#438 Lean Product Design: Daniel Andor on UX, Startups, and Avoiding Common Pitfalls

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Mehmet: Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO Show with Mehmet. Today, I'm very pleased joining me, Daniel Andor. Daniel, thank you very much for joining me here today. The way I love to do it, I keep it short. I pass it to my guests to tell us a little bit more about you, your [00:01:00] background, your journey, and what you're currently up to.

Mehmet: So the floor is yours.

Daniel: Thanks. My pleasure to be here. So yeah, I'm a product designer. I do product design and basically UX design for like 15 years. Uh, And the last four years, I started a product design studio called Durran where we mostly work with Pre-seed Seed stage companies, tech companies, helping them to reshape their products.

Daniel: Um, and on the side, I also mentor founders in various accelerators.

Mehmet: Great, Daniel. And thank you again for being with me here today. A kind of a traditional question, uh, out of the multiple options that, uh, you know, you had, why, uh, to be in the. In the product, um, uh, design and management.

Daniel: That's a good question.

Daniel: Uh, like when I started, uh, I started with graphic design. Uh, I also was doing, uh, tech stuff like coding in high school. So I thought that that's the path to move forward, you know, like [00:02:00] learning to code. Uh, unfortunately I never had the real passion to learn the whole thing. So I kind of dropped out of that, uh, but I had a somewhat.

Daniel: Bigger passion for graphic design. So I started to work in a small print agency and, uh, there was then a chance to move to a. tech company, but on a side product. And this is how I started this whole journey in UX and UI in the beginning. Um, and I also had a chance to, to work with some great product people there at shaped products, launched new products, tested and stuff like that.

Daniel: So I had the chance to, to actually see how people come up with these ideas, how they build them. Uh, what are the, you know, pros and cons and best practices and, and this whole, uh, process of, uh, of creating new products, shaping products, iterating on them, making them actually work as even like as a business as well, not just like as a product.

Daniel: So, [00:03:00] yeah, it was. Maybe a kind of like almost a mistake, but it worked out. Well, I would say,

Mehmet: Oh, okay. Yeah. It's a, some, some of, uh, these things that happen in life. So work out, work out very perfectly in the future now inside.

Daniel: It makes sense, you know, but when you are there, it's like, it's just, you take it step by step.

Daniel: Like if, if I would go like really back, like even in high school, when we were like writing code in C I was more interested in like how to ask the questions and how the thing should look like more than like how to actually write the code there. Uh, so in hindsight, it makes sense. But when I was there, it was like just things that happened.

Daniel: And there was a couple of opportunities that I was fortunate enough to have them.

Mehmet: Great. So, uh, what I like always to do, Daniel, of course, although like some of the audience that would be familiar, but I assume sometime that people might be new also to this, especially if, uh, people [00:04:00] that are, you know, about to start and, you know, maybe they have some ideas.

Mehmet: So I like to put some definitions at the beginning and it's one of the core, um, you know, concepts I would say, and the core, uh, Now, uh, I would say methodologies for people when starting, you know, their, their own products, which is, you know, lean product design, right? So if you can just, you know, give us on a high level, uh, kind of an explanation.

Mehmet: Of, uh, the concept of lean product design and how it's different from traditional approaches is.

Daniel: Well, I would say it's somewhat similar to how things are working in tech as well, like as with, with the writing code, you can go away, write the code, like when you start a new business, right? You can just.

Daniel: Write the code, shape the product and it most probably take a couple of months to a year and then you launch it and you wait for something to happen. Design can work in a [00:05:00] very similar shape as well. You know, you can, uh, start designing something and it may take maybe a couple of weeks or a month or two to design all the screens.

Daniel: And then you might need somebody to code them and then you might get feedback. What we try to do. Is, uh, to shorten that process. So that means we do a lot of co creation workshops after we have some sessions of, uh, mapping out the context and understanding the business logics and stuff like that. So we try to move really fast from understanding and shaping the challenge and the problem that we want to solve to.

Daniel: Do some stuff together, like sketches and co creation, as I mentioned, and then to go into a prototype and test the product with customer. So we are really, uh, you know, a fast track from challenge to solution testing in a couple of maybe days or weeks, instead of like just going away, doing the designs or doing whatever, and then coming back and hoping for the best.

