Product Habits - The best SaaS products with a free plan

 Hiten's Pick 

The Highest Forms of Wealth

What does it mean to be wealthy? Morgan Housel recently wrote an article about what he considers to be the three highest forms of wealth—and I think he's spot on. This is one of my favorite lines: "Money buys happiness in the same way drugs bring pleasure: Incredible if done right, dangerous if used to mask a weakness, and disastrous when no amount is enough." To what degree do you have these forms of wealth in your life?

 Business 

Making Scheduling Comfortable and Fast

Calendar scheduling tools face a few big challenges: It feels awkward to send a scheduling link and it leaves you open for people booking suboptimal meeting times with you. SavvyCal is looking to solve both of those problems. Here's how

Simple Frameworks for Success

I really enjoy listening to Sam Parr and Shaan Puri's podcast, "My First Million." This episode with HubSpot CTO Dharmesh Shah was no exception. They dive into plenty of topics like cryptocurrency, unintentional growth hacks, and company culture. But I was most fascinated by how Dharmesh thinks about money as a billionaire. If you're looking for something thought-provoking to listen to this week, check out this podcast episode

 Product 

Managing Product Development

When building a new product, one of the most important steps is prioritizing what to work on. Everything feels critical in the beginning, so as Ryan Singer notes, you have to get good at asking questions like:

  • How valuable is this from the perspective of the customer's problem? 
  • How necessary is this, from nice-to-have to must-have?
  • How good should this particular piece be to call it "done"?
Prioritize the parts of product development that will teach you the most about how to solve the core problem, and you'll be in good shape.

Not All Metrics Are Good Metrics

It's all too easy to focus on vanity metrics that look good on paper but don't paint an accurate picture of success or provide actionable feedback. At best, vanity metrics aren't helpful. At worst, they divert your attention in the wrong direction. When choosing what you are going to measure, it's better to focus on outcomes over outputs

 Marketing & Sales 

How To Acquire Customers Through LinkedIn

This is a great playbook for acquiring customers on LinkedIn. If you're a B2B startup, it's important to have a presence on the platform. After reading this, you'll see why LinkedIn organic is better than LinkedIn ads and how thoughtful content contributions can help you drive off-platform conversion. I recommend bookmarking this one

8 Essential Talks About Startup Growth

In the early stages, most startups don't have a big growth marketing budget. One of the best hacks is learning directly from people who have helped their companies achieve remarkable growth. These eight videos will teach you about what sets $100M+ companies apart, how to utilize network effects, and how to build a marketing moat that keeps competitors at bay.

 Growth 
How Netflix Acquired 200M+ Paying Customers

This is a great tweet thread about how Netflix (originally known as Kibble, if you can believe it) became an entertainment streaming giant. I'm fascinated by the company's maniacal focus on four key pillars: personalization, original content, viewing experience, and interactive storytelling. Which part of the company's growth strategy most surprises you?

Growth Skills Assessment Test

How do your skills stack up against some of the top startup growth professionals? This free test takes about 45 minutes and will help you identify your core competencies and blind spots. Based on your results, the site will offer up a study plan to help you address your weak points and accelerate your career. It's worth giving this a try.

 Management 
Open Decision-Making

Every company has a decision-making philosophy—even if they haven't consciously articulated it. On one end of the spectrum, you'll find companies that make decisions behind a closed door with just a few people. On the other end, you'll find a bottom-up approach involving lots of input from many people. Two-time CEO John Ousterhout advocates for the latter approach. His explanation for why is worth reading

How Yelp Thinks About Engineering Management

I thought this recount of how engineering management works at Yelp was fascinating. It covers what engineering management is (and isn't) and what makes it different from traditional engineering roles. It's a helpful read for all managers—even if you don't work on an engineering team. Ultimately, the goal is the same: Assume responsibility for people's motivation, well-being, and career growth on a team. 

 Insight of the Week 
The Best SaaS Products With a Free Plan

This past week on Twitter, I asked people what their favorite SaaS products with a free plan were. The list is full of gems. A few of my personal favorites echoed by others include Amplitude, Notion, Canva, Grammarly, and Figma. Check out the full list of favorites here


Copyright © 2021 Up Advisors, LLC., All rights reserved.
You received this email because you signed up to get emails from Product Habits.

