Tag: tech startup

  • Web3: From hype to real-world application

    Web3: From hype to real-world application

    You are probably familiar with the term “Web3”, which many refer to as the next stage of the internet. Around the tech industry – and in many others – exploring new alternatives is always tempting. With something as exciting as Web3, it is almost like Garfield trying to keep his hands away from freshly baked Lasagna. Simply seems impossible.

    All hype or actually useful?

    It is essential to ask whether this new, shiny tech solves a problem for you or if you are making your business model more complicated. While today’s hype can easily be the future of tech tomorrow, your business might be better off sticking to the traditional ways of the internet. Therefore, we always encourage our peers to look at Web3, blockchain, etc., as a platform to solve customer needs rather than pinning it as a solution before fully getting to the core of the problem. 

    Our recommendation will always be to identify the need based on user insights and then look at the tech and platform solution.

    The idea around Web3 is that it is based on decentralized peer-to-peer networks taking place on the blockchain, where applications are distributed across computers participating in a specific network. A significant amount of the spotlight comes from the sphere of crypto, NFT, and the metaverse, consistently bringing headlines for all the right – and the wrong – reasons. However, by looking at blockchain technology and what this can do, we begin to uncover real-world problems where blockchain can solve actual needs. 

    We have done this with Kollektiv, an endurance sports training platform leveraging deep-tech to help world-class coaches create personalized training plans for athletes like you and me.

    Providing total ownership to personal trainers

    When we first began talking to Kollektiv, they came to us with a revolutionary vision to democratize personal training and make excellent coaching available for everyone. They had identified a need to break free of traditional personal training platforms such as social media and instead allow trainers to form their unique communities. One, where pro athletes’ followers could benefit directly and exclusively. The pro athletes act as coaches and own their community by doing so. In this case, blockchain turned out to be the obvious choice of technology. 

    Leveraging blockchain to challenge real-world problems

    We concluded on tech stack during a discovery workshop in Copenhagen, bringing everyone together for three days of problem identification and solution exploration. 

    Fundamentally, we wanted to dive into how to solve three core needs. 

    • Empower personal trainers and provide 100% ownership of their community
    • Sustain the incentive to keep athletes on their path
    • Ensuring transparency by enabling proof of pro-athletes coaching abilities
    Kollektiv’s Discovery Workshop @Lab08’s office in Copenhagen

    As mentioned, we discovered that the blockchain would provide us with the right “out-of-the-box” technology to meet all our requirements. For Kollektiv, blockchain and Web3 went from hype to a problem-solving platform.

    To empower personal trainers and transition them from pro athletes to coaches, we leverage the power of Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) to help them form their personalized communities. The DAO allows complete ownership and enables them to build and manage their communities in a democratic and censor-free fashion. 

    Athletes will be granted a utility token when getting access to the network. The token allows several functionalities outside of simply being your ticket to play. It obtains voting rights for the DAO network and enables you to purchase community-related offers and services. Additionally, we have implemented a new method of motivating clients by establishing a “train-to-earn” token as an incremental payment system. The setup allows users to earn money back as they progress in the training plan. The more you train, the more you earn back on your initial cash commitment.

    To validate the coaching skills of pro-athletes, the “train-to-earn” token works as a decentralized ledger to support past performance and experiences with the individual trainer. It serves as an anonymized and immutable database containing all athletes’ prior performances in the trainers’ unique community. This makes it possible for new potential athletes to make informed decisions based on past results, completion percentages, etc., which makes picking a personal trainer much less of a shot in the dark.

    Continuing down the path with Web3

    Together with Kollektiv, we will continue to explore, define, and validate the individual functions and capabilities in the Web3 solution and how these will interact. We will be focused on enabling the DAO communities to flourish and leveraging the “Move to earn” token in the best possible way, e.g., adding further utility to the token by making it redeemable for physical goods and services relevant to athletes.

    If you want to learn more about Web3, blockchain, or how we might be able to help you understand more about the topic, please reach out. We’re happy to discuss this further over a coffee to see how we can help address your needs.

    Lachezar Blagoev

    Head of Product Management
    Linkedin

    Lachezar Blagoev is the Head of Product Management at Lab08. His responsibilities include defining product roadmaps, managing backlog, and coordinating development efforts in order to ensure that milestones maximize the value we bring to all of our customers

    He is acting as the link between customers and business by representing the user’s perspective

    Lachezar has made essential decisions regarding all aspects of a product strategy including but not limited to UX, technical approach, business purpose, and compliance with regulations

    Be sure to follow us on social media to receive updates about other similar content!