Daniel: We try to put something as fast as possible in front of the end [00:06:00] customer, not our customer.

Mehmet: Now, uh, explaining this and how this also helps, uh, you know, first to get things faster and get feedbacks faster. Um, what are like some of the, let's call them common mistakes. You see startups, they make when they launch their first product.

Mehmet: And, uh, you know, what are like some of the, maybe stories you can, uh, share about, uh, Something which was challenging and then a pivot, uh, happened or a product, uh, launch that, uh, you know, based on this, uh, rect, recti, uh, rectifying, you know, the pro these, uh mm-hmm . Uh, problems that led to these challenges, you know, led to a, a great launch.

Mehmet: If you want to share something with us.

Daniel: Sure. Yeah. I work with a lot of technical founders, I would say. And like when you start a new product, you definitely need somebody who can actually write the code or [00:07:00] it's good to have somebody you might find other ways, but it's usually good to have somebody who can actually write the code.

Daniel: Uh, some of the challenges are when both of the founders are technical founders and there is quite easy to default on what you So that means you, in a way, stay at your desk writing code, uh, just trying to add features on top and making sure you get to a feature parity with your competitor. And then maybe trying to sell your product cheaper than what's on the market.

Daniel: Like this is quite common. I saw it in a bunch of accelerators and incubators as well. Uh, the problem with this approach is that, uh, the customer feedback comes very, very late, uh, in, in the game. And you try to copy something that's out for, uh, out on the market for years. Um, and you don't necessarily have the backstory of how that thing is working.

Daniel: So this is why most people go for a feature parity. Like you want to have the [00:08:00] same features as the main competitor in your market, thinking that you will just, uh, convince people to switch because I know you are cheaper or you think you are doing something better. Uh, but up to that point, you don't put something in front of your customers and gather feedback on it.

Daniel: It's really hard to see if you're moving in the right direction or not. So in a way, because people don't really like to, uh, feel the. The, the, the, the feeling of failure, you know, when you, somebody tells you that what you're doing, it's not the right one, or it's not working for them, or they can't use it, or they don't know how to use it.

Daniel: People don't like those kind of negative feedbacks. Uh, but in the early days, it's like crucial to get, uh, not necessarily the negative, just the negative feedbacks, but to get, uh, get feedback that helps you to move to the next step. And a lot of times just trying to build feature parity, especially in the beginning, it's.

Daniel: One is very, it's very costly to do it. Like it takes a lot of time, resources and so on. [00:09:00] Uh, and, uh, it's also just. a way to delay the point where you actually get feedback.

Mehmet: Great. Um, so this is good, you know, because I think a lot of, uh, especially first time founders, um, um, you know, they, they would need to do this now.

Mehmet: I know that there's no one size fits all. And I know like, it can be different from, um, one startup to another or one, you know, maybe. specific use case to another, but, uh, from your experience, like what are like some of the signs that, you know, um, the product is not getting the enough, you know, user engagement that we aim for, or for example, what we call it in the specialty tech startup world, the churn, which means like people are coming, but they are also leaving us, you know, at a higher ratio.

Mehmet: So [00:10:00] what are like some of the signs that, you know, it should be kind of a red flags and usually like how, how is the best practice to, to tackle, uh, you know, these, uh, I would say low engagement slash high churn, um, from, of course, design perspective.

Daniel: Sure. So signs that something is not working well, or that people will churn.

Daniel: Uh, you can kind of like one of the things that you can look out is, uh, how, how long they actually stay in the product, especially if you have a product that like takes time to understand or to get the most value out of it. Uh, and you see that there is a lot of people that have very, very short engagement and they don't come back.

Daniel: That's most probably you kind of lost them, right? Because if they come back in a couple of days and they do something else, and then they tend to come back, then there is a recurrence in, in the fact that they use the product and they are returning to the product and find use cases and so on. So if you don't [00:11:00] have that.

Daniel: return of, of customer of the same customer, customer base and so on. Then, then most probably there are some problems and a lot of startups have especially early stage startups. Uh, they have issues around onboarding, how they get the, the customer, the user at that stage from the website to the product and help them to understand the product and what they can do with it.

