The Value of Domain Expertise
My first startup (and what we got wrong) I was recruited to my first startup (a small San Francisco-based company) from Berkeley Lab. Happy building some very early web applications without any thought of venture capital, I was a kid ...
The Art of Telling Stories
Have you seen the “Land of Land Rovers” commercial? Tonight we're going to talk about the art of telling stories, but there's no better way to do that than to show you a great example. I don't know if you've ...
Product Overshoot
Have you ever owned a Swiss Army Knife? Tonight I want to talk about product overshoot. But to do that I have to start with a question: have you ever owned a Swiss Army Knife? If you've ever stepped into ...
The Art of Lead Generation: What Top Business Owners Do Differently
The art of lead generation I talk to business owners every single day. Sometimes they own product companies. Other times they run agencies. But they fall into two categories. The first want to keep growing their business but they're not ...
Leveraging Multiple Price Points
The challenge with talking about pricing (and especially multiple price points) is that the conversation comes in the middle of a much larger discussion on product design. By the time you've built a new feature and want to know how ...
If I Wanted a New House… (tips for product owners)
Everyone wants more leads and sales, including product owners Today I wanted to share some tips for product owners who are looking for more leads and more sales. That really should be every product owner out there, right? To do ...
Are You Building a Product for a Non-Existent Customer?
The conversation that was really hard to have The developer walked up to me at a technical conference and wanted to pitch me on their new product idea. If you're building a product, especially in the WordPress space, I'm happy ...
What Walt Disney Didn’t Do
I want to tell you a quick story for all of you building products out there. As someone who has been building products for more than two decades some lessons need repeating. This is one of them. The story is ...
Paying Attention to Competition
Right now, if I asked you, could you name 10 competitors? Could you rattle them off with ease? Because you've been paying attention to the competition? Here's another way to ask the same question. If I asked you to tell ...
What Drives Your Roadmap?
A couple weeks ago I wrote about product roadmap themes. If you haven't read that, I strongly recommend it. I say that because today's post relates to that, and is a general warning to small product teams. It directly applies ...