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Who is Paul, and what happened to him? We are so glad you asked.
In this limited series, we unravel the mystery behind the disappearance of Paul, the trusted playbook that guided product launches for over a decade..
Follow Jarod and the Vivin team as they face their biggest challenge yet: pulling off a high-stakes product launch without the playbook they’ve relied on for years. As the product evolves faster than anyone imagined, the team must navigate the chaos of strategy, planning, creation, communication, and launch in real time.
Can they succeed without Paul by their side, or will the launch fall apart?
Join us as we explore the death of the traditional product launch playbook and what it means for the future of go-to-market strategies.
Narrator (00:03):
Last time on What Happened to Paul, we set the strategy for Vivun's product launch. Russell laid the groundwork for what was to come, and the team rallied behind a vision of success. But now we move from strategy to the all-important planning phase. And Paul, our trusted playbook is used to calling the shots, but will he have what it takes to keep up when the product changes, when Ava's capabilities change? The real work begins here, translating high-level goals into a clear actionable path forward. And with so many moving parts, you can imagine it's not as simple as it seems. In this episode, Dominique Darrow steps in to lead. With the uncertainty of the unknown and the pressure to deliver, the team's about to face their first real challenge. Can the plan survive the chaos ahead?
Dominique Darrow (01:03):
It was a Friday night, and I think, Jarod, I had to call you to make sure that we were aligned on everything going forward. Everything had shifted so dramatically, so it was more of a call to just say, can we do this? Let's jump on a call on Monday, make sure what does the product do so we can have full clarity? Because I think at that point, having just a document sent out wasn't going to do this shift justice, and that's really when we had to jump on a call and that was a hard call. It was one where we really had to put all concerns, good and bad on the table in terms of what we're going to do as a team. And I think at that point it was a really big shift in our mindset. We have to be flexible. Flexible in knowing the product is going to change because the technology is changing so rapidly that we have to change with it and it might be uncomfortable, but that's going to make us better as a team. Then that's what it's going to take to be successful. And I think we came out of that call, honestly, I think with a better plan. We gave product more flexibility, I think, on their side to iterate, which was pretty cool. I think we had just better alignment as a team, which was pretty awesome.
Jarod Greene (02:15):
But it changed in a good way. There was not a world where we were not going to launch accelerators.
Narrator (02:21):
But before Paul disappeared and they had to be flexible, this is what it looked like. Ava had certain capabilities, she was doing what she needed to do, but then these accelerators, the things that powered her brain and made her smart, developed and a whole new product was born, as you can imagine. It set everything into motion. Planning was happening. Creation was about ready to happen, but Ava's new capabilities completely overturned what the original plan was. But before we get to that, here's what it looked like to turn all of those ideas into a solid plan that the team could actually go ahead and work with.
Jarod Greene (03:04):
Once Russell set the strategy, how'd you start turning all of those big ideas into a solid plan we could actually go ahead and work with?
Dominique Darrow (03:13):
Once Russell outlined what the strategy was going to be, the first thing I focused on was turning that vision into a structured phase-based plan. We started to kick things off by selecting a leader from each one of our cross-functional teams, and really from there we aligned on scope, got executive sign off, and really established our core principles. It wasn't just about ideas. It was really about building the infrastructure to bring these ideas to life. We quickly moved into mapping out our tools, success metrics, and really defining the major milestones across three distinct phases, those being qualitative testing, which really focused on customer feedback, quantitative testing, which was what are the customer adoption metrics really looking like, and eventually really what would it take to have a successful click-to-buy process really at the end of the day.
Jarod Greene (04:02):
And with everything moving so quickly, what was the hardest part of planning? How do you keep track when everything feels like it's constantly changing?