Our mailing address is:
Up Advisors, LLC.
13337 South St. #269
Cerritos, California 90623

Add us to your address book


Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list

Email Marketing Powered by Mailchimp

Older messages

Join me tonight!

Thursday, July 22, 2021

I'm speaking about startup pivots and product/market fit tonight (7/22) at 5:30pm PDT. I'll be sharing some of my secret strategies and tactics... I'm speaking about startup pivots and

Mindset makes you world-class

Monday, July 19, 2021

Giannis Antetokounmpo teaches us all an important lesson—even if we can't shoot a basketball to save our lives. Hiten's Pick When You Hear the Word Startup, What Comes to Mind? The word "

How a Stripe product manager predicts problems

Monday, July 12, 2021

Don't wait to do a post-mortem to figure out why your product failed. Do this instead. Hiten's Pick What Nobody Understands About Startups I recently joined Ch Daniel for a conversation on his

5 things that kill startups

Monday, July 5, 2021

Y Combinator Partner and CEO Michael Seibel has seen his fair share of startup trajectories. Most of them aren't successful. Here's why. Hiten's Pick 5 Things That Kill Startups Y

Why everyone should use SOC 2 software

Wednesday, June 30, 2021

When I first realized that we were building a security company with our pivot to Nira, it hit me like a ton of bricks... When I first realized that we were building a security company with our pivot to

You Might Also Like

Data Science Weekly - Issue 540

Friday, March 29, 2024

Curated news, articles and jobs related to Data Science, AI, & Machine Learning ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏

This Week in Rust #540

Friday, March 29, 2024

Email isn't displaying correctly? Read this e-mail on the Web This Week in Rust issue 540 — 27 MAR 2024 Hello and welcome to another issue of This Week in Rust! Rust is a programming language

The Value Of A Promise 🤞

Friday, March 29, 2024

How much is a promise from a tech company really worth, anyway? Here's a version for your browser. Hunting for the end of the long tail • March 28, 2024 The Value Of A Promise When you hear a

New Elastic Security for SIEM Training Course

Friday, March 29, 2024

Detect and respond to evolving threats ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ elastic | Search. Observe. Protect Detect anomalies and malicious behavior March

SBF gets 25 years 

Thursday, March 28, 2024

Sam Bankman-Fried is sentenced View this email online in your browser By Christine Hall Thursday, March 28, 2024 Welcome back to TechCrunch PM! The editorial team spent a chunk of the day discussing

💎 Issue 410 - Being laid off in 2023-2024 as an early-career developer

Thursday, March 28, 2024

This week's Awesome Ruby Newsletter Read this email on the Web The Awesome Ruby Newsletter Issue » 410 Release Date Mar 28, 2024 Your weekly report of the most popular Ruby news, articles and

💻 Issue 403 - Microsoft defends .NET 9 features competing with open source ecosystem

Thursday, March 28, 2024

This week's Awesome .NET Weekly Read this email on the Web The Awesome .NET Weekly Issue » 403 Release Date Mar 28, 2024 Your weekly report of the most popular .NET news, articles and projects

💻 Issue 410 - Node.js TSC Confirms: No Intention to Remove npm from Distribution

Thursday, March 28, 2024

This week's Awesome Node.js Weekly Read this email on the Web The Awesome Node.js Weekly Issue » 410 Release Date Mar 28, 2024 Your weekly report of the most popular Node.js news, articles and

💻 Issue 410 - JSDoc as an alternative TypeScript syntax

Thursday, March 28, 2024

This week's Awesome JavaScript Weekly Read this email on the Web The Awesome JavaScript Weekly Issue » 410 Release Date Mar 28, 2024 Your weekly report of the most popular JavaScript news, articles

📱 Issue 404 - Dependency Injection for Modern Swift Applications Part II

Thursday, March 28, 2024

This week's Awesome iOS Weekly Read this email on the Web The Awesome iOS Weekly Issue » 404 Release Date Mar 28, 2024 Your weekly report of the most popular iOS news, articles and projects Popular