those who go abroad morph into problem seekers and opportunity detectors.

I will now highlight three examples of successful startup businesses whose stories and models were inspired by study and work abroad experiences.

Flywire

Flywire, an international payments company based in Boston and Valencia, Spain, is the brainchild of Spanish entrepreneur Iker Marcaide. In 2008, he was accepted to study in Boston at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. When it came time for Marcaide to pay his tuition and living expenses as an international student from Spain, he discovered how expensive and inefficient the process of transferring international payments was. The school had trouble finding and reconciling his payment, not to mention the unfavorable exchange rate he was charged — far worse than the market rate.

Detecting an opportunity, Marcaide decided to dig deeper and study all of the pain points of the international payments process and the ways in which it could be improved, ultimately leading him to found the company now known as Flywire (originally PeerTransfer) in 2009, and serve as its CEO through 2013.

From the start, Marcaide leveraged his international experience and newly developed U.S. network to grow the business by “unlocking interesting arbitrage opportunities and building bridges between the U.S. and Spain.” Flywire set up its customer facing functions in the U.S., and its operations center in Spain. Marcaide benefited greatly from being in the U.S. as a student, as it made raising capital from U.S. investors and selling to U.S. schools significantly easier. At the same time, Flywire took advantage of the relatively cheap and talented technical workforce in Marcaide’s hometown of Valencia to build out its technology.

In the past 9 years, under the watch of Marcaide and current CEO Mike Massaro, Flywire’s payments platform has transformed cross-border payments, offering a fast and easy experience for users, and more affordable foreign exchange rates as it groups and sends payments in bulk. Today, the company is the global leader in the education sector, with a growing presence in the healthcare and business sectors. It is processing over US$5 billion in payments annually for over 1,400 clients, and with a recently announced US$100 million Series D funding round to power geographic expansion and investment in its technology, shows no signs of slowing down.

Uniplaces

Portuguese startup Uniplaces is a rental accommodations marketplace that has served over 250,000 students from over 165 countries, and its story also began with its three co-founders studying abroad. Miguel Santo Amaro, originally from Portugal, met one of his co-founders, Ben Grech, in 2007 as an undergrad studying abroad at the University of Nottingham in the U.K., and his other co-founder, Mariano Kostelec, in 2010 through an introduction by Grech while studying abroad in China as part of an MBA program at Babson College.

The co-founders bonded over their shared experiences studying and living abroad, specifically how difficult it was to find and manage accommodations as foreigners. Santo Amaro recounted the challenges they experienced, including needing to pay months worth of rent upfront due to the lack of a local guarantor, being unable to understand rental contracts written in other languages, putting down deposits without any assurances the deposit would be returned, and spending countless hours viewing listings before finding the right accommodations. These collective pain points motivated Santo Amaro, Grech, and Kostelec to disrupt the mid to long-term rental experience, and in the 2012, Uniplaces launched.

Uniplaces aims to provide a seamless experience for mid to long-term rentals for both landlords and tenants by aggregating and digitizing the rental process, from contracts to rent collection and processing. The company fulfills a crucial need particularly for students, as oftentimes universities don’t provide student accommodations, which can end up costing students more than tuition fees. As Santo Amaro noted, “even in mature markets like the U.S., only 20% of on-campus accommodations are provided by universities, mainly for first year students.” The rest of the over US$150 billion student rentals market is fragmented, resulting in the issues detailed above.

Since its launch, the company has expanded its segments to include expats and young professionals — anyone who needs accommodations for 6–12 months — and currently operates in the U.K., Portugal, Spain, France, Germany, and Italy. It was the first project incubated in Lisbon’s Startup Lisboa program in 2012, was also selected to Chile’s Startup Chile accelerator program, and has subsequently raised approximately US$30 million, including funding from investors in both the U.K. and Portugal. Looking ahead, the Uniplaces team intends to double down on its growth in Europe and to scale its supply acquisition and engagement.

Kambista

Kambista, Peru’s first online money exchange platform, was co-founded by Peruvians Paulo Valdiviezo and Daniel Bonifaz Zegarra based on the former’s experience studying and living abroad in Australia. Valdiviezo pursued a master’s degree at UNSW Australia, and subsequently began working in Sydney. When he moved back to Peru in 2016, Valdiviezo wanted to change his savings from Australian currency to Peruvian currency to make use of them, but wasn’t satisfied with his options.

At the time, Valdiviezo could either exchange through a bank and pay a premium well above the market rate, or he could exchange through a street cambista, or moneychanger, and risk being ripped off or given counterfeit currency. Instead of settling for these options, Valdiviezo recruited a team to build Kambista, and by January 2017, the business was fully operational and licensed by Peru’s leading financial institutions.

Kambista currently has 20,000 registered users across its web platform and mobile app, and has already moved over S/250 million (US$75 million). Its average exchange amount is US$1,500 for individuals and US$8,000 for businesses. It has been able to gain traction by offering significantly lower rates than banks (0.3% versus bank rates of 1.5%) through aggregating funds in a manner similar to Flywire’s payments grouping. At the same time, Kambista provides the financial security and protection often lacking when dealing with street cambistas. Upon registering on Kambista’s platform and providing account information, customers simply select the amount they would like to exchange, are sent a bank code that they provide to Kambista, and minutes later the exchange is complete.

Kambista was selected to participate in Startup Peru’s national accelerator program, and has raised US$80,000 in seed funding so far. By the end of 2019, it aims to manage 100,000 transactions per month, and also has plans to expand to Argentina, Chile, and Mexico — other Latin American markets faced with many of the same money exchange difficulties as Peru.

