The best advice from thousands of founders

The Power of Product Thinking

Best-in-class product managers, engineers, and designers have something in common: exceptional product thinking abilities. They are the ones who seem to intuitively know what makes a product useful to and loved by people. This is a helpful guide written by Julie Zhuo on developing that special product sense—from cultivating observation to nurturing inquiry. This is a must-read for anyone who is a builder or works with builders. 

The Best Advice From Thousands of Founders

I stumbled upon this list of curated product, growth, and fundraising advice for founders between ideation and seed stage. It covers just about everything, from how to build an MVP as a non-technical founder to understanding the metrics you should hit before raising a seed round. Check out the full list here—it's worth bookmarking.

Acquiring 40+ Bootstrapped Startups in 6 Years

SureSwift Capital has acquired more than 40 online businesses from independent founders since 2015. I thought this was an insightful AMA between the company's Founder and CEO, Kevin McArdle, and VP of Acquisitions, Chris Reedy. Something I found interesting: the firm uses customer engagement as a signal before choosing whether to acquire a company. This thread is filled with gems about important startup metrics, company valuations, and interesting SaaS ideas. 

Opinionated Products

An opinionated product takes a clear stance on how a user should use it. It doesn't attempt to be a tool for everyone, but rather, a specific user with a specific goal. Non-opinionated products, on the other hand, are built for a wider audience and have more flexibility but require more time to set up and customize. What kind of product would you prefer to grow?

Transitioning From a Founder to Product Manager

For three years, Jaryd Hermann was the Co-founder and Head of Product for his startup. Then, in 2020, he transitioned into a product management role. Here are the 12 lessons he's learned going from a founder to a product manager. I found a few thought-provoking: stop listening to your customers, ship incrementally, and learn how to watch and ignore the competition. 

Patterns in Confusing Explanations

This is such a good read. In it, Julia Evans explains that writing clearly is a lot of work, and it's all too easy to make written explanations overly complicated or confusing. There are the 13 patterns that make for confusing explanations. Once you know what they are, you'll start spotting them in writing everywhere. I find unsupported statements and strained analogies to be two of the most insidious patterns. Which of these patterns do you find most confusing?

Building an Attention-Grabbing Messaging Strategy

Messaging can be a challenge for many reasons, but one of the biggest is that most brands try to cast a wide net. In my experience, the more specific you can be in who you are trying to serve (and why), the more likely you are to attract and connect with a loyal target audience. Here are some tips for how you can win the marketing game with strategic messaging. 

The Rise of the One-Person Unicorn

The way we build startups is changing. We're surrounded by micro-startups that build narrow, vertical businesses to solve single, specific problems. Some of these companies turn into multi-million-dollar businesses while being run by just one or two main people. This is a great recap of how this changes who starts companies—and how they go about building them.