Daniel: Now, when you are very, very early. Um, a lot of these, uh, handholding, if you want, it happens one to one, like the founder is the one that onboards the user and explains the product and showcases and, and all those details and helps them even set up some of the things. So they understand the value of what's happening and they understand how to use the product, but when, when things start to scale, then obviously the founder or the founding team don't have time to actually do all this.

Daniel: Uh, and this is where. Like an onboarding sequence, a nurturing sequence, or customer support becomes very important because you still need [00:12:00] to have something in place that will guide your customer or will guide the user actually to become a customer, like a paying customer because that's what you want.

Daniel: First you want to get them into the product so they understand the value of it and then you want to transition them probably into a paying customer. So if you don't have this recurrence, then that's probably one. Sign that something is not working right or if you have like a high number of people that are coming to the platform website, whatever, maybe they hit the sign up page.

Daniel: Maybe they hit the first screen, but nothing happens after that. That's another side. So we're looking into analytics definitely helps. Eventually talking with the customers, we've done that with a lot of startups that we work with, uh, in, in case, like, since you have the account email address, you can reach out to them, try to get them on a call, at least get some feedback from them, uh, and to understand what happened, why they didn't do some stuff and as you progress and you have more and more data, you can define what, uh, an [00:13:00] activated customer looks like they've done certain, certain actions.

Daniel: So you can just track back if these people are doing that or not. And then you can do kind of the same thing for people that will churn. You see like what are the patterns of people that churn and you can backtrack that and see who's on the same path if you want. And you can maybe intervene faster before that should happen.

Mehmet: Cool. Now, probably also Daniel, and this is kind of. You know, maybe a continuation of, of that question slash kind of best practices. So, um, we hear a lot, especially in the design space. And especially, you know, when you, when you are imagining, you know, how you should design your UI and UX, um, is. Putting, you know, having kind of, let's call it empathy between you and your users and imagining the journey, what we call it the journey, right?

Mehmet: Now [00:14:00] I can get it sometimes, you know, especially with founders coming from a strong technical background, which I mean, you know, coding background or like programming background and, you know, they understand the things. So if we see Um, you know, the, you know, the issue is, you know, they, they are assuming that, okay, this kind of work, but they don't really show this empathy of the user journey.

Mehmet: So in your opinion, and to avoid this, what is a perfect, I would say user journey would be, especially, you know, when you are onboarding and then later on when you are using, and here again, we're talking more, of course, about like. Probably SaaS kind of products in this, uh, in this space. So kind of some best practices that you have seen working always, Daniel.

Daniel: That's how you come up with the solution? Yes. Okay. [00:15:00] So this is kind of, yeah, I got it now. So, um, it's easy to fall into the trap that You saw a couple of stuff happening in one product and you will copy that and you put it in your product and it will work the same way. Um, and I saw that happen quite a lot of times.

Daniel: But, uh, when you start drafting the journey, uh, and this whole empathy thing, uh, like definitely if you want to have empathy, you kind of have to go and talk with your customer, right? You have to understand that even if the customer fits your own. Profile, if you want, because that's another thing, like a lot of people assume that if it works for me, it will work for everybody because they are kind of like me, like me, uh, and it might be true up to a point, but you still need some input to, if you want to validate this assumption, because you have an assumption, right?

Daniel: You want to, to find proof or You want to either prove either disprove the assumption that you have. So, uh, one of them is go and talk with [00:16:00] your customer and see how they actually think about this stuff. What kind of products they are using, how they are using them, what kind of challenges they have. The other thing is that you want to put things in front of your customer as fast as possible, most of the times.

Daniel: And I'm not saying like just shipping stuff for the sake of shipping, but you can test like user flows are quite easy to test. Uh, in, in like prototyping tools as well without actually coding them. And you can, like, as we are doing that in a couple of days, uh, and then you, once you have it, it's quite easy to iterate on them.

Daniel: So you can maybe launch different versions of the same thing in a couple of days and test them with, with your customers. And then you can see if people understand what's happening or. They don't understand it or if they know how to get from point A to point B, or they don't know how to, uh, and the easiest way to do it is like actually doing calls with them.

