A wholesome coffee chat with Jordan Parker

I just had a coffee chat with Jordan and got to learn tons from him. Jordan has an experience of 15 years of building apps, teams & businesses. He's worked with predominant brands like VMware and Uber in the past and packs a wholesome amount of experience with him.

Jordan started out with game development, where he built games using C# and Unity. He moved on to building a few startups in his career as well.

I'd like to go over some of the key takeaways from our conversation as well as the questions I asked him.

What was the biggest challenge you faced when building your first app or product, and how did you overcome it?

There are two levels to look at this question. The first level is the technical challenge. The second level is the personal challenge.

At the time he was working with Unity, it was a fairly new technology, so it was tough to find usage related information quickly and hence he had to do a fair share of experimentation with it to learn.

On the personal level, in his early days, he sought after perfectionism. Although, in his own words, what matters is the final result of the project.

"As an engineer, you need to build stuff that people end up using."

You build, take in feedback, incorporate that feedback, and keep doing this over and over.

What was the biggest lesson you learned from a failed app or product?

This was during he built his first startup. He realized the hard way that marketing matters.

"You need to be out there and be trying to connect with your audience."

How do you approach the idea generation and validation process for new apps or products?

Although he hasn't been doing it for the last few years, but he did have a few pointers in place.

"Annoyance is a good kind of started for any app idea."

One way of validating the app idea, if you're really confident with it, is to build a landing page with design screenshots and add a wait list feature on the landing page for people to sign up. If 90% enter but don't join the wait list, then it's not solving a big problem. Otherwise, it's a good sign to move forward with the MVP.

He also mentioned that one can often browse Twitter feeds for ideas, by going through what problems people are facing. You need only 1 or 2 issues, but the issues should be so important that people want to pay you for it.

Also, he believes in being a user himself.

"If you wanna help video editors, become one."

It not required to be an expert in the field, but you need to understand the problems and the pain points of the users.

How do you prioritize features and determine the scope of a project?

Find problems and ask 10 users if they need the solution to it, then prioritize the features based on the feedback.

"You don't need to solve it right, but solve it bad. Go crazy the first time."

Meaning, you badly need to solve it, but you don't need to solve it perfectly. You can always iterate and improve it later.

If people actually use it, the people will be using a badly implemented feature, that also means that's how bad they need it.

How do you manage and communicate with your development team and stakeholders?

In case of business stakeholders, be nice and don't promise anything. Let them know asynchronously in written format so that you can think it over 15 times.

For the development team, he believes in being transparent and honest.

"If you're not honest, you're not going to get the best out of your team."

How do you handle unexpected challenges or changes during the development process?

You need to stay somewhat organized. If the challenge is external, adapt. In case it's internal, within the team, often which is the case, make sure to have a good communication channel. In general, you don't want to be surprised.

What advice would you have for someone who is just starting out in app and product development?

"Grind like crazy, always."

Let's take 5 simple coding concepts:

• Variables
• Arrays
• Boolean Logic
• Loops
• Scope

What makes an engineer is not understanding these concepts individually, but understanding how to use them together. You need to be able to use these concepts together to solve a problem.

It's similar to when you're learning how to drive. You don't learn how to drive by learning how to use the accelerator, the brake, and the steering wheel. You learn how to drive by learning how to use all of them together, when you're driving.

Just write a lot of code, find something that's fun and build 10-15 or even more projects around it. Just keep building.

While we were at our 2nd question, Jordan noticed my Manga collection in the background and I said that I'm currently on Tokyo Ghoul: re. He said he's watched the anime, to which I replied that they've spoiled the entire story by changing it, and I recommended him the manga since it's one of the most epic graphic novels I've ever read!

I look forward to having more coffee chats with Jordan in the future. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.