A Proven Model

Governments and educational institutions have recognized the many benefits of their residents going abroad, and have invested in formalized programs to facilitate the process. One of the most prominent examples is the European Union’s Erasmus+ Program, which offers opportunities for Europeans to study, train, volunteer or gain professional experience abroad across 33 program countries in the region. Erasmus+ currently benefits around 300,000 higher education students per year, and according to the Erasmus Impact Study, almost 1 in 10 former students who did a job placement abroad through the program has started their own company. Another notable program is the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, which “offers research, study and teaching opportunities in over 140 countries to recent [American] graduates and graduate students.” The Erasmus and Fulbright programs are just two of the many formalized study abroad programs that exist today.

Bottom Line

What the above businesses have in common, and what I would suggest each business owes in part to its founder’s time abroad, is the companies provide logical and simple solutions to real problems. As Iker Marcaide reflected: “I created a company for the mainstream. I didn’t invent bank accounts or payments companies; I just put the right pieces together to create value.” Going abroad offers a unique opportunity to develop a more informed approach to critical thinking — a rare chance to draw connections between distinct experiences, derive the most efficient solutions, and create value. But even if aspiring entrepreneurs can’t go abroad, they should strive to apply the ‘abroad mindset’ to their everyday life — to detect opportunity through experience, and master the art of problem seeking. After all, only once one becomes an effective problem seeker, can one become an effective problem solver.

Originally published at www.forbes.com on September 5, 2018.

Want To Launch A Successful Startup? Spend Time Abroad was originally published in Startup Universal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“I compete with Google.” This was the response I received when I started chatting with the only other customer at a restaurant in Hanoi, Vietnam exactly four days into my journey traveling and meeting with startups around the world. I had been contemplating how best to break into the Vietnamese startup ecosystem, and this chance meeting proved to be the answer. It turned out the tall, friendly Russian I was speaking with was Victor Lavrenko, CEO of Cốc Cốc, Vietnam’s leading local browser and search engine! Over the next few days, I got to visit Cốc Cốc’s office and learn more from Lavrenko and CMO Kristina Melentieva about the company and why it’s worth keeping an eye on.

A Made-to-Measure Product

Only once I left the Cốc Cốc office — with its ping pong table, vibrant color scheme, and full-wall ideation whiteboard — and ventured back onto the street did I fully appreciate the obvious: this company is not operating (and flourishing) in any number of internationally recognized technology startup hubs, but in the chaotic and volatile center of Hanoi. Moreover, Cốc Cốc (“Knock Knock” in English) is not just based in Vietnam, but is based on Vietnam. Its success is tied to its ability to understand and reflect the population’s nuances and preferences through technology. So far, the company has made a name for itself by achieving this mission, becoming the top website in Vietnam as of June 2018 according to Alexa Internet and accumulating 24 million monthly active users.

The more I explored the Cốc Cốc browser and search engine and learned from Lavrenko and Melentieva, the more I recognized how intentional and detailed the company has always been in developing and maintaining a truly localized experience. Cốc Cốc’s story began in Moscow, Russia in 2010, where Lavrenko partnered with three Vietnamese programmers studying at Moscow State University. Leading up to this moment, Lavrenko had spent the better part of 5 years building nigma.ru, an AI-driven Russian search engine providing direct answers rather than website results to user queries. This task proved to be difficult, yet helped inform his next venture, this time targeting Vietnam. From the start, Cốc Cốc was meant to be THE Vietnamese browser and search engine — Lavrenko moved to Vietnam shortly after the company was established and the real work began.

When the site officially launched in 2013, it quickly picked up a loyal user base as it provided something both unique and highly-valued: easy and consistent access to Facebook. At the time, Cốc Cốc was the only browser in communist Vietnam offering a seamless and quick connection to the social networking site. These restrictions were gradually loosened over the next couple of years, but Cốc Cốc continued its massive user growth rate because of an unparalleled hyper-localized feature set.

Cốc Cốc takes into account Vietnamese linguistic conventions like tones and accents, and its search engine focuses on locally relevant results. In Vietnamese, words with the same spelling can have completely different meanings depending on the placement of accents and the emphasis of syllables. Cốc Cốc’s products detect and auto-complete these accents, and include a Vietnamese spell check and a Vietnamese/English dictionary. They not only factor in how Vietnamese users speak and interact with each other, but also their web browsing/searching behaviors. For example, because Vietnamese are heavy consumers of online videos and local internet speeds are slow, Cốc Cốc has always prioritized increasing download speeds and available options for its users, such as downloading videos as mp3 files within the browser.

Mixing Brawn and Brain

The above features are a large reason why millions of local internet users have chosen Cốc Cốc over the likes of Firefox or Safari, including almost 2 million new monthly active users added in the past year. But, from a size and user perspective, the company still has a long way to go to match its main and only real competitor, Google. As of April 2018, Google’s Chrome browser captured a 60% share of the desktop browser market in Vietnam, versus Cốc Cốc’s 25% market share. That said, Google has been very hands off when it comes to operating in Vietnam, leaving the door open for Cốc Cốc to continue gaining ground. Google has yet to open a representative office or actively invest in creating sustainable technology in the country, and as Lavrenko said cheekily: “if I’m Alphabet’s CEO, I’m thinking about how to make my next $100 billion, and that’s not Vietnam, that’s flying cars.”