Daniel: And you need to kind of around 30 to 45 minute calls, uh, give them a task, give them a prototype and see if they can go through it or not without your help. Even if you're on the call, [00:17:00] um, especially if you're on the call. Founders usually try to save the customer, you know, and when they start asking, like, Oh, what, how I should do this?

Daniel: And they just like intervene and explain what that's like, not a useful way to get the feedback that you need, because in the end, you're there on the call to get the feedback. Uh, so yeah, just this empathy part, it can be very abstract, but if you transition it into. How I gather the feedback that I need, how I make sure that I build something that's usable, uh, and, and people understand it, then you have some, I would say, easier to, uh, tackle challenges than just thinking about an empathy side, uh, way of, of solving the problem.

Daniel: So create, create something to test your assumption, because in the end you have some assumptions, see how you can test those assumptions, see what kind of users or people you need for that. Put something in front of them, see if they can use it or not.

Mehmet: [00:18:00] Right. So it's all about keep having this, uh, you know, this, uh, continuous loop, loop, uh, loop feedback loop.

Mehmet: Sorry. So, so, so, you know, they, they can decide and see what's working, what's not working. And yeah, actually

Daniel: feedback loop basically. And you can get the feedback either like one of the things that people tend to do is like they try to get to some kind of statistical significance and they say, Oh, we don't do this because like why test with five users when we can test with, I don't know.

Daniel: 100. Either way you don't have the statistical significance, right? But they think that if you have more people, then the feedback is better or something like that. Sometimes it's true, but it takes quite a lot of time to actually get to something that you launch versus put something that's like low, uh, low involvement as resources in front of your customers and gather feedback on that, iterate on it.

Daniel: You know, iron out to those challenges [00:19:00] that are there that in the flow, and then once you have something that you think that's good enough, you can ship it instead of like, just wait for something to ship, get feedback, go back, iterate on it again, wait for something to ship and so on. This is basically the whole.

Daniel: Thing and like the whole idea behind the lean lean product design or lean Uh lean startup as well. It's kind of the same thing You want to get feedback from your customers as fast as possible Learn from that feedback gather the insights implement it and move on

Mehmet: right. Um again, because this is a field which is I would say it's the You know too much human oriented I would say because at the end of the day, you know the user experience It's something that me as the one who has the problem that you are offering solution to I have to use.

Mehmet: So it's, it's like, it should be like kind of letting me feel you have tailored [00:20:00] your solution to me. Right. And this is kind of having this empathy, but At the same time, you know, and maybe again, I can't have an episode in the past two years without asking now Is there any space for? Ai and the gen ai tools to help me from you know ux perspective to to you know Make it better or maybe getting me some suggestions.

Mehmet: So how I can leverage, you know, the power of AI When I when I design my product have you seen any successful or you might tell me that you know what it's a catastrophe Don't use it. So I have to hear your feedback on this

Daniel: Yeah, I have a couple of thoughts on it. Like it depends on At least at this stage, and from what I tested, so there might be tools, and obviously there will be better and better tools out there.

Daniel: From what I tested, there are stuff that in my [00:21:00] opinion is not working, so I'm not a big fan of like, using AI tools to gather, I don't know, user persona information and this kind of stuff. You still have to do your own work and your own research, uh, but there are, uh, things and spaces where you can use AI to generate ideas, basically to ideate, to do some desk research and summarize, to, uh, summarize information from calls.

Daniel: And we've, we've done that, like there are a bunch of note takers out there, right? Uh, and, uh, there are also similar tools for research, like UX research as well. So you can just upload calls and they extract important parts of the calls that you can use after that. or analyze user feedback. So there's a bunch of stuff, especially on the, on the, on these two pillars of generating ideas, analyzing, extracting information.

Daniel: But yeah, I'm, I don't think we are at that space where [00:22:00] it can go from one end to the other and create a whole experience yet. It can definitely create. Drafts that you can interact with and improve and so on. And it also can help you gather some insights, um, and, uh, get you like faster from, from all the raw information to, to some insights that you can use.

Daniel: Um, and, and have a partner which you can use to like. ping pong ideas and just come up with different solution or solution ideas. Uh, that that's definitely useful. And I think there will be more and more on the personalization side that like they, you can use probably AI and probably it will be quite soon where the AI can personalize.

