first principles is the only way to create product strategy
every other way will miss the point of origination of desire for your customers
which means if you miss first principles you will be looking at mimetic clusters of users which are not your early adopters
and these mimetic clusters will not make the boat go faster
because if you spend effort on these mimetic clusters, they will incur unreasonable cac and have little to no retention
using first principles will help you discover the right mimetic clusters
these mimetic will make your boat go faster
you can only discover these mimetic clusters using first principles
these mimetic clusters will have high retention
these customers will forgive all your ui/ux mistakes simply because the value they get from your product is worth it for them to
these people are your 1,000 true fans
they are your most potent salesforce
here’s how first principles will let you discover this group of people for your product
let us take 3 examples
Facebook—why do you think people were checking Facebook multiple times a day in the early days?
because people are curious
just like you are curious about your high school crush even today
I am too, let us practice some vulnerability
it feels so good
by saying this, I think I am inadvertently setting in motion, a lot of profile views on Facebook
so just like you are curious about people who are a part of your tribe
your tribe of grade school
your tribe of grad school
your tribe of the company you first worked at
as you can see
this is the heart of the matter
first principles have guided you and me to this insight
curiosity about people who are similar to us is the core product value of Facebook
which puts core product value at the heart of the equation
valueprop == core product value
yes what you see is a double equals
it is an assertion operator used to check if both variables on either side of the equation are exactly the same, bit by bit
imagine you are making product strategy for Facebook
if you are following first principles, you will want to find the #1 most important cohort of people your customers will get most value out of if they joined Facebook
this will be different for each cohort of existing users
for instance, for people 16-21, this is people their age in the same neighbourhood in the same school and so forth
for people 21-27 , this will again be people of their own went to the same grad school and work in a similar industry and so forth
for people 27-40, this will be a similar situation
as you can see, using first principles, we have discovered a pattern
people are curious about people who are similar to them
if your users find more people like them on Facebook, NPS will be high
let us now take the example of Linkedin and let us keep it very short
imagine you are working at Linkedin in the early days
you will ask yourself, what makes people join LinkedIn?
-> so they can network with likeminded professionals
you will then ask yourself, why do people want to network with likeminded professionals
-> so they can know how what the industry is optimizing for
okay, you will then ask yourself, why do they want to know what is the industry is optimizing for?
-> so they can see which skills are growing in demand
okay, you will then ask, why do they want to find out which skills are growing in demand?
the answer will be, so they can gain those skills
well, why do you think they want to gain these skills?
the answer, simply, is so they can do more fulfilling work at the same company or find a new place to work
this directly translates to economic opportunity
this will lead you to conclude, if you can make it so that people who join Linkedin end up with better economic prospects
your product will have a high NPS
hence, all your efforts, ui/ux, engagement, retention must be aligned with this goal
you can figure this out for other products as well
for twitter do you think the core value prop is expressing one’s opinions?
you should do this for your product too
this will move your focus away from the trivial many
this will move your focus towards the vital few
this is only the first part of the first principles framework I will share with you as we go
Usman Gondal 