Because Cốc Cốc does not have nearly the resources or scale of Google — Cốc Cốc’s most recent funding round in 2015 pulled in US$14 million, still an incredibly impressive amount for a Vietnamese startup — it has pushed its team to work smarter, and take advantage of its active presence on the ground. As Lavrenko pointed out, he and his team understand that given the incredibly low cost of labor in Vietnam, it’s oftentimes more efficient to hire workers to complete a task manually, rather than invest in artificial intelligence or other automated solutions. While Google paid a reported $1 billion+ for map and navigation app Waze in 2013 to bolster its complex Maps technology, Cốc Cốc has taken a different approach to building its local Maps application. During my tour of the Cốc Cốc office, I met what I thought was the full Cốc Cốc Map team. As it turns out, those in the office are a piece of the larger team that includes drivers who ride around Vietnam snapping pictures of individual locations and recording information. This manual approach to mapping Vietnam is not only affordable, but generates incredibly accurate information, as the team is able to capture certain valuable visual or informational details about these locations that would otherwise go unnoticed. I can personally attest to how confusing it is to navigate the streets and alleyways of Vietnam. Cốc Cốc’s Maps offers a welcome alternative to Google Maps, which is often glitchy and inaccurate in the country.

Another example of Cốc Cốc’s human-centered approach surrounds ads within its browser. Each surfaced ad is accompanied by a phone icon that users can click on to initiate a live conversation with a representative from the company featured in the ad. I watched along as Melentieva provided a demo and initiated contact, and sure enough, within the allotted time of 26 seconds, a sales representative from that company called to conversationally pitch their product/service and answer any questions. I found this process surprisingly efficient and logical. After all, consumers shouldn’t need to exert themselves to track down information and be sold on a product. That’s the seller’s job.

The Road Ahead

Cốc Cốc’s long-term success is contingent upon its ability to effectively monetize its localized experience. The company’s advantage lies in its market knowledge and local relationships, most notably its relationship with a communist Vietnamese government that closely monitors online content (Melentieva noted that Cốc Cốc’s search engine redirects certain sensitive keywords related to violence and racial discrimination to Google’s search engine). A positive indication that it’s up to the challenge is a planned strategic shift to focus on e-commerce, including the development of an in-browser price comparison tool, as well as building out its advertising capabilities. It should also be noted that Lavrenko’s (and much of the Cốc Cốc management team’s) previous experience building an AI-driven search engine will continue to be an invaluable asset as the search industry turns to artificial intelligence to make search a more efficient and conversational experience. Still, Vietnam’s ever-changing internet policies serve as a constant threat to these plans. The growth to date of Cốc Cốc’s products has certainly been impressive, but if it can prove its hyper-localized model to be profitable, it will surely give Google a good reason to step-up its game.

Disclosure: The author’s spouse worked as a paid consultant for Cốc Cốc on a project unrelated to the content in this article.

Originally published at www.forbes.com on June 6, 2018.

In the beginning of 2017, I had recently joined retail e-commerce startup Jet.com as a web product manager after having worked at Deloitte Consulting as a management consultant for the first few years of my career. I was contemplating applying to business school as my next professional step. I was also newly engaged to my now wife, Zoe. At the time, traveling the world was as unlikely to cross my mind as it was to actually happen.

And yet…Fast-forward 9 months, and Zoe and I left our respective jobs (my job at Jet and Zoe’s job at a media agency), packed up our belongings, and embarked on a year-long global travel adventure/honeymoon through the Remote Year program. Launched in 2015, Remote Year caters to professionals who don’t want to have to choose between work and travel. In exchange for a monthly fee, the program provides those accepted — typical group sizes range from 40–70 people — with transportation, accommodations, workspace, local teams, and programming in each of the locations on a given itinerary. Four or twelve-month itinerary options are available (one location per month), and a new group launches on average monthly. To date, over 1,000 people from 40 countries have participated in Remote Year programs. The participants come from a diversity of professional backgrounds, and include full-time employees, freelancers, and entrepreneurs.

Having initially applied on a whim — Zoe applied for both of us without my knowledge — we gradually came to consider the program more seriously, and the experiences it could offer us. Not only the obvious experience of spending our first year of marriage seeing the world, but the experience of being exposed to and learning new things from new people in new places. Surely the education we could acquire through international travel — assuming we went into the journey with clear goals and an understanding of what we wanted to gain from it — would serve us well individually and collectively as people and professionals. A recent Harvard Business Review article echoes this belief, detailing a series of studies outlining the ways international travel can “enhance creativity…and promote career success.” The further along we progressed in the application process, the more we began to speak in ‘what ifs:’ ‘What if we left our life, friends, and family for a year?’ ‘What if we spent our first year of marriage moving from place to place each month?’ ‘What if we created our own version of a global MBA program?’ Whenever we brought up the idea to family and friends, their excitement and encouragement made it harder for us not to in turn be excited and consider the real possibility of joining Remote Year.

Minutes after saying ‘I do’ on our wedding day in August 2017, Zoe and I looked at each other and agreed: we had to take advantage of this opportunity, and would regret not taking a year while we’re young to explore together geographically and professionally. Despite our remaining doubts and concerns, 10 days later, we paid our deposits and joined a Remote Year itinerary called ‘Sisu’ traveling throughout Asia, Africa, Europe, and South America. We had two months before the program started in Hanoi, Vietnam in November 2017 to figure out what our new normal would look like, including a personal transition to married life and a professional transition to working as digital freelancers during our travels to help support ourselves. We discussed ways to get the most out of our trip, and decided that given our interests and professional experiences, we would strive to create our own global entrepreneurship curriculum: to meet with members of the local startup ecosystems in each of the places we visited to learn what it means to start up in different cities and countries around the world. Being on the ground for a month in each place would provide us a rare perspective and opportunity to witness first-hand how a country’s history and culture impacts local entrepreneurship.