Daniel: Uh, flow in the product, especially on the onboarding side. And there is also like support, right? There, there are AI bots that can [00:23:00] help you when you have questions because they already know all the FAQ documentation and so on. So there is space for it. Definitely. Uh, but it depends on what are the reasons behind it and for what are you using it?

Daniel: Because on the other side. Uh, I also saw a lot of AI tools, which are, they honestly quite crap to use yet.

Mehmet: Right. No, no, of course. Yeah. Like we've seen the, you know, the, the, uh, good, the bad and ugly, I would say, of course, indeed. Like we we've, we've seen it all. Like, yeah, to your point, like sometimes it can be good in some.

Mehmet: Aspects. And, but yeah, you, you, it's like, it's not about just using it blindly, I would say. And, uh, again, to your point, this, uh, uh, feedback loop also, which always, you know, and this way I always tell people where the human, um, you know, interaction and reaction, uh, is, is very important. Now we talked a lot about [00:24:00] challenges we talked about, about, you know, the problems and so on.

Mehmet: Now let's, let's. You know, talk about also the bright side of the house. So, um, How do you see or let's say from from people who you work with whether you know They are still in the first phase or maybe they they bring you to fix some of the problems So what are like some some of the you know healthy?

Mehmet: measurements, uh, that we can rely on to, uh, define that. Yeah, we have a success here. We solve this problem correctly. Or like, yeah, we have the right, uh, the pros, uh, product design now. And you know, whatever we have put in place is working. So, so some of the. You know, um, metrics, let's call them, uh, that are signs of success.

Daniel: Right. Uh, like as anything, I would say it's like an iterative process, so it's really hard to get to the top level. And you don't have to [00:25:00] do anything from, from that. It's the same with development. It's the same with, with design and with everything in tech, right? It's evolving. You have to be up there. You have to improve.

Daniel: You have to new launch, maybe new features. You have to improve what you have. Uh, and there is an iterative process all along. Um, but sometimes you have to make like big changes in the system. And sometimes you have to make like small iterations. Like I assume kind of that's, that's where you are planning to go with this, or at least this is how I understand the question.

Daniel: Um, Um, there are, like, there are startups that we work with when customers actually were asking for, for features that were in the product, but they didn't found them. So that's something that you want to analyze, you know, why that thing is happening. And a lot of products that we work with, uh, they are not the MVP very, very early stage, but are more like.

Daniel: We have a couple of customers and now we want to get to the next stage because up to that point, the CTO sometimes take care [00:26:00] of, take care of putting something together, launching the product, uh, maybe using the UI kit or so on to, to, to satisfy the need of, of the design. Let's put it that way. Uh, but.

Daniel: Once things start to scale, new features are added and more and more customers come, especially when those new customers are not coming on boarded by one of the founders or one of the founding founding team members, um, then the design and especially on the UX side, there is more and more pressure because you have to still take care of the customer.

Daniel: Um, so. If you want to see if things are going in the right way, then talking with customers and understanding their point of view is definitely one way to do it. Especially early on, uh, then metrics, depending on what kind of success metrics you set, uh, like I won't go with like, uh, revenue because that's like the ultimate goal of February.

Daniel: So you will figure out if you have revenue or not quite late and most probably want to [00:27:00] have. Um, some shorter, shorter, uh, feedback metrics that you can use before, right? And it can be some kind of retention rate, or if they are using specific features, or how often they come back to the product, how often they use those specific features.

Daniel: In a way, this is very tied to the product itself. What's important in your own product? How do you know that somebody is going on the right path or not? Do they create something? If you like your product, it's about creating documents. So they create documents. How many documents they create? Do they come back to maybe edit or share?

Daniel: Uh, is there any kind of maybe virality in that thing? You know, they share it outside. Some new people are coming in, so it's very tight to, to the product specific. Uh, and, and, uh, what I usually talk with, with the founders, like you can't compare. I don't know, the, the, the usage of Facebook, how many times I log into Facebook a week or I [00:28:00] check out, I checked out, I don't use it that much anymore, but how often you check out the social media platform versus how often you go into Google Docs.

