Product Habits - The rapidly changing AI environment

Defensibility and Competition

Most early-stage startups are not very defensible in the beginning. It's typically easy to clone something a small team has spent several months building. Defensibility is something you build over time. This is a helpful list of the many forms it can take—from bundling and integrations to regulation and scale effects. 

The Rapidly Changing AI Environment

The AI environment feels like a quick pendulum swing between hype and skepticism. People are learning limitations as we go, which will likely create a new regulatory environment. What do you think is in store for AI this year? 

Palo Alto's First Tech Giant

A few hundred years ago, California looked quite different, but there was some continuity. Early settlers built pre-silicon Palo Alto—from the railroad to radio components—on ideas about how science yielded efficiency and profit. This is a fascinating story about a 20-something failed lawyer named Leland Stanford who came to California in 1852 and changed everything.

How To Ship Great Products Fast

Podia is a company of more than 30 people, but they have yet to hire a single product or project manager. Founder & CEO Spencer Fry explains why he believes it's precisely because there aren't any PMs that the team ships features faster than companies many times its size. Could the same process work at your startup? 

The Hard Problem of Onboarding Horizontal Products

When launching a horizontal product, one of the challenges is navigating the onboarding experience. Your user base will be groups of people who understand and care about different things, but the onboarding language has to make sense to all of them. Try designing for initial goal achievement and build a strong framework for exploratory search. 

Boosting Marketing Email Open Rates From 20% to 60%

One simple trick helped a company improve its marketing email open rate from 20% to 60%—sending emails within the same hour the user last visited their website. Try this instead of sending emails at random times and see what happens. 

Why Building Your Startup's Brand From Day 1 Matters

It's common for startups to kick brand marketing down the road early on. But it's important to focus on it as soon as possible. The results compound, and you won't regret investing the time and energy upfront. This post explains how one team used sustainable growth strategies to build a brand as an early-stage startup. 

An Ideal Sales Compensation Model

Sales compensation is one of the most essential parts of a company's strategy. It'll inhibit companies from implementing the best go-to-market strategy and pricing models if done incorrectly. Especially if you're looking to introduce product-led growth principles, revamping your sales structure is a must. Here's an optimized way it can look.