How eFounders and Hexa use Cycle to ship MVPs in 3 months.
"Cycle is a feedback tool that helps you to generate features from ideas. It integrates well with your existing stack and helped us to deliver outstanding products."
Alexandre Briclot- Product @eFounders
TL;DR
Problem: Effectively processing ideas and feedback and collaborating throughout product development. Their existing tools like Notion and Linear lacked depth for refining ideas and closing the loop with customers.
Solution: Use Cycle to consolidate feedback, track feature development, facilitate internal meetings and engage with the first customers.
About eFounders
eFounders: is a startup studio that builds B2B SaaS startups from the ground with founders. Some successful eFounders companies include Front, Spendesk, Aircall, Yousign, and Slite. Cycle is also part of eFounders. eFounders is one of Hexa’ studios.
Alexandre: is Product Manager in the Core team
Industry: B2B SaaS
Headquarters: Paris
Founded: 2011
How eFounders works
The product team structure generally includes a Product Manager, a Product Designer, and two founders. On top of this, founders have access to experts in specific areas such as GTM, HR, Admin, etc. The advantage of the studio model is that founders can really save time by directly working with and learning from experts in specific areas to quickly develop skills on those topics.
Typically, start-ups are incubated in their first 12-18 months at eFounders - until they raise a Seed round.
The product team begins by crafting a comprehensive product vision with the founders, creating detailed wireframes to envision what the product could become, dissecting it into smaller, manageable segments, and eventually deciding on an MVP and pilot programs.
Customer-centricity is crucial; founders engage in discovery calls with potential customers to understand the pain points and be able to work on the right problems in the right order.
The objective is to put on the market an MVP with key high-value features within 3 months.
eFounders’ Cycle story & alternative comparisons
Before adopting Cycle, eFounders faced some challenges in the business aspect of product management. While they excelled in product delivery, they faced difficulties processing ideas and feedback effectively and collaborating throughout the product development process.
They were using Linear for delivery and searched for a tool that could deeply link the 'why' with the delivery.
They liked Notion for many purposes but they missed specificities for the Product job. For instance, collaboration was challenging, and linking the product info to the big picture was also very complicated.
"Notion couldn't help us determine what should be done based on the interviews, left us without relevant quotes, and failed to trace features' origins.
We struggled with refining ideas, addressing discoveries, and keeping clients up to date. It was also tough to link feature to yearly objectives and product strategy."
Alexandre Briclot - Product @eFounders
How eFounders uses Cycle
Cycle helps them to track ideas from inception to completion. Here are the processes they put in place around Cycle:
1. They centralize Slack & Mail feedback along with user research interview notes. They then extract insights and link them to features or problem areas.
2. They prioritize features based on the business needs of customers. “Why this?”
3. Internal meetings are held to determine feature readiness. They comment, brainstorm about solution ideas, and draw wireframes in Cycle.
4. They create Linear issues from Cycle and do the PRDs there.
5. They track initiatives in a Kanban view and close the loop with customers at each release to really engage with them.
Here are their favorite views:
- Feedback inbox: with all notes from stakeholders
- Initiative pipeline: to handle ideas until they’re shipped
- Features by Product area: to prioritize them
"Cycle facilitates team alignment around the product. With the insights linked to each feature, everyone has a deep understanding of why we build each feature.”
Alexandre Briclot - Product @eFounders
Impact
Cycle is now the default tool to launch any new company from the studio and enables them to:
1. Centralize Product knowledge: making it the go-to source for Product matters.
2. Align teams: by linking insights to features, Cycle fosters team alignment around shared product objectives.
3. Improve collaboration and productivity: thanks to Cycle views & docs, meetings preparations are much faster.
4. Close the feedback loop and engage customers: by having customers’ feedback linked to each feature that’s been shipped, the teams never miss a loop. It also helps to sign the first customers.