SLUSH WEEK 3/5 – Ready to launch
You know what’s funny? I bet everyone has heard the saying: “KISS – Keep it simple, stupid.” It even translates to Finnish: “Yksinkertainen on kaunista.” Or: Simple is beautiful.
The funny thing? I don’t think a lot of people object this statement. But then once we understand it, we often continue: “I got it. Now what’s a more clever way of saying that?”
So. The official side/kickoff events start today. As I am writing this, I am sitting in Kaapelitehdas, the old cable factory of Helsinki. Today, it is hosting the Ready to launch kickoff event of Slush 2019. One of few kickoff events – this one revolves product management at different stages of growth, with talks from experienced product and growth professionals. A good match for a savvy Product Owner as myself, eh?
As I wrote yesterday, I have a roundtable date with Mr. Jonathan Rochelle. To quote his bio: “He is currently the Chief Product Officer of Zapier, before that he was the Director of Product Management at Google and one of the original co-founders of many Google Apps, including Google Sheets, Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Slides, Google Drawings, Google Forms, Google Apps Script, Google Fonts, the new Google Sites, Google Classroom and Google Jamboard.”
“Jonathan led product development for these collaborative apps in G Suite from inception, through their first 8 years (from 2005 until 2013), which are now used actively by almost 1 billion people. He is the co-inventor on several patents related to real-time collaboration in productivity apps which was at the core of the G Suite apps he helped launch.”
I will definitely ask him what are the very obvious things he knows today. Things he definitely didn’t know when he had created the first few things at Google. I think it really comes down to this. (edit: I met Jonathan, and what a friendly man indeed. He did share me some interesting insights but let’s just say I wasn’t too far off to begin with!”)
Why ask about obvious? Because what’s so close to us that we don’t see it anymore? Things we have forgot to focus on because we take it for granted? From a marketing perspective I would also like to focus on what’s the most simple way of telling our message?
You know what’s funny? I bet everyone has heard the saying: “KISS – Keep it simple, stupid.” It even translates to Finnish: “Yksinkertainen on kaunista.” Or: Simple is beautiful.
The funny thing? I don’t think a lot of people object this statement. But then once we understand it, we often continue: “I got it. Now what’s a more clever way of saying that?”
Since we have this inbuilt need to be clever. I think that’s our pitfall sometimes. Too clever becomes complicated, and complicated becomes hard to understand. Hard to understand becomes impossible to sell.
I think we are more than ready for tomorrow. Keeping things simple, focusing on the obvious and staying true to our product. Keep on rocking!
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