announcement - No product left, and today goodbye!

Feb 08, 2023

The article below is written a couple of days ago. And yesterday, we had the worst and biggest earthquakes in our history. People are suffering, people are dying. We were together for 98 days. I ask for nothing. But today, we need your help, your donations. The link below is the most effective NGO in Turkey and they are on the field from the beginning.

https://ahbap.org/bagisci-ol

Hi friend 👋,

We have reached the end of our journey. For the past ninety-nine days, I've shared ninety-nine products with you. And the promise was for a hundred different products. I'd like to take advantage of this opportunity to talk about the products on which I worked. So, let's get started.

College - 2006/2011

I, too, had to implement a dorm registration system like the rest of the engineering students. But the most intriguing things I worked on were first an NLP application for news summaries, where I was confronted with machine learning's ethical issues, and then the researcher's bookmark graph, where we displayed the link trees in a graph format. Oh, the product wasn't all that exciting, but during my internship in Seattle, I worked on the WPF team and developed an automated test framework for WPF. It was my first opportunity to work with a global team, and I recall how eager I was during my pitch at the end of the internship. I worked on GIS through an internship with a product that is focusing on the map of water pipes in Turkey. I worked a lot during college, and that's not even counting the other products I made as a freelancer.

Microsoft - MCS - 2011/2013

I worked as a consultant for Microsoft and was a part of the MACH program. I got to view a lot of large projects and make a lot of humorous memories. We were consultants, but we never stopped getting our hands dirty. Thanks to my team leader, I learned how to lead a team over these years. Though I was a rebel at heart when working with him, I was profoundly impacted by his approach to leadership. Working with the team of smart-ass guys was a constant challenge for me. I was still unable to work in a team with such highly intelligent and skilled individuals. I worked on more than ten projects, but the two that stayed with me the most were the accident report application and the parliament application for Windows tablets.

Jukela - 2013/2014

This was the time when we took all of the risks. This was the time when I believed I could do anything. Every time I go back through those years, I discover new things to learn and comprehend. Jukela was a jukebox application for bars created by qualified engineers and master students who had never experienced a true nightlife. It was a music player with beat balancing and cross fade capabilities and a mobile application for both iOS and Android devices. Deezer was cooler than Spotify at the time. We followed all of the rules. We conducted research, developed our MVP, earned money before seeking financing, joined an accelerator program, and pitched to numerous investors. This is when I discovered the distinction between local maximum and global maximum. Our local maximum was insufficient for none of us, so we eventually gave up. These were the experiences that taught me how to deal with a blunder and the country we live in.

Depression - 2014

Passion is a virus of sorts. I'm absolutely certain about that. And failing is not a cure for this sickness. Disappointments perform better. But if you give this virus another chance, it will suddenly envelop you. During my depression, my desire to create something beautiful transformed me. Bumblebeat was the product that made me the most pleased. It was a mobile chat program that transformed your texts into song parts and distributed them to the recipient as short audio clips. It was a lot of fun, and it had the potential to go viral. I was handling product management for a team of creators. We didn't have a budget and didn't have the energy to ask for money from anyone. So we gave up, but inventing it and playing with it was immensely helpful for me.

BKM Express - 2014/2015

BKM is a large institution in this country that is sometimes referred to as a bank of banks. It was processing payments, and BKM had all credit card usage data for the country. They also have a mobile wallet app called BKM Express, which allows all banks to experiment with new concepts and gauge client feedback. CEO at these years established a tremendous vision of "cashless Turkey". That concept convinced me, and I learnt a lot about fintech and payment throughout my year there. And, with the help of one of my best friends, we wrote an e-book about payment methods from around the world. My good fortune was having a good budget and the opportunity to work with Hipo, one of the best software agencies in Turkey. They were famed for creating the first Robin Hood design these years, and we extensively restored BKM Express with them. They accepted me as a member of their team, and we collaborated on design sprints. BKM Express is still a popular wallet app in here.

TAG - 2016

TAG was a ride-hailing mobile application designed to alleviate Istanbul's traffic congestion. At least, that's what we were saying. There was no single suspect in the problem; we were all experiencing it. Is it conceivable, however, to fix the problem with ride-sharing? That was an excellent example of a problem-solution mismatch, and we were oblivious to it while we were there. I had the opportunity to work with brilliant designers and product managers there, and I still believe that my design sense was formed there. One significant experience was renting a villa outside of the city center and staying there 2-3 days per week while commuting with our own app to develop empathy with the end users.