That’s exactly what I’ve been up to for the past several months, and plan to continue pursuing for the rest of our travels, and hopefully beyond. I’ve been testing my ability as a newcomer to these geographies and markets to gain access to and build relationships with the people that make up each startup community. In most cases, I’ve been successful in gaining this access and improving my local knowledge through a variety of strategies: leveraging my existing network, tapping into local co-working spaces, attending local events, and in general striking up conversations with locals whenever possible. I approach this endeavor from a learning and development perspective: each interaction or connection is a success insofar as I experience or learn something new, specifically when that experience or knowledge is contingent on being physically present and investigating on the ground.

The purpose of my writing is to document and share this journey, shining a light on my experiences, but also on the stories of the people, companies, and startup ecosystems I encounter. I offer a curated and in-person perspective on promising technology entrepreneurs and startups. Among the themes I hope to explore are the challenges of and opportunities for entrepreneurship in developing countries, and the unique ideas being brought to life in different places around the globe. In many cases, the subjects I cover have been overlooked in conversations about the forefront and future of international entrepreneurship because of barriers such as location and language. My aim is to demonstrate what each has to offer, and what makes each compelling. The resulting posts are part travel diary, and part startup spotlight.

The intended audience for these posts is current and future entrepreneurs, whether they are interested in learning about the subjects from near or far. The writing is also relevant for anyone looking to understand more about some of the world’s developing startup ecosystems, the ways they are influenced by their surrounding cultures, and the progress they are making. It’s been a wild ride so far, and I’m excited to share it with you.

Originally published at www.forbes.com on June 1, 2018.

My Journey Traveling And Meeting With Startups Around The World was originally published in Startup Universal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A Beginner’s Guide to Digital Product Development, and the Role of a Product Manager

This guide covers the digital product development process from the time a product/feature idea is conceived until after that feature is launched. It breaks down each product development phase, including helpful tips, and suggested deliverables. It also covers the many roles of a product manager throughout this process, including: owner, champion, coordinator, communicator, documenter and more.

In addition to drawing on my own experiences as a former product manager at retail e-commerce startup Jet.com, I also draw from learnings and publicly available materials shared by other members of the Product team at Jet.

If you come across any unfamiliar terms, you can consult the glossary in the appendix, or do an ol’ fashioned Google search.

The Process

To start, see below for the general structure guiding the product development and management process. This process is NOT necessarily linear, and will not always follow the same order of phases/events. That said, each product development process should at some point cover all of the below phases.

1. Definition
2. Socialization
3. Discovery/Research
4. User Requirements
5. Design
6. Delivery/Build
7. Test
8. Deployment
9. Measurement
10. Optimization

Before I dive into each phase in more detail, here are a couple of general product management tips upfront:

PM Tip: Get under the hood. As a product manager, it is crucial to proactively familiarize yourself with the systems and roles of your counterparts on the business, design, and technology sides. It builds relationships between you and the other teams, and will come in handy as you are thinking through what your feature is and how it should/will work. Practically, this means sitting with a designer or with a developer, watching, and asking questions to understand their tools and thought processes.

PM Tip: Always be learning. Web Product Management is a relatively new field, and has not yet been standardized. There are many different right ways to do product management, and you’re likely to learn countless strategies depending on the people who work with and the organizations you work for. All this to say…there’s always room to learn. The more you can interact with other PMs (within and outside of your company), and learn about the PM discipline at Meetups and conferences, the better.

And now…The product development cycle phases, and the role of the product manager in each phase:

1. Definition: outline an opportunity assessment — what the feature is (verbally and visually), why it makes sense to build, and who will be involved in the development process. Size the product opportunity at a high level.

The starting point for product development will probably be a vision or product strategy. Once these high-level descriptions are set, dictating what’s important to the future direction of your team/organization, it’s time to think about individual features that ladder up to and help make progress toward achieving this vision and strategy. Each feature should address a SINGLE primary problem with a SINGLE primary solution. To identify what this problem and solution are, it is often helpful to map out all of the current problems/issues and see whether they can be condensed to a common theme. This will allow you to focus your thinking. Also, it’s helpful to pull together people in your company who know about the focus area to ensure you have a solid understanding of the customer problem, and the user it affects.

In most cases, coming out of the Definition phase, all of your questions won’t and shouldn’t be completely defined, as details will change and be tweaked throughout the development process. Further definition and answering will occur in the “Discovery/Research” phase (keep reading ;)). The purpose of this exercise is to organize thoughts and provide stakeholders a high-level idea of the feature. This upfront communication is critical in establishing an efficient and productive dynamic between the product manager and the stakeholders.

As you are imagining a feature solving for a single problem with a solution that is impactful, usable, and feasible, the below questions will help formalize and document your thoughts, and articulate why this feature should be prioritized over other features. The more of these questions that can be answered, the easier it will be to validate/prioritize the feature later on in the process.