Daniel: They are very different products and obviously people are using it in different ways. So whatever you track, it has to be aligned with the product and the product goal. Um, but, uh, once you have these kind of small metrics in place, then you can definitely check them. Definitely listen to your customer feedback and see what people are saying, how they are using the product.

Daniel: Uh, and, and, uh, kind of what's their level. There is all kind of surveys that you can send out, so there is a lot of stuff, but they are very, I would say they are quite personalized for a specific product, so you have to define what game you play if you want, uh, and then find the metrics for that specific thing.

Daniel: Um, yeah, I didn't really answer your question, I know, but I don't have a very good answer for this.

Mehmet: No, no, that's completely, it's completely, uh, you did actually Daniel. And yeah, by the way, [00:29:00] I, some, some, I would not name them. I stopped, you know, checking some of the social media platforms. So that's, that's completely fine.

Mehmet: Um, now, you know, I know like you do a lot of, uh, you know, mentorship also, and, uh, you've worked like, uh, with startups, and, uh, you know, and accelerators like tech stars and so on. So, um, Uh, what do you think was the most valuable lesson for you? You've learned like working with founders.

Daniel: Uh,

Daniel: it's always interesting to see what's out there. I would say what new products are coming with like new, definitely technology, like as new technology evolves or you have it, there are new ideas or maybe old ideas, but implemented in a new way. So one of the things was like, just seeing what people are capable of doing with new technologies.

Daniel: And that was one of the [00:30:00] reasons why I started to do this. You don't want to be in your own bubble and just think that you are the king of the world. And you're just, you're there. Um, and that's, that's one, but otherwise you can see like. That some of these very old challenges are still present. They, we still have cus founders that are not talking with their customers though a lot of them, they are seeing that they are talking or uh, they send out a survey instead of like actually going on a call.

Daniel: 'cause they think that it's easier, they get more answers and they go qua quant, quantity over quality a lot of times. Sorry. Um, and, uh. Yeah, I would say the top of my mind kind of these It's just, just, you know, being curious to see what people can do with, with, uh, new technologies. It's always interesting and how the whole UX and product mindset go into that.

Daniel: And how relevant, how relevant is it? I don't expect to be a relevant. It's [00:31:00] more like how the, even these things are changing, right? We have, we have AI now, so we can make summarize calls quite fast. We don't have to spend a lot of time on like just extracting insights and highlighting stuff anymore. Uh, or you can, uh, draft solutions faster than before.

Daniel: Um, so even, even for us, it's a change, like even on the product side, it's a change. Even like what's a product market fit and how easy it is to lose it. It's different now because everything is moving at a different speed now. So, so yeah, it's just being there and seeing what people can do and what is capable of the new technologies.

Daniel: It's always great.

Mehmet: Yeah, any favorite frameworks, any favorite maybe resources says Daniel that you always tell people Hey, like you should go read this book or you should go check this. Um, this resource usually

Daniel: Oh books. I have a lot. Uh, there are some books that I recommend I usually recommend to founders running lean from ash moria [00:32:00] He has a very good framework of, uh, how to understand the problem, how to come up with ideas of solutions and then how to test all these stuff without actually building a lot of things, right?

Daniel: Because that's the whole reason behind this lean approach. Also, he has the customer forces, which is in the third book. In my opinion, it's a more visual way of the jobs to be done framework. So, easier to understand those. Triggering events that happen so people can start, can people start to actually look for a solution and how they end up choosing solutions and using them and then switching them and so on.

Daniel: Another book, it's inspired by Marty Kagan, which goes very in deep into product discovery and how people are doing product discovery at larger companies. So, yeah, book wise I see. I would say these two, uh, if we are talking frameworks beside the customer forces, which already mentioned and like jobs to be done in general, um, we [00:33:00] started to test assumption mapping in our processes.

Daniel: And it was in the beginning, it was one of the last thing that we've done. So we went through our process and it was, Oh, let's do this as well. And, uh, The feedback was very good, so we moved it quite in front now. So it's one of the first thing that we do. So definitely assumption mapping. It's a great plus to just put all your assumptions there.