  • Doing basics great when you create MVPs

    Doing basics great when you create MVPs

    Our last article covered how Lab08 uses product management as a value-adding tool to help ventures build intelligent software solutions. If you missed it, you could have a go at it by clicking the link here.  This next piece will dig a little deeper into how Lab08 develops MVPs – minimum viable products. 

    If you know about Lab08, you know that we are big believers in simplicity. We want to cover the pain points, making us a bit less interested in chasing shiny add-ons that make for a buzzword-worthy marketing presentation. Fundamentally, our methodology supports value-adding requirements that cover needs, something we rarely see in software development today. It is easy to get lost and use your resources running after the unnecessary, why this article will give you a look into how we work with a laser-sharp focus on covering core needs – ultimately limiting time and money spent by our clients.

    Getting the users on the field

    To set the right direction from the get-go, we need to map the strategic goals we must meet to succeed. To do so, we start by identifying the target segments and verticals and understand how they look at success. What does it take for them to succeed and what KPIs are essential to reach? 

    To get this right, we conduct various qualitative and quantitative interviews with internal stakeholders to understand the key jobs to be done. Doing the qualitative interviews helps us map the underlying user needs from different areas in the organization, while the quantitative surveys allow us to start quantifying the relevance.

    Once we have insight into the internal drivers, we look towards the external factors. What does the competitive landscape look like, and what are the market conditions in the category? This gives us a new angle that can help support or bust our early hypotheses.

    As we uncover needs in a business, we get a rather extensive list. It turns out, when people get going, they typically have a lot of stuff they would like to add. One of our critical tools for success in developing MVPs is securing proper prioritization of these needs. Fundamentally, we need to identify the Basic, Performance, and Delighter needs per the KANO model.

    Prioritizing features using the KANO model

    At Lab08, we are all about helping our clients build dynamic but straightforward and value-adding software. We have a passion for driving impact and business value, which allows us to come aboard some fantastic growth journeys in the process. If we are to ensure simplicity and scaleability in our products, the KANO model is an absolute must for us to scope the must-have features and prioritize the needs from the wants.

    The model is a prioritization framework designed to help product teams – such as ourselves – rate initiatives. The different needs that have been explored with the users will be classified into three different categories: Basic, Performance, and Delighters. 

    It is essential to note that needs are dynamic. Needs will always be seen differently from venture to venture, depending on the required outcome of the software and the people we try to serve. Furthermore, needs can also be fluid. Needs that were Delighters years ago are suddenly considered to be Performance – or even Basic – needs today. Think of the ability to take pictures on your phone. What a delighter it was on the Nokia 7650 back in 2001. Now, it is an essential feature for smartphone shoppers.

    • Basic needs are must-haves. They are the ticket-to-play, as they are required to start using the product eventually. The Basics are often not the shiniest attributes, but they need to be done exceptionally well for the overall experience. As such, the Basics are a treasured part of getting the MVP just right, as it must carry the total weight of serving core needs. 

    If you compare it to the auto industry, it is the equivalent of installing a seat belt. People are not interested in buying cars without seat belts, as it covers a fundamental need for safety. The lesson here? You need to cover the absolute basics to even get in contention with the target user.

    • Secondly, Performance needs are essential to serving, as they ensure that the product provides a good user experience. They are not considered business-critical, but they represent a crucial function in making the product easy and intuitive to use daily. If we turn towards the auto industry once again, a performance need would be a sound system. It is typically developed through another company, but it is integral to the user experience.
    • Lastly, we have the Delighters. You love it when Delighters are present, but you would not have noticed if they were not there. With cars, delighters are the things you least expect when you arrive at the dealer, like the ability to parallel park through AI or even the self-driving ability – that would be pretty cool.

    If you do Delighters well, you get the “wow-effect,” where users become promoters and love to work with the product. However, these are not fundamental to the business or the value we try to add. Therefore, we only add Delighters if they are low-hanging fruit that is efficiently implemented. We want to build simple, not getting complex and bloated products.

    It is easy to run and chase the shiny new attributes that create the “wow,” but these must co-exist in a hierarchical structure. The foundation consists of the Basics that make it robust and serve the core requirements, why you need to fill the Basics first. If you run straight to the Delighters, no one will bother to use your product for more than two seconds. Always cover the Basics, then look at Performance. Delighters finish last.

