Product Habits - This one email explains Apple

This One Email Explains Apple

An October 2007 email exchange between Steve Jobs and Apple's former SVP of Software Engineering Bertrand Serlet has been circulating around the internet. In it, Serlet outlines just about every core feature of Apple's App Store, which brought in about $64 billion in 2020 alone. It's an email exchange that changed the world forever—and it also reveals a lot about what has made Apple such a wildly successful company. We can learn a lot from how Serlet composed this email, and how Jobs responded to it. 

How To Be More Productive

This is one of the most honest and genuinely helpful articles I've read about productivity in a long time. The key point: There are different kinds of time. The key to being productive is to make the best use of each kind. Then, ultimately, you can work on making your time higher quality overall. I found the section about the mental force field of procrastination to be particularly memorable. Read the full piece here.

All Your VPs Really Need To Do Is Tilt the Curve

There is a lot that goes into hiring a great management team. Finding the right VPs for your company can feel like an impossible task at times. It's hard to know exactly what to look for, but it ultimately comes down to one thing: VPs need to be able to tilt the growth curve at your startup. This is a short but sweet read about what that actually means. 

The Hierarchy of Needs for New Product Ideas

Underneath the surface of any good product are layers of factors that contributed to its success. It starts with early evidence of genuine, growing demand. But there are also other things, like a founder's unfair advantages and the ability to pool together the right resources to build and scale. This is a thought-provoking video about what it really takes to make a new product idea succeed. 

Why Context Matters So Much for PMs

This is a fascinating tweet thread about a PM who was very successful at managing one team and then, just six months later, had entirely different results with another team. the main point: You can be good at product management by becoming an expert in one style of operating. But if you want to be truly great at it, you have to be more adaptive. 

7 Signs It's Time To Hire a Freelance Content Marketer

Increasingly, skilled marketers are opting to freelance in order to gain more creative independence. It's never been easier to find low-risk options for moving your content marketing strategy forward. This is a helpful read about why it's worth the investment, how to decide when and what kind of expert content marketer you need, and how to set end goals for your freelancers early. 

13 Steps To Advance Your Marketing Career

Given how much marketing has shifted over the past decade, it's not always easy for marketers to know how they should progress forward in their careers. I thought this was a helpful step-by-step guide for making some concrete decisions, like choosing between a generalized or specific marketing path and using your pre-existing network to build a new one. If you're feeling stuck in your marketing career, reading this will help. 

6 Questions To Ask Before Adopting Usage-Based Pricing

Usage-based pricing is an increasingly popular strategy, especially at product-led organizations. It can be a win for both sides—the customer avoids making a big product commitment that might not work, while the company can scale more seamlessly over time. But, this pricing strategy isn't for everyone. This is a framework that will help you decide if usage-based pricing makes sense at your company.