Black Monolith | VideoShops

My role

Interim product lead

Business problem

The company had spend a considerable amount of money on a tech stack but had no product to show for it, nor was there a plan for product-market fit. The developers were hindered by a lack of design output. There was also an unrecognized) strategic problem. Company leadership had zero visibility into the reality of the product, which meant they did not realize the scope of the problem.

Solution

I uncovered the makings of a workable product in the company's code-base, then used the company's marketing team to gather market research to identify under-served niches. The results of this research were made available and consumable for company leadership, enabling a clearer picture of the company's reality than they had ever seen. I also established design processes that would ensure a strategically-based output in the future.

Outcome

VideoShops was able to obtain a second round of investment, rescuing the company from dire financial straits and enabling them to launch with a much more focused vision. They now have an active, thriving user base.

Related development

My process development work for the design team resulted in what I call Progressive Design Workflows.

See the product

VideoShops.com

VideoShops needed to find product-market fit

While the best approach to profit-market fit is to start by identifying the market, then working backwards from there, in practice that doesn't always happen. VideoShops had built a tech stack around a general idea of a target market, but had no working product, nor value proposition to attract and retain users. The company was searching for a VP of Product to create a business model, but they would also need an actual product to serve that business model.

The company's design was rudderless

While the company lacked a direction for their product, the more pressing from their viewpoint was that the developers were sitting idle due to a lack of work from the UX team, insofar as it existed. There had been a revolving door of journeyman contractors but no UX leadership. The result was that no product specs were being created. The company hired me to identify the source of the block and enable product development.

I built the first real blueprint of the product

There was an added challenge. The company was locked in to their current technology stack. This meant that we had to shoehorn the product, such as it existed, into the market. But, again, there was no fully functional product. In order to get development work restarted, I would need to uncover the potential product in the tangle of pre-existing functionality. After weeks of sorting through chaotic Figma files and talking to various stakeholders, I was able to build a blueprint of a workable product, something which could be spec'd and handed off to developers.

I was the first to truly "see" the product

The blueprint let us start handing off the most universally applicable user stories to developers. Next, I worked with the marketing team to find market gaps. I leveraged the in-house creators to get access to closed video commerce platforms to study their products. I modeled the product with an early version of XenBuild to compare the built portion to the minimum launchable product. I also used it to resolve the problems the company had with terminology - there were many competing names for proprietary aspects which was a big problem for a company trying to brand these features.

We built a new business model to get investment

As a result of my initiatives, not only did development resume, but we created a clear picture of the product that the new VP of Product could use to create a business model. I continued to contribute to the development of this business model, culminating in a new round of investment for VideoShops, enabling the company to continue during tough times. The product has now launched and is on the market.