    If you enjoyed learning more about how we work with the KANO model as we build MVPs in software, make sure you keep an eye out for future articles. We will continue to drop papers every month that describe what sets us apart and makes us stand out as a partner and collaborator when you look to develop or refine your software products.

    Lachezar Blagoev

    Head of Product Management
    Linkedin

    Lachezar Blagoev is the Head of Product Management at Lab08. His responsibilities include defining product roadmaps, managing backlog, and coordinating development efforts in order to ensure that milestones maximize the value we bring to all of our customers

    He is acting as the link between customers and business by representing the user’s perspective

    Lachezar has made essential decisions regarding all aspects of a product strategy including but not limited to UX, technical approach, business purpose, and compliance with regulations

    Be sure to follow us on social media to receive updates about other similar content!

  • 8 tips for the Nordic tech scaleup considering software development abroad

    8 tips for the Nordic tech scaleup considering software development abroad

    Most tech founders and executives that I know would have liked to keep the entire product team united under one roof. To be honest, I, more than once, had the same thought during my 10-year spell as CEO in the SaaS company Komfo, where our product team of 50 people was divided across Copenhagen and Sofia.

    • Under one roof, it is easier to communicate and build the desired culture,
    • you have fewer misunderstandings on urgencies and priorities
    • and knowledge is more naturally shared between commercial and product people.

    So why even consider a location abroad for your product team?

    There are multiple reasons, why having a foreign location is a good idea when you are scaling a Nordic tech company.

    1. Access to larger talent pool when hiring

    Software talent is a scarce resource in the Nordics. When you stop receiving qualified applications on your job ads, it is a natural time to think about having another location. Having a tech office in a market with a larger talent pool of software developers is the most common reason for setting up a new location.

    2. Save time and stay focused on product development

    When you finally, get the required funding or budget for hiring the people you need to deliver on your road map, then you basically want them as fast as possible. Having a foreign location often means working with a professional local partner handling hiring. This allows you to keep focused on product development instead of time-consuming hiring processes. 

    3. Preparing for scale culturally and financially

    When thinking long-term most Nordic tech founders will agree that it is not likely to keep product development under one roof. The sooner you get to experience what it means to have a product team across two locations, the faster your culture and work methodologies will adapt. Moreover, it will be very expensive to hire everyone in the Nordic market (assuming you can find the talent). It will most likely not be cheaper in the first phase when setting up the foreign location, but at scale, there will be significant financial upside.

    Things to consider before on-boarding a foreign software team

    4. Assess your own team

    You need to have an overview of your own team’s capabilities when it comes to product development and you need a plan for which competencies to have in which location. Which part of the product development do you want to keep closest to you down the road? You should consider your team’s current strengths in product leadership, UX, UI, design, system architecture, software development (coding), data science, quality assurance and DevOps. 

    5. Have a plan to deliver on UX and design

    Scaling your software team means increasing demand for specified, designed and tested product user stories. In the Nordics, we have a great UX and design tradition and in most cases, it makes sense to design the user experience in the Nordic HQ in collaboration with the customers and relevant partners close to the market. In other words, you need to make sure you have the right people and partners in place to keep up with the increasing software delivery capacity, as the foreign team gets up to speed.

    6. Be comfortable with agile methodologies

    In order to be agile and react fast on market demand, you need to be comfortable with agile development methodologies. This is the case in most tech companies, but especially when having a foreign location it is important to have a constant dialogue across borders about what’s being developed and why.

    7. Allow the entire team to work on the core

    A common way to think about a foreign location is to design the road map so the foreign team will work on isolated and less important parts of your product, allowing your local team to focus on the core. This might be good practice for some enterprises, and for scaleups, it is often a good way to get new colleagues up to speed in a safer way – both at home and abroad. However to get the full potential of your new foreign colleagues the natural ambition should be to get them to contribute to the most valuable part of the road map as fast as possible – including the core of your product. The Product team needs to work as one united team.

    8. Choose an EU location for your team abroad

    You need to be in an on-going dialogue in your team so for practical reasons choose a location as close to your own time zone as possible. Nordic scaleups often choose Eastern Europe, where there is a great tradition for software development and a large talent pool at lower salary rates than in the Nordics. With all the attention on privacy and data protection, good advice is to choose an EU destination to making sure partners and developers are familiar with the GDPR.

    If you consider a foreign location for software development, or if you are struggling with getting your current setup across multiple locations to work, then I hope you will be able to use these 8 tips. 

    You are welcome to connect at https://www.linkedin.com/in/rasmusmn/ if you would like to discuss some of the topics above.