Taking Assembly for a Test Drive

I have been taking the web product Assembly for a test drive.

Assembly is a platform for crowd-sourced web-based products.  A product for product development online.  Sounds like recursion!

It's got to be a dream for programmers and web geeks!

Product Description and Traction

Assembly is really interesting, just because you get to see what other people are thinking about, in a transparent way.  The product seems to have solid traction based on cosmetic review of the activity.  Here are some key observations about this product.

Coderwall Project bounties and contributors (from Assembly)

• Virtual - The projects are mostly virtual from around the world.  The landing page is filled with many approved and pending projects.  A large product like Coderwall has 100 contributors, although contribution follows a steep power law distribution (probably even more than 80/20 rule - meaning 5% do 95% of the work ... the nice thing is, they are paid accordingly). 
• Platform - The diversity of products is as wide as people's imagination.  Of course, what Assembly provides are the building blocks (see below) of a web product building.
• Revenue Positive - As far as I could tell, Coderwall is its most profitable product; based on 2014 payouts, it seems to have about $24K MRR with 86% profit margin.  Wow!
• Engineer Heavy - I've joined a few products and started one to test the default experience.  I don't have hard figures, but based on new people who sign-up to a project, the site is engineer heavy, followed by designers, followed by non-technical people.

What Are the Building Blocks of a Web Product?

One of the reasons Assembly interested me was that the product makes you think about what the building blocks of a web product development are.

https://assembly.com/discover

In essence, Team Assembly would have had to deconstruct the core elements of software development, and so doing, virtualized and abstracted a traditional coming together of a team.  Abstraction and virtualization are both long-term trends in the software-centric world.

So, apart from that interesting academic question, here's my hypothesis about what Assembly believes are core building blocks.

• Software engineers - Which is great, because a platform like this would be self-selecting to software engineers who are used to working "in the web."  Remote working is a norm in this community.
• Comprehensive communication - Communication is key in product management.  Many good vs. bad outcome can be traced back to good vs. bad communication.  Assembly uses Slack threads for each project you join.  Seems like a good solution.
• Project management - This seems to be a missing piece of the platform.  Teams likely will use a Trello board or Google docs outside of Assembly.  The communication threads are nice, but not sufficient for serious collaboration. 
• Version control - Assembly-built products are linked to Github repositories.  There is no separate bug tracking here, but can be managed through communication threads and pull requests.
• Incentives - I think Assembly's solution is particularly novel and effective.  I think it is very meritocratic, because coins are awarded based on contribution.  The overall model is very Silicon-Valley-esque. The founder holds the lion's share of initial coins, and if everyone maxes out the contribution efforts, the founder's holdings can be diluted down to 50%, and everyone else holding 50% ... unless founder herself is doing a lot of work and awards herself.  Apart from monetary incentive, the product also leverage's people's sense of curiosity and personal value. You can say, "hey, I'm only a designer, but I can add this little piece to the overall effort!"  And so on.  For many, I would say, money is a distant second or third incentive.
• Team Trust - This is another challenge.  Trust is really hard.  Most startup teams at least, fail because of bad founder selection.  Here, the process is just left up to the wind.

What else is important to building a good product?  Really, it is customers, and a good process to deliver what those customers want.  That's it.  If you don't have customers, things like project management, engineers, and everything else doesn't matter.  Only thing is, some startups start out with a hypothesis they can get customers, and start building.  But, in the end, you need customers.  Communication, version control ... don't get lost in the details.  

It's just tools and processes to serve the customer.

Assembly's mix of light-weight and mostly off the shelf tools is an interesting approach to discovering better ways to build for the customer.

You Might Also Like ...

Are you a product manager?  What's your philosophy and approach to building great products?

You might also like the following teardowns and meta talks on products:

• Hierarchy of product love
• Hotel Tonight room price triggers
• Prosper 1 Click - Not Really and 404 

Why do people ask: "how do you create your own luck?"?

Big Name Entrepreneurs

I was listening to Michael Wood, Aaron Levie, and Naval Ravikant tonight. They were on a Wall Street Journal panel talking on the topic: "How I Built It."  Michael is an avuncular, older entrepreneur who was a law firm partner by the time he started building LeapFrog. Aaron, by contrast is a youthful sage. At 28, he's now heading a 850 person organization called Box.  It was apparent that regardless of age, all three were very well-informed about the world, very self-aware, and very excited about what they do.  Another way to say that self-awareness and leadership is age independent.

The real deal - whiz kid

How to Create Your Own Luck

Even in the heart of startup land, people ask (what seems to me) naive questions like "How do you create your own luck?" This is a question you often hear around the startup circles.  I suspect that people have this question for various reasons, and these come to mind:

• Misunderstanding - People misunderstand the modest statement behind success: "I was lucky"
• Efficiency - People often find the easy way out desirable (versus relentless hard work)
• Pattern mind - The patterns behind success stories are difficult to fathom (if there are patterns at all)
• Role model - People genuinely want/need an inspirational story from a role model of overcoming the odds
• Safety net - Luck serves as a mental safety net. If luck is the driver behind success, then failure is not my fault.
• Immaturity - People just don't know better questions yet.

Some Answers

Anyway, the answer to the question generally tends to be an arithmetic one.  In Aaron's case, the story is told how he got Mark Cuban (the Shark) to invest.  The luck was created because the team hustled like nobody's business, talking to hundreds of investors.  This is a common pattern to those who successfully create traction to move forward.

Michael agreed. There are really two things: 1) Persistence and 2) Expertise.  One, you have to persist, because if you exit, then the game is over.  If you stick around and keep playing, you at least have the chance to get lucky (it is tempting to give up - I reflected on Churchill's dictum never give in in this post about persisting).  Two, it helps to know everything about the field you're in, because it helps you capitalize on the opportunity when you see it.  I think this instance of seizing the opportunity is what strikes many as luck, but it really isn't.  It is the narrative of overnight success that took 10 years to make.

And I might add, if you really want to get lucky, it really helps if you are novel.  If you know a lot about disrupting education, but so does everyone else, then it's harder to get lucky.  This is why you don't see many new startups selling insurance policies. Or why it would be hard to succeed in fields like healthcare or education: virtually everyone agrees that these industries are broken.

All of that said, don't forget to celebrate the journey - often it's not about the goal. And, when you feel like you need to get lucky, remember that it might be time to step forward, and not back.

And the journey starts with finding personal happiness and your place in the world.  If you are looking for practical tips, I wrote a post about my book on happiness.  You can find the book on Amazon - How To Be Happy: 12 Powerful Steps.