What on earth does that title “TBPP” mean, you ask? I received a nice surprise last week when Jeremy Horn, organizer of the 700-person strong “Product Group” meetup, said that I had been awarded “The Best Product Person of 2010” (after being nominated by Ty Ahmad-Taylor, so TY Ty).
Photo by Jeremy Horn (that's me far left)
As much as I am proud of what Liz and I have accomplished with Aprizi, especially with so little in the way of resources, I’m not sure I deserve such a title, but my fellow NYC entrepreneur Vivek Sharma gave me a smile this morning with this tweet:
Vivek Sharma: @giffconstable Well deserved. Even more than Aprizi it’s the impact you’ve had on how people think about their own products.
In turn I would say that the whole startup community, both in New York and across the blogosphere, my co-founder Liz, and all the people who have given me feedback on Aprizi (which includes Vivek), have made me a better product person in the last 12 months. The learning curve never ends, which is a joy.
This week is going to be a fun one for Aprizi from a product perspective. I believe that if a feature is non-core, you should question its existence and focus on maximizing the simplicity and clarity of your application. To that end, we are going to try hiding a big feature to see whether our users care. What really tickles me is that this is a feature that is very trendy right now, and which popular wisdom thinks is important, but which I have decided is counter to Aprizi’s mission, focus, and effectiveness. I’ll report back soon enough on what happens. 🙂
By the way, I’ve been a regular attendee of the NYC Lean Startup Meetup, and have even become a co-organizer of that group, but it was my first time attending the Product Group. It was a fun, lively, diverse and respectful bunch of people. The topics ranged from the abstract (“what is innovation and how can big companies accomplish it?”), to the company-specific (Dinevore presented their product and got lots of feedback). If you are into product design and local to New York, you might check it out.