Multiplayer Products
Multiplayer Products are the next wave of products we’re seeing. They’re best-in-class companies like: Notion, Loom, and Figma; that allow you to create an artifact (document, video, design) and share it. This artifact might help a company generate value, or have intrinsic value. These companies build products that all have a few things in common.
There will be a new wave of products with these characteristics, all in different markets, solving problems with these core ideas.
Consider these either predictions for future product attributes, or rapid-fire ideas for how to build a high-growth startup from a design perspective.
Multiplayer Products will…
Solve a Daily or High-Value Problem
There should be a daily, or at least high-value problem the company is solving. This isn't ground breaking. The products of the future will have a more frequent natural frequency; meaning more people will experience the problem more often.
Kevin Hale makes a great point about how you “want to be solving problems that are frequent”. With more people using computers… more; the problems that used to be weekly will be daily. If it's not a common (daily) problem, then it will be a high-cost problem that needs solving (buying a house).
Capitalize on Network Effects and the Power Law
Network Effects was a buzz-phrase for a while, and was touted as the framework to reach exponential growth like Instagram. But now it's a common practice.
If you had two identical products with the only difference being one had some network effect (more people on the platform means more value for everyone), the one with the NE wins. The network effort generates a compounding loop, making the product better, bringing more people to the product, and so on. This generates a winner. And the Power Law knows all spoils go to the King.
Integrate Everything
Silos won't exist. Slack is integrating with Microsoft Teams for God's sake. Competitors will shake hands. This is partly because of the Power Law, the best will be the best and you'll lose if you don't use, or integrate with the best.
Have a Best-in-Class Primitive
Because of the Power Law, you're likely to focus on a single primitive and collect that primitive to make an artifact. This artifact will then generate an abundance of value. The best companies today have products with a single primitive, then they create collections of that primitive.
One example is Slack. Slack orients its product around messages. This is the single primitive. You can’t do much in Slack without a message: a simple line of text with basic formatting and file attachments. Then they collect these messages into public channels and others, these are the artifacts that generate value.
Slack: messages (then collect into channels, and direct message)
Notion: blocks (then collect into pages)
Github: commits (then collect into repos)
Loom: specialized video
Figma: design documents (with file management and collaboration built in)
Having a single primitive makes it easy for the user to understand. It can be instantly valuable. Then, your product strategy is: improve the primitive at all costs, then slowly improve the collection of the primitive (an artifact) at all costs.
Be the Home for Something
Github is the home for code, Slack is the home for work conversations, Figma is the home for design. Future products will likely be the home for something. This is, again, because of the Power Law and single primitive. That single primitive will be best-in-class at its specific thing. When you need to solve that problem, there is no question where you go, there is no friction. Products that try and solve multiple problems at once will be disrupted.
Use Immutable, Powerful Interfaces
Products—especially web applications—will have a higher interface standard than ever before. Certain features will be expected: shortcuts, text formatting, simple link sharing, these are not optional anymore; customers expect it.
The good news is: there are common patterns now for commenting, sharing, for text formatting. A part of this will also be an immutable timeline of all your changes. This gives you snapshots and history of what you create, it saves automatically (no save button), and it increases your confidence in the application you're using.
If everything is fast, everything is fun, you can’t break or lose anything, and you’re generating value… you’re on your way to being a Multiplayer Product.
Be Consumerized
Consumerization means instant entry, it means no training. It means you can build a business, or use a product to do your work with the same experience as the "consumer" apps (Instagram, Snapchat, Messages) you use.
These products will generate financial value for corporations while being as easy to use as Instagram.
Be a Solution that has Existing Best Practices
Throwing technology at problems doesn’t work. Lots of products try to use tech to do something, anything. We have the tech! Why not? A winning product won’t teach someone dogma, then convince them that that dogma is better than other dogmas. Then following, that your product is the product to use if they want to use this dogma. Garbage. Products won’t win by guessing.
Future products will already have a "real world" solution that's maybe: not easily accessible, that's hard to piece together, that's too expensive, that takes too long. Someone will come in and build a one-click solution to solve a big problem.
Be a Combination of Existing Solutions
A lot of these products will be vertically integrated solutions. At the moment, Figma is doing laps around Sketch. Not long ago, Sketch disrupted Adobe products with a low-cost solution built specifically for screen design. This created new problems: how do you manage your files? How do you share files? How do you hand them off?
The Figma interface is the same as Sketch, but it adds important solutions: file management (by the way: files automatically save), and collaboration (one-click sharing, and multiplayer). It bundled a couple solutions together for the set of problems a Sketch user would have.
Loom saw a misfit bunch of nerds creating screen sharing videos with their little face at the bottom. They built a one-click solution for this common case, allowing you to record your screen, and use your camera at once. They added one-click sharing, commenting, all the good stuff; and in the meantime, created a new market for customers of this type of product.
Include Sharing, Everything is Collaborative
Everything will be shared. Some products will allow multiple users to collaborate and create a single artifact.
This functions as a Network Effect as well, and touches on "table stakes interfaces" (it’s expected now). People are building towns in Figma for crying out loud. All due to sharing and multiplayer collaboration.
Be the Place you Create Content
Being the place a customer creates the actual artifact (document, video, whatever) is a huge advantage. If the product isn’t this place, you’re one integration away from being disrupted.
It takes a lot to switch to a new product, this is why you want to be the best at what you do. But once you're creating content there (and you're getting all of these other benefits like sharing), the product strategy becomes: make that content builder better. It takes out the guesswork.
Examples: Slack (messages), Github (code reviews), Figma (designs), Loom (videos), etc.
The future products, these Multiplayer Products will have:
a daily, or high-value problem
a real-world, less than optimal, solution to capitalize on
network effects (to make use of the Power Law)
integrations with other best-in-class applications
a single primitive document or “artifact”
an immutable, powerful interface with shortcuts
it will be:
the home for something
a consumerized solution (turn-key, no training)
collaborative, multiplayer
the place you create content
We’ll see what happens. Cheers, and Godspeed.