Twentify & Bounty - 2017/2018

Twentify conducts market research. With the Bounty mobile application, they enable marketers to conduct research with the support of millions of consumers on the ground. Bounty's user persona was extremely diversified, and they were profiting from the application. This is the first time I've seen community-led product management in action. We established a dedicated community team, which was a fantastic source of information for product development. During these two years, I learned what it means to "fill in the blanks" as a product person. The days I wore my white Stan Smiths were design days, so yes sometimes you as a product person have to design if you don't have any designers. Another interesting experience involved white-labeling the product for a country that uses RTL layout. It was an excellent combination of a challenge. Bounty is still alive, and they are one of the satisfied Storyly customers.

AppSamurai - 2018/2019

AppSamurai is a user acquisition platform where I learned about the complicated world of advertising technology. For the first few months, I went insane trying to understand everything about the domain. The client dashboard was not a big deal, but the internal dashboard where campaigns are managed was the real issue. I believe it is the most intricate and feature-rich tool I have managed in a long time. AppSamurai is still on its way.

Samurai Network - 2019

It was a component of AppSamurai, and we created our own ad network from the ground up. I believe that some domains can only be fully understood by developing them from the ground up. You will recognize all taught helplessness along the way and discover new methods to innovate. Samurai Network was undoubtedly one of them. There was no product vision at the outset, and we were learning as we went. However, its pivot revolutionized my life.

Interceptd - 2019/2021

Interceptd is also a component of AppSamurai, an ad fraud protection suite. This is the first time I've had to learn about ML algorithms in a product and how to display such sophisticated data to customers. The significance of user personas and buyer personas are the most important lessons I've learned. And you don't have to have the finest tool to determine whether or not there is a market. There are less expensive options. After Jukela, it was my first SaaS experience.

Storyly - 2020/~

Storyly is a user engagement platform that provides its customers with SDKs, a content management system (CMS) dashboard, and a studio. It appears that everything I've learned thus far has been incorporated into this one. All the research we did, all the MVP trials, all the systems we used for multiple teams includes some parts of my experiences. So far, it appears to be a success. During my time at Storyly, I learned how to persuade people to pivot, how to get budget from your superiors, how to get your first client, how to set a proper SaaS pricing model, how to keep multiple products aligned, how to create an enterprise-focused SaaS without doing any custom development, and many other things.

So far, I've had the opportunity to work on nearly 20 different products (maybe more than that). I was a software engineer in the first phase and a product person in the second. I got to observe different domains, different business models, different team sizes, and different phases of enterprises. Even now, I can't shake the feeling that I'm completely in the dark. The only thing that left with me is having a taste. I'm well aware that a person's sense of taste is largely formed throughout childhood, but I also know that anyone who manages to maintain an inquisitive mindset and an attitude of openness to new information can improve their taste at any age. And this is what I came up with based on my own tastes:

100p100d - 2022/2023

When I was watching Julie & Julia, this challenge sprang to mind. This is hardly the greatest film ever made, but seeing how commitment altered Julie's life inspired me. I don't have a Julia Child, but I believed the makers of these things may, and that the products they made might include some Julia elements. During these 100 days, I got the opportunity to meet people from all around the world, which was quite heartwarming.

I had around 250 subscribers, and the average open rate for emails was 50-55%. I'm not sure what success looks like in these types of challenges, but it taught me a lot about dedication and the cost of tweeting on the spur of the moment. I had some days where I woke up at 5am to write on that day’s product. I had some days, I changed my mind about the product while writing so deleted the post and wrote a new one. I had some days with full of anxiety since I was not that sure about the product cause I couldn’t actually use it, but I’ve loved the idea.

I don’t know what would be or should be the next step for this challenge. If you have an idea, please let me know in the comments section below. I've told you a lot about myself, and I hope you've enjoyed what you've read so far. Of course, I'll keep writing my learnings in product space, even if it feels like I'm writing on water.

So, this is the end.

I was “desperately in need of some stranger's hand in a desperate land”. You witnessed it firsthand, after all. Thanks.

I don’t know yet, when we will talk again.