how to use telegram to quickly test hypotheses
In this article I will share how my team and I actually developed a product step by step based on the Lean Startup method
let’s get acquainted
Hello, my name is Maxim, I am the Product Owner of the Social direction in the Betting League. In my experience, there have been several products that were launched on a whim, without proper testing of hypotheses, and not all of them were successful. In this regard, I began to use the Lean Startup method, the essence of which is rapid iterations of product development under conditions of uncertainty.
I want to share the story of using this approach to create a product. My experience can be useful for both products and entrepreneurs.
First, a short excursion into the Lean Startup theory.
Lean Startup Concept
The world we live in is incredibly complex and unpredictable. When developing a product, we cannot foresee in advance all the factors that will affect it. Therefore, before launching a full-fledged product, it is extremely important to test the concept against reality. The faster you receive feedback, the faster you will understand in which direction the product needs to be changed.
The Lean Startup concept is based on the Build-Measure-Learn cycle.
Create
It is necessary to assemble a minimum viable product (MVP) as quickly as possible. It should be of such quality as to perform a basic function, but no more.
Measure
Honestly determine whether your product creation efforts are producing the expected results.
Learn
Understand whether you need to continue on the same path or whether you need to change your strategy.
For a deeper understanding, I recommend reading Eric Ries’ book “Business from Scratch. Lean Startup method.
An example of using the method in practice
Imagine you are a young product in the Betting League. And you have a hypothesis: if you arrange competitions between players, then everyone will benefit – both the users themselves and the business.
Where would you start to explore this hypothesis? Would you start preparing technical specifications for developers?
How will product metrics change if we launch competitions?
How many and what segment of users will participate in the competition?
Why will users participate in competitions?
What competition mechanics should be in order to achieve the goal?
And a million others…
To answer these questions, we applied the Lean Startup method.
First iteration did without development in order to launch competitions between players as quickly and cheaply as possible.
We created a telegram channel for competitions, in which users could register for the tournament. The conditions were published there and the player ratings were updated. The player rating was generated using a simple SQL script in PDF format.
Time from idea to launch – 1 week
As a result of the tournament, it was important to collect feedback from our users. The Telegram channel turned out to be a very successful solution, since participants could leave comments directly while going through the user journey.
After the first iteration, we ran another 12 quick iterations of A/B testing, experimenting with competitive mechanics. Along the way, we measured the impact of each mechanic on business metrics to determine the most effective rules for competition.
An example of feedback given by users. Thanks to her, we quickly adapted the mechanics.
As a result, we realized that we can answer most questions very accurately:
How will product metrics change if we launch competitions?
How many and what segment of users will participate in the competition?
Why will users participate in competitions?
What competition mechanics should be in order to achieve the goal?
Thanks to MVP in the telegram channel, it was possible to avoid very expensive mistakes when implementing it in the application. For example, we realized that we need to segment users and create separate divisions in the tournament so that they have equal opponents.
Next cycle – implementation in the application
After a successful experiment with telegram tournaments, we realized it was time to move the competitions into the app to improve the user journey.
In the very first tournament in the application, we saw that the number of competition participants increased sharply.
The scaling of success was evident not only in the number of participants, but also in overall activity in the application. We noticed that users who participated in tournaments became more dedicated and active, which confirmed the effectiveness of our development method.
The results of the launch of tournaments in the application are delightful:
More than 70 thousand players participated in tournaments – this exceeded our expectations
Minimum number of calls from clients to the call center. Since from telegram experience, we understood what problems users might have and took this into account in the interface
The number of bets for participants increased by 20% during the period of participation in the competition
Conclusion
Using Telegram for MVP has proven to be an effective and inspiring experience for our team. We saw how quickly it was possible to test a hypothesis without development and collect feedback, which became the key to a successful product launch.
If you are facing the challenge of launching a new product or improving the current one, try launching an MVP in Telegram. This will greatly speed up your iterative hypothesis testing cycle and provide reliable feedback.