QUESTIONS:

• Name (feature)
• Name (business owner, team)
• Stakeholders: Who are the key stakeholders (leadership) for this feature (including sign-off/advocacy and delivery)? Which teams do you anticipate providing input/support in the development and management of the feature?
• Overview of the Feature (1–2 sentence description): Will this be improving upon an existing feature/experience or addressing an entirely unmet need (i.e. what is the foundation/baseline the feature will hopefully build upon)
• Which company objectives/goals does this feature align with?
• What problem will this solve for the user and for the business?
• Who’s the target market, and what’s the size of that market?
• Why should WE invest in this feature, and why NOW? Are there any timing dependencies / moments associated with this feature (i.e. does it need to be built to support a specific experience)?
• Do competitors offer similar features?
• Is this a new feature using existing data or new data? Where is the data coming from?
• What is the target impact of this feature (ROI)? Including all calculations. Consider site performance (traffic), financial performance (sales, margin), SEO performance, other business outcomes (e.g., partnership opportunities, PR)
• What metrics are we trying to move (key KPIs)?

PM Tip: Tread lightly. As you define, you’ll be tempted to reach out to tech teams to get a better understanding of how things work today, and the potential technical requirements and timelines for the feature. It’s alright if there is an informal back-and-forth with your tech counterparts, but it’s always better to provide something for them to react to rather than posing open-ended questions early on. When you do engage, be sure to clarify that your research is purely exploratory at this point. Each team/function has its territory, and while everyone is working together and collaborating, your success as a PM depends on maintaining close and informal relationships, so that no one you speak with feels like their territory is being encroached on.

Deliverable: a “Product Brief” detailing the product, the opportunity/impact, KPIs/metrics to track, stakeholders, any risks/dependencies etc.

2. Socialization: engage the feature stakeholders, and discuss the feature with them.

The reason this step is necessary is both to ensure that a feature is as fleshed out as possible and has input from across teams, and to allow the teams to raise any concerns/issues.

If there is a system through which new/in-progress features are tracked, open a ticket for your feature (e.g., Jira, TFS). This ticket will hold all progress and content created throughout the process, and will ultimately turn into the sprint ticket for build (i.e. the ticket that the developers will refer to). Here is an example of a ticket template used to communicate feature details between the product manager and technology stakeholders:

After creating a ticket or creating a destination for documentation related to your feature, the next step is to share the Product Brief and documentation with your core PM team + manager, as well as the following stakeholders (assuming these stakeholders/teams exist in your company. If not, it is up to you as the PM to be the jack of all trades):

• Product group mailing list: inform them of your work
• UX: begin discussion around design UX resourcing needed
• Analytics: inform and make sure the feature is on their radar in case any further analysis is needed and to ensure effective tracking is in place if/when the feature launches
• Build product manager/your tech counterpart: begin discussion around scope and tech resourcing needed
• User Research: begin discussion around user research needed to give the Research team enough time to source and enroll eligible research candidates
• Native (app) team: inform if the feature will be launched on native as well as desktop/mobile web

PM Tip: KYA (know your audience). When you engage these stakeholders/teams, distinguish between ‘inform’ stakeholders and ‘responsible’ stakeholders. Inform stakeholders should be notified and kept in the loop about the feature, while responsible stakeholders will potentially play a role in the design and build process. An email to the inform stakeholders outlining your work should suffice, and a wiki page is even better (a web-based product called Confluence is a great tool for this). Responsible stakeholders should be engaged in-person — try to consolidate to as few meetings as you can allowing for direct communication.

PM Tip: Pre-work is key. In advance of each meeting, come up with the set of questions you need answers to, and which teams you think should provide those answers. That way, the meetings are not a one-way dialogue with you explaining an overview of the feature, AND you’ll keep the momentum moving following the meeting.

PM Tip: Get the word out. One of the many hats you wear as a PM is that of a salesman. It’s up to you to get other teams/stakeholders excited about your feature, because they have many other features they are and could be building. Oftentimes, features will be built or not built based on the wishes of the senior leadership team, or other senior stakeholders. As the product champion, it is your responsibility to convince others to buy-in.

Coming out of these stakeholder meetings, and any follow-up discussions, you should have a good sense of whether it makes sense to continue pursuing. The stakeholder meetings should result in 1 of 2 outcomes:

• Go: the feature is slotted into the Engineering team’s roadmap (and development sprints are dedicated to the feature). The PM’s role moving forward is to conduct additional research, refine product details, and develop requirements and designs before the product feature is ready to be built
• No-Go: the product feature will not be built at this point based on the initial proposal

If No-Go, understand why and work to improve your idea. If Go, proceed to Phase #3 — Discovery/Research. In most cases, the feature requires more research and definition; however, in rare cases, the feature is fully fleshed out, and can be slotted into the Delivery roadmap assuming requirements and designs are created (see Phases #4–6).

Note: many companies plan their feature prioritization and release schedule on a quarterly basis, or some other regular interval across several teams. This can be separate from, but informed by, your stakeholder conversations. Make sure to have your Product Brief ready and to have these stakeholder conversations in advance of any broader prioritization discussions, so that you can advocate for your feature, and that others in the room will already be aware of the initial scope.

PM Tip: Don’t take it personally. When you spend a significant amount of time and effort thinking through and investing in a feature, the natural inclination (consciously or sub-consciously) is to become attached to that product. This could bring with it biases and could mean you are hesitant to ‘let go’ of the product, even if the support/value is not there. Try to maintain an objective point of view surrounding the value/impact of your feature to your company and users, and the quality of evidence you have to speak to this value/impact. Putting work into a feature that is not prioritized is NOT a failure, as the learnings will contribute to further exploration until the feature is optimized and ready to be built.

