Product Habits - Find the fast-moving water

Find the Fast-Moving Water

This article compares technology and markets to a river—some parts run faster, some slower, and others are eddies that send you backward. The "currents" include market segments, language, distribution channels, and cultural beliefs. Your goal as a founder is to find fast-moving water. Everything feels like it lights up at once when you're in it. Investors are excited, customers are quick to sign on, the team clicks into place, and the press is interested. Here are some thoughts on how you can find fast-moving water now. 

The 9 Best Tools for Your Early-Stage Startup

Most early-stage founders focus on the tech stack they need to build a product, not the business itself. Don't forget about the latter—it will save small teams plenty of future headaches by removing time-consuming admin tasks and empowering your team to focus on what they are best at. Here are nine tools you should consider adding to your tech stack.

Software's Third Revolution

For many of us, our perception is that AI is about creating artificial human personalities. But it's becoming more apparent that AI is more about creating intelligent tools capable of performing more complex tasks than we thought imaginable. So far, we've experienced two major software revolutions: the shift from command-line interfaces to graphical user interfaces and the change from single-player computing to globally networked computing. The third revolution is coming, and this is what it will look like. 

Interfaces and Bundle Boundaries

What are the most critical design decisions that ultimately attract and retain customers? General Folders founder Pardis Noorzad identified four: configurability, functional variety, application universality, and audience universality. Check out her explanation of each one, along with examples and best practices. 

How To Conduct a Product Health Check

If you're a product leader, understanding the overall health of your product is an integral part of your ability to make strategic decisions. Some of the most important product aspects you need to dig into include: user data, conversion rates for critical journeys, monetization strategy, and strategic health. I enjoyed this guide on how to measure the health of each one. 

Growing From 0 to 76k Pageviews

Collaborative learning platform 360Learning grew its blog from zero to 76,000 pageviews almost exclusively through organic search by running SEO experiments. If you want to develop a growth strategy that helps you get off the expensive treadmill of paid acquisition, you must find unique ways to activate organic search. These three experiments are worth a try. 

Running a One-Person Content Program

In the very early stages of a company, you usually have a one-person marketing team at best. The best early marketers know how to operate like a Swiss army knife, doing a little bit of everything to help a company grow. Learn how to activate multiple content channels and test them yourself before you start to hire contractor and employee specialists.  

The Secret To Going Viral

The main growth driver at most unicorn companies is referral-based viral loops. If you can figure out how to get them working in your business, future growth will be more effortless. This is a helpful breakdown of how viral referral loops work, how you can build them into your business, and what you need to do to sustain them over time.