Product Habits - Airtable's path to product-market fit

Validation is a Mirage

Jason Fried makes a great point: Many people want to know how to validate a new product, but you can't find that certainty ahead of time. You won't know until you build something and make it available for anyone to try. Even then, it's barely validation because so many other variables are at play, like timing, marketing, and pricing. This is a good reminder that validation is a mirage. 

Finding Traction Without a Product

Before you invest a lot of time in building a product, start with the product positioning first. Focus on what your product will do for customers and why it differs from other solutions. Here's how one startup did this to get from zero to initial traction in two months.  

More Product Doesn't Always Mean Greater Profits

Surprisingly, product-led growth companies had a more significant profitability decline than sales-led businesses this year. This profitability pattern changed during the pandemic. So what might be causing this shift? This is a thought-provoking list of observations. 

Airtable's Path to Product-Market Fit

After a decade of building, Airtable has developed a customer base of over 300,000 organizations, and the company is now valued at $11 billion. But in the early days, the path to success didn't seem easy. Airtable's journey from private alpha to launch is fascinating. Check out this detailed breakdown of how the team validated the initial vision and navigated the early product-building journey. 
 

The Problem With AI Image Generation

The surge in the popularity of AI-generated photos is astounding. While entertaining, this technology comes with significant risks. Anyone can grab photos of a person and create realistic fake images of them—that is just the beginning of the damage that can be done to people's reputations and lives. Is there anything we can do to protect ourselves?

Why Hot Wheels Are One of the Most Inflation-Proof Toys

Almost every good in the U.S. has been impacted by inflation, but one beloved toy has managed to stay around $1 for over fifty years—Hot Wheels. More than 16 Hot wheels are sold per second around the world, and over six billion have been produced to date. This is an awe-inspiring read about how the company managed to keep costs down over the years.

How AI Will Unlock a New Dimension of Marketing Creativity

One standard narrative about AI is that we should view it as a competitor. In some ways, it will be. But it can also be a complementary tool to help humans overcome creative blocks and ship products faster. This is an interesting read about the current AI landscape and how we can use it to do everything from creating videos to taking better notes. 

One of the Worst Price Increase Examples

Gumroad recently sent an email out about an upcoming pricing change. I found a thought-provoking tweet thread about why it was such a poorly communicated price increase. It details the one thing the team did right—and the handful of missteps they made. What do you think about the company's language to communicate the shift?