September 2022 - May 2023

Product Management mission for JOIN

JOIN is a startup that publishes an application for creating content using the "Web Story" format. It experienced a strong commercial growth in 2022, and raised 4.5 million euros. Bastien joined the team as Product Manager for an 8-month mission.

Client : JOIN
Plateform : Web application (SaaS, B2B)
Our role : Product Management

JOIN's customers include many e-commerce websites, internal communications departments, media, mobile applications, corporations, etc.

Context

The company experienced solid growth in 2022:

• Revenue multiplied by 3
• Fundraising led by XAnge and Seedcamp (Linkedin)
• Team size increased from 12 to 27

Bastien is hired to help the founders refine the product vision, explore strategic features, and prioritize developments. He joins a brilliant, fast-moving team, as their first Product Manager.

Missions

1- Discovery

The team has many ideas for new features. The challenge is to identify those that will have the greatest impact on customer satisfaction, or the potential to become new paying options.

This includes:

• Gather insights from the team and customers
• Document context and inspirations
• Define success criteria
• Create prototypes to explore possible solutions
• Challenge feasibility with developers
• Interview customers with their account managers, record reactions on video, and extract the most instructive moments
• Estimate expected impact

Every week at the Product Committee meeting, Bastien presents the results of his research to the founders, technical leads, and sales managers. Priorities are set collectively.

2- Delivery

Bring selected ideas to success in a timely manner. Drive design with pilot customers. Deliver in small functional increments.

This includes:

• Refine the design with a UX/UI designer
• Define functional scope with developers
• Involve pilot customers in the design
• Monitor developments
• Give frequent demos, both internally and to the pilot customers
• Quickly iterate on feedback
• Measure results
• Document

3- Communication

Ensure that each team take ownership of the innovations. Provide teams with the resources they need to present, market and sell new features.

This includes:

• Present new features internally
• Assist Marketing, Sales and Account Management teams
• Write internal and public Release Notes
• Publish Intercom News and Posts displayed in the application

Setting up Release Notes was one of Bastien's first actions on his arrival. Over the course of the mission, this created a history documenting and valorizing the team's progress.

Results

A 4-month assignment, ultimately extended to 8 months, ending with:

• Great new features delivered and adopted by customers
• Many ideas researched and documented
• A backlog of future features, ready to be prioritized by the team

Example of a new feature driven from idea to customer adoption:

The new Shoppable Stories allows e-commerce customers to showcase their products in their stories. Adding products is easy, thanks to a connection to each merchant's Google Shopping product catalog.

Examples of web stories created by 3 customers with the new "Shoppable Stories" feature.