One was a betting marketplace for shoppers in the UK and US. The other was an Uber for chefs in Brazil. Different products, different years, different people. Put the two exhibits side by side and the same three mistakes show up in both.
| Mistake | Fortiut | iChefs |
|---|---|---|
| A market we couldn’t get close to | Nobody in our circle gambled | Brazil, where we had few connections |
| No one person deciding | Many bosses, no direction | Friends without the discipline to run it daily |
| A model too complex to run | Shoppers, retailers and gambling rules | Chefs and customers, with a big investment up front |
1. Get close to the people first
Both times we designed for people we couldn’t watch, ask or sit beside. Research plans and personas don’t replace that. If you can’t reach the people, you can’t learn from them, and every decision becomes a guess.
2. One person decides
Both teams were groups of well-meaning people with other jobs. Ideas were good; decisions didn’t happen. A product needs one person who says “this, not that”, and owns what follows.
3. Choose a model you can actually run
Both were two-sided businesses that had to win two groups at once, with rules or money standing in the way. That is a hard start for any team, and an impossible one for a team without time.
And then e-Candle worked
Partly because it got all three right by accident. It was built for people we knew, by two people who decided, and it was one-sided and simple: make a candle, send it, blow it out. Read how it started.
The checklist we use now
- Can we sit beside the people this is for, this month?
- Who is the one person who decides?
- Can this team run the model every day, with the time and money it really has?
- Would we want this to win?