Product management is hard

There is no such thing as the "right way" to build a product, grow a business, or make an important decision.

Hiten's Pick  Timing Is Everything at a Startup What often looks like luck can be explained by timing. Bill Gross has founded over 100 companies in the last 30 years and found that timing was the biggest determining factor of success, followed by team and execution. Here's my tweet thread where I share my favorite reads about the topic of startup timing.   Business  How to Kill a Unicorn Companies like Notion, Canva, Mailchimp, and Figma have unseated previous category leaders with less money and smaller teams. Chris Frantz argues that they've done it by opting for a product-led growth strategy fueled by virality, and an innovative pricing strategy (read: compelling freemium options). This is a great explanation of how freemium really works for scaling new businesses, making them profitable, and ultimately helping them take over as category leaders.  How Figma and Canva Are Taking On Adobe—And Winning Adobe is a very strong company, having made a relatively seamless transition to SaaS and continuing to be best-in-class at M&A. That said, companies like Figma, Canva, and Sketch are creeping in as new market leaders. While it's incredibly difficult to break into a market with such a dominant leader, it's not impossible. These companies are doing it by addressing rapidly changing customer needs. Here's how.  Product  How We Cut Our Dev Cycle by 75% The Process Street team moved from Scrum to Shape Up (Basecamp's development methodology), which was designed for product development teams who struggle to ship. One of the reframing questions I appreciate about Shape Up is the shift from asking "How long will it take to fix the problem?" to asking "How long are we willing to spend on fixing the problem?". This is how the Process Street team made the switch and cut their dev cycle by 75%.  Why Product Management Is Hard Product management is hard because there are rarely one-size-fits-all solutions to problems. There is no such thing as the "right way" to build a product, grow a business, or make an important decision. This jam-packed tweet thread is a reminder that the most important thing you can do is become a clearer thinker and employ thoughtful frameworks.  Marketing & Sales  Making a Decision To Buy In sales, you want to help people make better decisions rather than come to a compromise. When tradeoffs are framed well, it's easier to sell. I thought this article provided an interesting peek into how people make decisions and why understanding the tradeoffs your potential buyers are willing to make is so important.  Which B2B Company's Marketing Do You Admire Most? A few days ago, I asked people on Twitter which B2B company's marketing they most admired. The responses are illuminating. Companies like HubSpot and Drift kept coming up in people's answers, but there were a number of surprising, under-the-radar choices, too. Check out how people responded.   Growth  6 Lessons That Powered Amazon's Success This is a must-read interview for startup leaders. Two former Amazon executives break down the tech giant's "invention machine," comprised of 14 leadership principles, four cultural pillars, and five very specific processes. This article is filled with gems about Amazon's growth, and how those lessons can help you shape the trajectory of your startup.  The $4B ARR Company The opinions about GoDaddy are all over the map, but none of us can deny the company's success. Founded in 1997, it now achieves $4B in ARR and still grows at around 12% YoY. In 2020 alone, the company spent almost $440 million on marketing and ads. These five interesting learnings from the tech behemoth might surprise you.   Management  Building a Sense of Urgency Into Your Organization When something is urgent, it has to be dealt with as soon as possible. A sense of urgency, on the other hand, means you don't wait for situations to get urgent because you're always making decisions proactively, with a deadline in mind. Infusing a sense of urgency into an organization requires commitment from top management first. Then, it trickles down to the rest of the team. This is how. The Stories We Tell Ourselves I joined Patrick Campbell for a conversation on the stories we tell ourselves, what it takes to achieve alignment, leveling up through standards, and the secret to Clubhouse's booming success. We dive deep into how we make up stories all the time, filling in the blanks with our past experiences and interpretations. When it comes to people I work with, I now pay a lot of attention to what people say, and what the implications of their stories are for our work together. After listening to this, I think you will, too.   Insight of the Week  Jeff Bezos on Knowing What's Not Going To Change Jeff Bezos points out that he will commonly get the question, "What's going to change in the next 10 years?" Rarely does he get the question, "What isn't going to change?" But he argues it's the more important question of the two. When you know what will remain true over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it. What is true in the long term for your company? 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