Mar

Leaving the Echo Chamber

Eli Lopian Category

Unfortunately I can’t tell you about our next product as of yet, but I can promise that you will hear about it very soon.

What I can share with you is that following the great success of the Isolator, we weren’t sure what our next product should be. We wanted to help the developer, and yes the first time we got it right, but what next?!

When I first got my iPhone, I was so into it that I found myself using it all the time. One evening I sat in the living room, playing with the apps when my wife said “you are always on the iPhone. I don’t know how to communicate with you anymore.” Before I could reply, my 7 year old daughter said with a huge smile, “through the iPhone!!” What a young marketer, She quickly identified the need and its easiest solution.

We tried to emulate that kind of straightforward thinking when we decided on our next product. It wasn’t easy but eventually we understood that we must actually know and not just assume what the market actually needs.

We conducted marketing research FOR THE FIRST TIME. Leaving the Echo Chamber, we had to check what our target audience wants and what products and services they need.

The process was not easy. A trusted advisor said “I can do that” and then she and I had to convince our team that this was the right step. Convincing everyone was very hard, even when they went to see the focus groups about developers and what their pains are. When we saw the developers’ needs, each one of us saw them through a filter of our preconceived ideas, seeing only what we wanted to see, and reaching individual conclusions.

Finally, we compiled the conclusions to develop THE idea to solve a problem or a pain. Only after we started writing it, we started to understand the power of what we were doing.

A key learning was that we don’t have the same needs of the developers that we develop for. There is a difference between those who build features for developers and the developers themselves.

But if you are reading this blog you have probably already “seen the light”. You probably want to learn how to connect your developers to their customers. They don’t necessarily think or act like you. We are all developers but with different needs.

Breakthrough breaking a wall…

Our here-on-earth mission is to help developers write unit testing that help developers and respect the occupation of development.