More Resources Won’t Help
I remember reading a story, when I was first managing people, about Bill Gates and his approach to resources at Microsoft. According to the story, he regularly rejected requests to add resources to the development teams. When I first heard ...
When the reciprocity principle goes wrong
What is the reciprocity principle? If you've never heard of the reciprocity principle, you've surely experienced it. If I say to you, “thank you,” what are you going to say back? If I pay you a compliment, like, “I love ...
Competition is good
Competition is Good In 1995 Kim Polese was the product manager who launched Java to the world, from Sun Microsystems. The next year she left Sun with Arthur van Hoff and started a company named Marimba. I know, that's a ...
How to reduce bias in decision-making when evaluating new projects & products
We all have bias when we make decisions. It's not bad. The other day I saw this tweet. I don't know Louis Nicholls directly, but a quick look at his Twitter feed and site, and I can tell he's sharp. ...
Have you embraced the subscription business model yet?
Can we talk about the subscription business model for a bit? With millions of people out of work, tons of business closed down, and no clarity on what the new normal will be, the recent Subscription Impact Report by Zuora ...
Reducing Options can Drive Online Conversions
A case of too many options Something happened today, which I'll get to in a minute, that drove me to write about online conversions. Before I get to that, let's chat for a second about situations with tons of options. ...
If you spend a year developing a WordPress theme, are you wasting your life?
This is an open letter to the developer who spent a year developing a WordPress theme and couldn't sell it anywhere. An Open Letter to Chris Dear Chris, My name is Chris too. And that's not the only thing we ...
Understanding network effects helps you build better products
For more than eight years, I was lucky enough to work at a software company focused on vertical markets. I didn't step into the company with any expectation that it would be any different from any of the software companies where I'd ...
Building an easy onboarding process for new customers
Long before there was SaaS (Software as a Service), there was ASP (Application Service Providers) and while they're not exactly the same, they've all been “hosted products.” Those are the kinds of products I've been working on since 1995. And in ...
How to announce pricing changes (without ruining everything)
Especially in the world of startups, the need to change business models is common. How you announce those pricing changes can help or kill your business. Five Tips on Announcing Pricing Changes It's no shock to you, if you've read ...