Book Review: The Right It - Why So Many Ideas Fail and How to Make Sure Yours Succeed
Author: Alberto Savoia
Serial Founder and Former Director of Engineering at Google
Lecturer at Stanford University
Why you should read this book: You are starting a company or product from scratch.
You are humble enough to know you probably won’t succeed.
But you want to do whatever you can to avoid failure.
The review: Savoia takes on the immense task of creating a coherent framework to evaluate and iterate an idea until you’ve exhausted all possibilities.
His energetic and direct personality are infused in the book which makes it fun to read, especially when he reflects on his multi-million dollar failures.
The section on prototypes does more than just define the prototype, it gives case study examples for each. This makes the prototypes easier to understand and more likely to be remembered when the time comes to choose one for your next experiment.
These techniques work great for software, technology products and even small business ideas.
Chapter after chapter artfully extol the best of modern Product Discovery including moving from the theoretical to the concrete (“Escaping from Thoughtland”), iteration (“Plastic Tactics”), testing sooner than later, testing cheaply…pushing you to learn as you go, instead of dreaming of success in your head.
Savoia’s list of favorite prototyping techniques is available as a quick read PDF for those who want to browse them. And a preliminary version of the book remains free to this day.
One awesome takeaway: Savoia has created a way to measure success for new products. In the past, I’ve struggled to create metrics for the “zero to 1” stage.
Savoia’s XYZ Hypothesis solves that problem.
It focuses on the adoption of a new product in a market defined by the team.
Replace the X,Y, and Z according to his instructions to get a powerful, data-focused hypothesis.
XYZ Hypothesis
At least X% of Y will Z.
Example: At least 10% of people who live in cities with an AQI level greater than 100 will buy a $120 portable pollution sensor.
He explains in the book:
"X% is a specific percentage of your target market. Y is a clear description of your target market. Z is how you expect the market will engage with your idea. As you may recall from your high-school algebra, X, Y, and Z are the letters we use to represent unknown variables. And at this point that's exactly where your idea stands you are dealing with many unknown variables. But you can begin by making educated guesses about those unknown variables, running some simple experiments to test your initial hypothesis, and making adjustments as necessary."
Alberto Savoia
What’s unique about this book: This book is focused on the “zero to 1” phase where new companies are trying out ideas to find product-market fit. The Right It is one of the few books focused on Product Discovery.
My Advice: Read the last chapter, Chapter 9: Final Words, first. It’s a quick summary of the whole book. This way, when you see an individual tactic, you can place it in his larger framework. Then read the book from start to finish since his terminology in each chapter builds on the concepts he explains in the previous chapter.
Audience: Anybody bringing a new product to market whether you are in a startup or in a group within a corporation.
Style: His writing style is casual yet passionate and flows nicely. The only part that slowed me down was keeping track of the new terms and acronyms he invents.
I first encountered Alberto Savoia at Dan Olsen’s meetup.
Jim coaches Product Management organizations in startups, scale ups and Fortune 100s.
He's a Silicon Valley entrepreneur with over two decades of experience including an IPO ($450 million) and a buyout ($168 million). These days, he coaches Product leaders and teams to find product-market fit and accelerate growth across a variety of industries and business models.
Jim graduated from Stanford University with a BS in Computer Science and currently lectures at UC Berkeley in Product Management.