Daniel: See how important, how much evidence you have for them or not. And how important are they in your product and business. And then just try out to figure out, uh. How you can test those assumptions that are important and have no evidence so you know which way you are going and what to look out for. So yeah, assumption mapping framework wise, it's great.

Mehmet: Cool. Um, I know you have your own newsletter, Daniel, also as well, so Uh, you know, what audience can learn from you from this newsletter?

Daniel: Uh, yeah, I started to be more active on [00:34:00] Substack, uh, and try to post some longer content there versus on LinkedIn. I'm most active on LinkedIn because I write short stuff, uh, but like videos and I started to like product hunt, product reviews.

Daniel: Uh, so I just look out on top products of the week and review them. This is how I reviewed a bunch of AI tools as well. Like this is why I said that some of them are crap because the onboarding is still missing. Um, and, uh, I try to go more in, in, in, in this, uh, middle ground of the, of UX and product and how those things interact and how you apply them in, in this.

Daniel: space, uh, for, for actually building products that are successful in like both as a business and useful for your customer.

Mehmet: Cool. Super cool. And, uh, you know, as we are approaching to the end, any final words you want to share with us, Daniel, and where, you know, you just mentioned you are active on LinkedIn and sub stacks.

Mehmet: Of course I got to put the links, but any, any final [00:35:00] thoughts, any final words of wisdom, let's call it this way.

Daniel: Uh, yeah. As a counterintuitive as it might look, sometimes just like stopping a bit, putting everything on paper or mirrorboards, we are using mirrorboards nowadays, so mirrorboards, uh, and, and mapping things out can make a whole difference.

Daniel: And it's one of the common feedback that we get from startups that we work with is kind of the same, you know, because we don't necessarily invent stuff when we work with them in those early stages, we just. collect all the information and put them in frameworks and it becomes quite clear where you should focus, where you have gaps and on what you should do next.

Daniel: Uh, but, uh, it's, what they usually tend to say is that we never took the time to actually do it. So just making time for, you know, putting everything and brain dump as some call it, they said, we've done a large brain dump and kind of, that's it, just brain dumping everything. And like. Making sense of the math, uh, it makes a whole difference.

Daniel: [00:36:00] Sometimes you just miss things that, that were there all along, but because you didn't stop the bit and, and spend some time on this, it just slipped your mind. So yeah, I think that's it, I would say.

Mehmet: Right. And just to, you know, uh, Re highlight, because I think this is important, Daniel. It triggered something in my mind.

Mehmet: And I think where, you know, people like yourselves, like mentors like yourself, experts like yourself, play a big role in the success of these startups. So it's having the third eye perspective, or let's say, you know, someone that's from inside. And let's be frank, it happened to me before and I'm sure it happened to you, Daniel, as well.

Mehmet: So when we are, when we are within, so our perspective is always, you know, we are limited by what we want to see successful. So when you bring someone to look from the outside and, you know, start to, you know, classify the problems that we have or maybe the challenge that we have and you get help. So this is where I think there's [00:37:00] the, the, the.

Mehmet: You know, conception start to change and then you start because to your point, like you start to listen to other people's opinion, which opens your eyes. So, you know, and this is exactly I think where Daniel, you know, your expertise would help a lot of founders and, uh, you know, even teams who are facing problems coming to design and user experience to be solved out.

Mehmet: So. Again, thank you very much for sharing your insight. And, uh, again, like if you want to find Daniel because he mentioned, so I'm repeating that you find him on LinkedIn and you find on sub stack. So again, I put the links. If you're listening on your favorite podcasting platform, you will find them in the show notes.

Mehmet: If you're watching us on YouTube, you'll find them in the description. Daniel, again, thank you very much for being here with me today. This is how usually I end my episodes. This is for the guests. Guys, thank you very much for tuning in. If you are new to the show. Hello and welcome. Please subscribe and share it with your friends and colleagues.

Mehmet: And if you are one of the people who keeps coming again and again, a big, big, big thank you [00:38:00] for you. And as you know, starting 2025, the CTO show with Mehmet was choose to be in the top. 45 business podcasts in dubai and we have entered you know The top charts so far in four countries in the in such a short time.

Mehmet: So thank you for encouragement. Thank you for Uh, you know support as always and stay tuned for a new episode very soon. Thank you. Bye