Product Habits - Apple's management framework

Things First-Time Founders Get Wrong

Lattice CEO Jack Altman wrote an insightful list of things many first-time founders misunderstand when building their startups. Reading through this thread will help you avoid common mistakes like counting out competitors, wasting time on investor conversations when you're not actively fundraising, and focusing on the wrong things. Check it out here. 

Microsoft's Billion-Dollar AI Business

Venture Capitalist Tomasz Tunguz has been tracking public company earnings to look for trends in the software market. He's observed that Microsoft is the first example of a public company generating hundreds of millions (soon to be billions) of dollars on AI. We should expect other big companies like Google, Amazon, and Cloudflare to follow suit. 

Measuring the Quality of a Startup

Building a startup isn't easy, but the process is almost always the same. First, you talk to users and understand their problems. Then you go through an iterative process of building prototypes, shipping them, breaking things, and iterating to improve them. The quality of your startup is correlated with the speed at which you can repeat this process. 

PM Habits for Getting Things Done

Becoming a great PM requires you to do a range of tasks at a high level—from building a strategy and setting clear priorities to being an effective communicator and having data-driven thinking. This is a helpful list of habits worth developing to get more of the right things done. A few of my favorites: Summarize the outcomes of every meeting in writing and create an intentional calendar to guide your week. 

Building for the End User

HubSpot's VP of Product, Christopher Miller, recently shared his thoughts on how to build for the end user. One of the biggest takeaways from this interview is the concept that growth is a downstream effect. It's ultimately a lagging indicator of making the right decisions further upstream, like solving problems simply and meaningfully for people using your product. This is a worthwhile read. 

Three Waves of AI That Will Revolutionize Marketing

AI is changing almost everything about how we do business—including marketing. This article outlines the three waves of AI that are transforming how companies approach their marketing efforts. The first wave is data-driven, the second is conversational, and the third is predictive. Here's what each wave means and how we can best prepare for them. 

The Prerequisites for Building a Great Company

I saw this tweet the other day and couldn't help but think about how accurate it is. Jen Abel explains that the prerequisite for customer discovery is founder vision. Customer discovery then becomes a prerequisite for sales. Finally, sales is a prerequisite for marketing. Do you agree? 

Avoiding Vanity Metrics

So many companies fall into the trap of measuring vanity metrics and building their strategy around them. Page views, downloads, or social media followers can be misleading progress indicators that distract companies from their core business goals. So make sure you're measuring things that are genuinely aligned with your core business objectives.