3. Discovery/Research: answer and confirm 3 questions (from the perspective of the user and the business): is the feature usable, impactful, and feasible?

1. Is the feature usable? (usability: does it solve a user problem and provide them a solution that they can easily access)
2. Is the feature impactful? (value/impact: does it add value to the business and to users)
3. Is the feature feasible? (feasibility: based on current resources, can this feature be built and delivered on-time and with a level of quality ensuring it is impactful and usable)

Key stakeholders specifically for Discovery work: UX, User Research, Engineering, Analytics, Content/Copy, SEO — depends on the type of project, support functions (e.g., Legal)

To answer the above 3 questions, it’s best to consult directly with the end-user through user research as much as possible (see appendix for user research tools/resources), as well as looking at competitors and industry leaders. Upon evaluating the results of your research, you and the other feature stakeholders will again conclude whether the feature is ready to be slotted into the roadmap, the feature requires more Discovery/Research, or the feature is ultimately not worth further investment.

PM Tip: Inform always. Throughout the Discovery process (and as a good general rule), maintain consistent communication with your stakeholders, updating them of any progress and keeping them informed of any developments. This could take the form of a weekly status update email, or a dedicated slack channel.

PM Tip: Cut through the noise. When it comes to communication, maintain a single source of truth or master feature document. Given how many people are typically involved in the feature development process from beginning to end, it’s critical to consider how you communicate, and what you share. Try to maintain a single channel of communication with the key feature insights(splintered email chains to different stakeholders or numerous slack channels are a recipe for disaster).

Deliverable: detailed “Product Brief” or feature overview document including further developed problem statement and opportunity/solution.

4. User Requirements: document user stories.

These stories describe different cases or scenarios, including the context, an action taken by the user, and a resulting reaction. They depict how your feature should respond to the behavior of the user. Here’s an example of a story, which follows a structure known as BDD (behavior driven development):

The case is the “scenario” statement, the context is the “given” statement, the user action is structured as the “when” statement, and the feature reaction or response is structured as the “then” statement.

The purpose of this exercise is to think through as many cases and variations as possible. Ideally, for any and every action performed by the user, there should be a decided-on corresponding response. This prevents a broken user experience. While your goal should be to cover as many relevant cases as possible, there is NOT an expectation that you will be able to think of everything. This is an iterative process where both you and the Engineering team will tweak and improve the cases.

There are several variations on the structure and syntax of these stories, so you should consult your tech counterparts to align on their preferred format. This will be one of the key documents used by the developers to build your feature, so it is important to write it in a style they are familiar with. As mentioned above, find time to sit with the Engineering team to review and iterate on these cases.

PM Tip: Organize your work based on priority. In crafting your cases/stories, separate popular cases from rare/edge cases (i.e. create a separate section for edge cases). This creates a natural organization of which cases are more common/important to address.

Deliverable: user requirements document outlining user stories for your feature.

5. Design: advise and work with the UX Design team to develop high-fidelity design mock-ups (simulating the actual look and feel as opposed to sketches or wires).

You will likely already have some form of initial wireframes or sketches that were used in user research, and your user requirements will serve as the guide to building designs that reflect an exceptional user experience.

The UX Design team will typically own the development of the designs. As the PM, your role is to provide guidance, feedback, and to make sure your research and input is reflected in the designs. The designers should and will guide the visual layout, and you will ensure this matches the desired experience. You can and should also loop in relevant stakeholders and share the designs as needed.

Here is an example of a high-fidelity screen, including notes and feedback on the right side:

PM Tip: Look forward. As you go through the Design (and Delivery/Build) processes, brainstorm ways the feature can be used for different applications, or additional future uses beyond what it’s being built for today. Rather than thinking of the feature as a distinct enhancement, think of it as version 1.0, both because you can continue to iterate on the feature once it’s launched (see phase #10), and because in all likelihood this feature can have multiple uses. Your UX Design and Tech counterparts will be much more invested and buy into the feature development process more if they understand that it is not a one-off development, but will inform and serve as the foundation for much more development work in the future.

Deliverable: high-fidelity design mock-ups

6. Delivery/Build: propel the feature from an idea and some documents into a finished product.

While this phase is called the Delivery/Build phase, the role of the PM in this phase can be summed up in one word: MEETINGS. It is your job to schedule and manage several meetings intended to set the stage for and guide the actual build, which is led by the Engineering team (i.e. developers).

The first step is to package up 3 main documents: your Product Brief, your user requirements, and your designs. These will be the materials used to build your feature, and may be referred to as the feature “requirements.” Once these materials are organized, it’s time to guide the translation and explanation of these documents through separate meetings with Build/Engineering stakeholders to scope and organize the work, UX stakeholders to review flows, and Analytics stakeholders to align on how best to track the impact of the feature once deployed.

Following these meetings, the Engineering team, equipped with the information it needs, begins to code/build the feature. Depending on the feature, this build could span either or both front-end and back-end development. Assuming the product development process is on-track, the build will take place in the sprints in which it was originally slotted.

Throughout the build process, you maintain contact with the lead designer and lead developers to ensure the product is what it is meant to be. This could take the form of weekly meetings, or less formal communications. The developer will likely have different versions of the feature (some less finished than others) to show you and hear your feedback. You should also inform supporting stakeholders such as the Marketing team about the feature and its timeline, so that any efforts to support the feature launch can be prepared.

