🔓🔍💻 How drop open sourced product development
Oct 21, 2022 . 3 min read . 97 views
Drop is a community commerce startup where a group of people can collect together to place a bulk order. Because of the bulk order, the users get massive individual discounts.
Following are a few broad principles drop used to engage its users:
Principle 1: Don’t guess, Just ask!
In the early days, drop founder texted all users who were spending more than 5 minutes on the website.
He’d message people and simply say: “How’s it going? I’m one of the founders. Do you have time to talk?”
Principle 2: Document before you start
Drop heavily documented all feature requests before they built anything.
Instead of users saying, ‘It would be cool if you built that,’ they encourage users to say, ‘It would be cool because of the following four reasons,’ with each one fleshed out so they can prioritize accordingly.
Principle 3: Don’t Overcommit, Instead Overcommunicate
To avoid overcommitting and later looking like a fool drop set the expectations fair from the start.
They’ll tell people they’re pushing something new on X day, and if it doesn’t work according to a specific set of metrics by Y day, they’ll roll it back.
Principle 4: Find your heroes
Drop relies on a group of 10-15 loyal active customers. These users are more than just power users, they are ambassadors for the company.
A hero user is like a walking sales board for your company/product.
Principle 5: Make Sacrifices to Build Trust
It’s ok to sometimes hurt a few users with a decision that benefits the vast majority.
Principle 6: Rely on Users to Surface Their Pain Points
You know how to build products and users know what they want. Rely on users to tell you exactly that.
Drop built several of its top features because they would let users speak. Some of their power users would have detailed takes on how something can work and operate.
Principle 7: Motivate Your Users to Build with You
Give credit back to your users for the features they come up with. Make users feel like they are a part of the building process.
Drop team would sometimes send a few users a sneak peeks of the features they are currently building. This made the users feel much closer to the product and to the team.