Karapet Gyumjibashyan 🚀

Consistently updating documentation is crucial as products evolve. Let's foster a culture where documentation is central to our development process, not an add-on. While standardization is key, we shouldn't shy away from innovative methods, such as video tutorials or interactive demos. Ultimately, our aim is a dynamic, user-friendly knowledge base.

Selecting the right documentation tool is as critical as the content itself. While tools like Confluence or MediaWiki are fantastic for dynamic collaborations, we need to ensure the platform we choose aligns with our team's workflows and the technical stack of our product. Additionally, considering the growth trajectory of our startup, scalability and integration capabilities of the platform are paramount. We should also ponder upon factors such as search capabilities, ease of backup, and security features. I'd also recommend a pilot phase with a couple of selected platforms, gauging our team's comfort and the tool's efficacy before making a long-term commitment.

It's critical to emphasize the importance of understanding the user journey when selecting a documentation style. Who is our primary audience? Developers, non-technical users, partners, or a mix? The selected documentation format should cater to their unique needs and ensure they can efficiently extract the information they seek. Furthermore, while adhering to existing documentation standards is advisable, we should remain adaptable. As our product evolves, our documentation strategy may need to pivot. Regular feedback loops with our users and internal teams will ensure our documentation remains a valuable asset and not just a box to check off.

Building a product without user feedback is like walking in a dark tunnel and there is no light at the end of it. If you're diligent in listening to the users and collecting their thinking, then you can have the "light", i.e the direction in which your product should go towards.

If you've been lucky enough to hit the maturity phase, then there are two big directions your product can go from there 1. Keeping the lead in your core market where you are mature already 2. Invest heavily in innovation to extend the product-market fit and start conquering new markets. Sometimes some companies would even go as far as to separate the two activities into two teams - the core team that keeps the business running, and the innovation team that is small, fast, and tasked with finding the right expansion strategy with experiments and rapid development.

One warning though - before entering the growth phase and doing growth-related activities, you should ensure you have two things set in place 1. Your product should have PMF. This is important because you can only grow what exists. Growing a product that does not have a proven product-market fit will result in a lot of wasted energy and money. So start there. 2. You should have data infrastructure in place. All growth activities and experiments are heavily based on data, so if you do not have the appropriate and flexible enough infrastructure to support your data needs, you need to invest in it first, before going into investing in growth teams and activities. Otherwise, you risk having a team but no tooling.