Additionally, while the build is underway, you should take the time to begin developing a reporting dashboard, using an analytics platform such as Adobe Omniture or Looker. Getting started on this dashboard early on will save you time down the road, and will ensure that once the feature launches, you are not scrambling to measure the performance properly. If your feature is improving upon or adding to an existing process, make sure to include current performance — the status quo performance. This is incredibly important as it serves as a performance baseline against which the new feature will be measured and evaluated. Feel free to meet with and enlist the help of the Analytics team if relevant — they’re the experts on building analytics dashboards and can confirm that you’re building the dashboard correctly.

PM Tip: Stand up. In many cases, the Engineering team will hold daily stand-up meetings to talk through the day’s progress and surface any issues/concerns. This is a great and frequent forum for the PM and the designer to stay informed and ask questions as they come up.

Deliverable: compilation of requirements: brief, user stories, designs

7. Test: test pre-release and make sure the feature works as it should. The user stories come in handy in this phase, as they guide how you test the feature.

After the build work is ‘complete,’ the feature must be tested before being deployed. Typically, the feature will be in a QA or staging environment for pre-launch testing (i.e. a site that mimics what the end user sees, but is accessible only to those with permission). As stated above, use the user stories as a guide; put yourself in the user’s shoes and walk through the steps of the user story. Does the feature behave like it should? If not, document or ‘log’ any bugs you find and communicate them to the developer. Make sure to test on different devices (desktop, mobile, app, different phones/operating systems). If possible, make this testing a group activity — get the developers, designers, and you together (and anyone else with intimate knowledge of the feature) and divide and conquer. This saves time and you can have fun with it — a win-win!

There are 2 types of testing you can leverage (1 internal and 1 external):

1. UAT (User Acceptance Testing): Cross-platform and device testing done as a group to allow for conversation and to consolidate feedback.
2. Crowdsourced QA: Testing outsourced to additional users through a platform such as Applause to gather additional feedback and log bugs.

PM Tip: Plan backwards. It’s critical to leave enough time for testing before a feature is released. Oftentimes the timeline is tight as the feature approaches its scheduled launch date, and it’s tempting to compromise on testing time to stay on schedule. Do not fall into this trap! Make sure to leave several days for testing, and more importantly for fixing any bugs that come out of testing. Work backwards from your launch date to set aside this window.

PM Tip: Stay organized. There will be many people involved in QA testing, each testing different use cases across different platforms. It’s crucial to maintain a SINGLE record of what has been tested by whom, and any bugs or issues that require follow up work. This minimizes duplication, and makes sure everyone is on the same page. If possible, divide up the testing work upfront so that each person knows his or her scope and there is no overlap.

Deliverable: testing log outlining testing use cases, QA owners, results, identified bugs, and resolution statuses.

8. Deployment/Launch: review and double-check that all steps have been followed, teams notified, and pre-cautions taken. Give the green light to launch.

It’s the homestretch — launch is in sight. As the PM, it’s your job to pilot the launch, making sure each person involved knows their role, and that there’s clear communication about when the feature will launch. This communication is not only with the feature developers and designers, but also supporting functions like Marketing and the Business teams. These functions must not be forgotten, because the site placement and marketing of the feature is just as important as the feature itself. These other teams are instrumental in getting word about the feature to users, and making sure the feature is discoverable so that users can take advantage of it. The first step to users using the feature is users discovering the feature.

In advance of the launch, take the time to craft an email to be sent upon launch, recapping the work that went into the feature development, detailing why the launch of the feature is important for the business — why it’s exciting — and most importantly, thanking all of the people who helped along the way. Be sure to include these people on the email, offering them credit, as well as any senior leadership who have been/are invested on the feature development. It’s great to be able to promote the feature within the business, and to make a splash when it launches. Oftentimes, because you’ve been working heads down on the feature for so long, you lose sight of the fact that many people within the company probably don’t know about it, but would love to hear more. Take the opportunity to spread the word.

On launch day, it’s best to gather the core team together, so that if there are any pressing issues once the feature is launched, they can be dealt with swiftly. Assuming all of these precautions and preparations have been completed, it’s time to flip the switch!

9. Measurement: measure feature performance to validate/update assumptions about feature functionality, and end user reception & adoption.

You will measure several different types of performance, at several different intervals. The business stakeholders will want to see any immediate results, and while it’s tempting to show these results, it’s also important to make sure you have enough of a data sample to feel confident in reporting on the results. The types of results you’ll be measuring include, but are not limited to:

• Site performance (traffic)
• Financial performance (sales, margin)
• SEO performance
• Other business outcomes (e.g., on-boarding new partners, vendor funding)

The target impact across these performance types — the ROI — will have already been defined in the Definition phase (Phase #1), as well as the metrics used to measure these results. In Phase #6, hopefully you started building a reporting dashboard. Now is when that dashboard will come in handy, although this time with live data. Taking the time to schedule an Analytics touch point in that phase means that hopefully anything that needed to be in place in order to properly track the feature is in place. This covers various triggers or events related to the feature (in other words, if the feature leads users to take certain actions, the point and frequency at which these actions occur will be captured).

Measure the performance of the feature within the first week to get an initial sense of performance, and keep a constant eye on performance going forward. You can take screenshots to illustrate key metrics and results, and communicate performance to stakeholders.

Importantly, continue to document findings related to the feature. Regardless of whether the feature is hitting the targets that were originally estimated, try to tease out key learnings about what went right, and what could be improved. These post-launch findings can be added to the Confluence/wiki page that’s already set up. The reason documentation is so important is not only to retrospectively evaluate the feature development process (the good, the bad, and the ugly), but also to inform future feature builds. It’s vital for other PMs and developers to understand what has already been done, and what they can work from. There’s no point in reinventing the wheel each time a feature is being developed!

