Advising any business is hard. I’m hesitant to do it. It’s all too easy to give bad advice, which steers companies in the wrong...

Spending money is very easy. Spending money effectively is very hard. There are lots of dodgy people & service providers out there who...

Any product serving two distinct sets of users is addressing a two-sided market. eBay connects buyers and sellers. Google connects...

The Swiss Army knife is a remarkable product. By combining many products of low utility, it becomes a product of some utility. This is...

Gathering useful timely feedback from customers can be a long process. Intercom makes it faster and easier than ever before but just...

The most important thing a product manager does is decide where their product stops and someone else’s product takes over. If an app does...

A closed beta is an excellent feedback loop. It lets you see what works well in your application, and it helps you understand the jobs...

The total market for coffee in America is worth about eighteen billion dollars. That’s $18,000,000,000 if you like to see zeroes. If...

The funnel is a lousy metaphor for measuring conversion. In real life, funnels let everything pass through–a 100% conversion rate if you...

Private betas are great for controlling access to a product as you tweak it. They work best when your product delivers value, but isn’t...

The second part of our interview with Bob Moesta discusses topics specific to start-ups. We look at how a start-up can apply these Jobs...

The world of start-ups is obsessed with outliers. Companies who have achieved remarkable success through a combination of their...

In Gimmicks and Patterns I wrote that new features either become table stakes, or are dismissed as being gimmicky. As some readers noted,...

The mathematician searches around the lamppost on his hands and knees. “What are you looking for?” a bystander asks. “My keys, I dropped...

I use the above graph to pick what features to add or improve based on how many customers use them, and how often. This leads to curious...

Meaningful companies are built upon a strong timeless vision. Let’s look at some examples… “To organize the world‘s information and make...

When a customer asks for a new feature, it’s quite often something that makes perfect sense. My heart says “Sure thing, we can do this...

We’ve had a phenomenal response to the product since we began our private beta back in June. It has been amazing to get such qualified...