Dominique Darrow (04:12):
Honestly, the hardest part was balancing speed with clarity. Everything was evolving so fast with so many moving pieces. We had to constantly reassess to stay on track. We built a very detailed playbook to start with, breaking out each phase into task-level checkpoints, and we prioritized asynchronous updates, live feedback loops, and tried to have clear ownership. Each gate from strategy to execution, had clear defined deliverables, which gave us a compass. Even when things shifted, as you can imagine, they did a lot. Flexibility for us within a strong framework was really what our milestone really was set on.
Narrator (04:40):
We keep saying this over and over, but it's important. Rigid product launch playbooks aren't gonna cut it. Yes, you have to have a strong framework, but hat framework has to allow for an abundance of flexibility.
Without it, this product launch will not be possible. Which means Paul, the traditional product launch playbook is about to be put to the test.
Jarod Greene (05:14):
There's a lot of different teams involved with a launch. There's different parts of product, different parts of marketing, different parts of sales. How do you make sure everybody's working towards the same goal without stepping on each other's toes?
Dominique Darrow (05:27):
Yeah, so I would say coordination and really constant communication was absolutely critical. We made sure that each team knew what their swim lane was, but we also designed a plan, so those lanes converged at key points. Everyone had visibility into the launch roadmap, which really helped align efforts without too much overlap. I also think that we had the mindset as a team that we needed to move forward with rapid innovation and iteration, which really encouraged us to work tighter together as things shifted and changed.
Jarod Greene (06:00):
We all know things don't go a hundred percent according to plan, so when things get a little off course, how do we keep things moving without losing that momentum?
Dominique Darrow (06:12):
We really tried to build an iteration. Each phase had a feedback and learning loop really baked into it. After phase one, for example, we really visited user insights and refined our onboarding and enablement. After phase two, we adjusted based on user adoption and refined security documentation and tracking measures. Because adaptation had to be part of the plan, it could not be a disruption, so that meant that we had to make course corrections without stalling momentum.
Jarod Greene (06:20):
And when we're planning something like this, something this big, something this significant, there's always chance that things may go awry. How do you think ahead and deal with the potential risk before they become issues?
Dominique Darrow (06:55):
That's the tough part here, right? We really tried to be proactive at every stage. Early on, we aligned on legal requirements, pricing, strategy, infrastructure needs, all the big things and milestones that we thought we could have something go wrong. During planning, we had safeguards against malicious behaviors and monitored usage patterns. Thinking through those worst case scenarios meant we could build with confidence.
Jarod Greene (07:18):
This launch was big for us. What were the must-haves for you in making sure everything went so smoothly?
Dominique Darrow (07:27):
There are three things I really didn't want to compromise on: alignment, instrumentation and constant communication. Alignment across the teams really keeps us unified. Instrumentation was ensuring that we are capturing the right data to make the decisions, and communication from both a technical and an operational perspective helps prevent surprises on launch day. Without these three, even the best plans can unravel.
Jarod Greene (07:55):
And as we move the launch along, what was the main focus for you right before we went into the creation phase?
Dominique Darrow (08:04):
The final stretch was really about enablement and polish. We focused on loading content, finalizing web changes, and ensuring all of our customer and prospect communications were tested and queued. Operational readiness was key. We had to validate systems. We had to train the go-to-market team, have sign off on legal and pre-brief analysts, and really at that point, it was less about planning and more about orchestrating every moving part to align perfectly on Go live.
Narrator (08:36):
Now that planning is done, creation has to start. As we've learned, the old playbook isn't going to work, it's just not. It's too rigid. Ava's capabilities have changed, which means the product launch playbook has to change. Funny enough, Ava and her capabilities with accelerators are going to really set the stage for accelerating the creation phase. Ava is a teammate, but what does that look like and how is the creation phase going to survive? More on that in the next episode of What Happened to Paul, the death of the traditional product launch playbook.
Victoria Myers (09:25):
We were changing the name of our product offering, and it wasn't changing the message as much of what we were planning for that launch. But that's just really when it hit me that all of these little micro changes that we had been making for the past several weeks to our launch plan, it really signaled a broader pivot.
We were launching a new product to a new audience. And we were becoming a new company.