PM Tip: Tell a story with the data. Showing stakeholders a series of numbers is important, but make sure those numbers are accompanied by an explanation or story — how is the feature performing, and WHY is it performing as such.

PM Tip: Conduct a post-mortem. It’s best practice to gather everyone involved in the feature from inception to launch after the feature is deployed to participate is a “post-mortem” or “retrospective.” This in-person meeting is an open forum for anyone to talk about any suggestions for future improvement (whether process oriented or technology oriented). The more participation, the better. You can hand out sticky notes so people can write down and present their thoughts and suggestions.

Deliverable: feature performance dashboard, displaying key metrics and live data, organized in a digestible format.

10. Optimization: tweak and improve. Do everything you can to make sure the feature is optimized, and is doing what it is meant to do. This involves quick decision-making and execution.

Once the feature is launched, that doesn’t mean it can’t be improved and tweaked. View this final phase as the beginning of another test-and-learn cycle. Given the real data you now have about the performance of the feature, and hopefully hypotheses for why users are interacting with the feature as they are (or aren’t), it’s time to course correct. The more data you have, the easier it will be for you, along with your cross-functional feature collaborators, to make tweaks to improve the feature and its performance.

Some of these tweaks will be obvious — bugs or technical issues. Others will be more nuanced, and will be rooted in user feedback. Whatever the case may be, don’t hesitate to continue iterating on the feature. This is your chance to see how the changes you and the team make to the feature impact its performance in a quick feedback cycle with real users in a real production environment.

It’s extremely hard to completely optimize a feature, but attempting to do so marks the final phase of the product development process. Going forward, your ‘baby’ has grown up, and will require less attention. It’s time to turn your attention to a new project — the next great feature.

Appendix

Glossary:

• Agile: a software development methodology encouraging rapid and iterative development cycles (as opposed to a single large, polished cycle and release known as ‘Waterfall’)
• Back-end: the Back end developers would typically say they focus more on the plumbing, infrastructure and algorithms that drive the flow of data in a system.
• Delivery: the build process through which the feature is developed and deployed
• Discovery: the research process through which a feature is researched and initially validated and selected for development
• Feature flag: A feature flag should be used when a new design or behavior is to be tested with a small amount of traffic before going live. The use of a feature flag allows the old code to still work as it did before, so that if the test is a flop the flag can be disabled and the new code removed before the next release. The opposite is true, if the test is successful the flag can be 100% enabled and the old code removed before the next release
• Front-end: the Front end developers would typically say they focus on the last leg of the user experience — the UI (user interface), the browser, HTML, forms, etc.
• Full stack: both front-end and back-end
• MVP: minimum viable product, or as many prefer to think of it, product market fit. This is the most basic version of a feature that will accomplish the intended results. It’s a starting point, but one that is usable.
• Product backlog/roadmap: a list of product features to be explored and/or built all fitting within certain themes based on an overall product vision and strategy
• Product/feature: in this context — an enhancement or capability whose goal is to make a digital experience better or easier (either for a backend user or end-user/customer)
• Sprint: a time-boxed period of time in which a piece/the entirety of your feature is built (typically 2 weeks)
• User story: an Agile development tool describing feature from an end-user perspective. The user story describes the type of user, what they want and why

Resources/Tools:

Market/Competitive research:

• Sales data: Nielsen
• Market share, key players, and trends: IBISWorld, Euromonitor, Forrester, Gartner
• Statistics: Statista

Company performance:

• Traffic/site performance: Adobe Omniture, Google Analytics, Amplitude, Mixpanel, Heap
• Sales: SQL/Looker
• Vision/Priorities: hear from leadership; speak to business teams

User research:

• Onsite user surveys (specific to your site): Hotjar, Sprig
• Market user surveys: Google Consumer Survey, SurveyMonkey
• User purchase behaviors: Google Consumer Barometer (free)
• Prompted user testing: in-person lab testing, usertesting.com, usabilityhub.com, Qualtrics
• NPS: Promoter.io
• Tree-testing (decision trees): Optimal Workshop

Documentation:

• Confluence (wiki)
• Notion
• Slab
• Sharepoint
• Dropbox/Paper
• Google Docs
• Dropmark (visual layout)

Project Management (with tech teams):

• Jira
• Airtable
• ClickUp
• TFS
• Trello
• Asana
• Wrike

Prototyping:

• InVision
• Figma

QA Testing:

• Applause

Design:

• Figma (design, prototyping)
• Zeplin (sharing and discussing designs)
• Sketch (creating designs)
• Axure (creating designs, interactivity)
• Balsamiq (creating designs — basic)
• Pencil (creating designs- basic)

Learning & Development:

• General Assembly
• Codeacademy
• Udemy

Articles/Books:

• Marty Cagan on Assessing Product Opportunities
• “Inspired” (Marty Cagan)
• “Sprint” (Jake Knapp)
• “Hooked” (Nir Eyal)
• “The Design of Everyday Things” (Don Norman)
• “User Story Mapping” (Jeff Patton)
• “Validating Product Ideas Through Lean User Research” (Tomer Sharon)
• “The Hard Thing About Hard Things” (Ben Horowitz)
• “Creativity, Inc.” (Ed Catmull)
• “Originals” (Adam Grant)

Videos:

• Agile Product Ownership in a Nutshell (Video, 15m51s)