17 posts tagged with "product"

User interview is a comprehensive process to find out and understand users, their problems, and potential areas for product improvement.

• Objectives of User Interviews:
  • Refine hypotheses about the user: Understand their profile, motivations, and relationship with the product.
  • Clarify the user's problem: Grasp the problem in the user's words, its severity, and their current solutions or workarounds.
  • Identify potentially more valuable problems: Explore if other issues might be more critical to address.
• Focus of Interviews:
  • Interviews should center on understanding problems from the user's perspective.
  • Avoid exploring potential solutions to prevent bias and leading the user.
• Common Pitfalls:
  • Insufficient warm-up, leading to missed insights.
  • Leading questions that bias towards preconceived hypotheses.
  • Strict adherence to a script, missing new and valuable information.
• Interview Trail Guide Framework:
  • Warm-up Phase: Build rapport and foundational understanding of the user. Small talks to introduce the team and the research. Ask for approval for recording. Emphasize that there are no right or wrong answers.
  • Build Phase: Gradually approach the problem hypothesis, allowing users to express their views, from general experiences to specific experiences.
  • Peak Phase (2/3 of the time): Deep dive into specific problem-related questions. Are we disucssing the right problem? Are users approaching the problem with any alternative ways? How painful is the problem?
• Conducting the Interview:
  • Start with rapport-building questions.
  • Gradually narrow down to the specific problem.
  • Allow space for unexpected insights and follow up on them.
  • Spend substantial interview time in the peak phase, focusing on the hypothesized problem.
• Final Steps:
  • Prioritize emerging problems during the interview.
  • Structure interviews to adapt to new insights and user feedback.

Examples​

1. Doordash:

   • Warm-up Phase: Questions might start broadly, touching on general lifestyle and habits, such as weekend routines and eating habits.
   • Build Phase: Narrowing down to food delivery experiences, with questions like why and how users order food delivery, their typical order times, and their general experience with food delivery.
   • Peak Phase: Specific questions about Doordash’s service, such as frequency of use, user experience with Doordash’s delivery time, and alternatives they resort to when delivery times are long. The goal is to assess whether their hypothesis about delivery time being a pain point is accurate.

2. Rippling Employee Onboarding:

   • Build Phase: Questions might start with general feelings about onboarding new employees, tools or systems currently used, and issues faced with these tools.
   • Peak Phase: Focus on specific problems identified, like steps taken to onboard a new employee, tracking various requirements and deadlines, and the impact of current practices on the onboarding experience.

A deep dive into the business model powering blockchain's infrastructure leader

Web3 infrastructure company QuickNode recently raised $60M in Series B funding at an$800M valuation, continuing its impressive growth trajectory even through crypto's notorious bear market. But while most discussions focus on their technology and market position, a critical question remains: how exactly does QuickNode make money?

Let's break down their revenue model, pricing strategy, and how they've managed to achieve 4x year-over-year growth during one of crypto's most challenging periods.

The Four Revenue Pillars​

QuickNode has built a diversified business with four distinct revenue streams:

1. Core Business: Node Management Platform (80-90% of revenue)​

The foundation of QuickNode's business is its node-as-a-service platform, which comes in two flavors:

Self-Service Plans

• Users sign up directly through QuickNode.com
• Select from tiered subscription plans based on needs
• Pay via credit card or crypto for monthly access
• Pricing scales based on request volume, compute resources, and features

Enterprise Contracts

• Custom contracts negotiated for larger clients
• Typically 6-12 month commitments
• Premium support and SLA guarantees
• Tailored for high-volume customers like Coinbase, OpenSea, and Adobe

This core business operates similar to cloud infrastructure providers like AWS or DigitalOcean, but specialized for blockchain networks. The pricing model follows a familiar pattern: start cheap (or free) for developers, then scale up as usage grows.

2. 'Icy' NFT Tools (5-10% of revenue)​

In May 2022, QuickNode acquired Icy Tools, an NFT analytics platform. This acquisition:

• Added premium NFT data and analytics services
• Created a new subscription revenue stream
• Leverages QuickNode's differentiated off-chain indexer
• Provides enhanced APIs for NFT developers

This strategic acquisition shows how QuickNode is expanding beyond raw infrastructure into higher-level services.

3. App Marketplace (Emerging revenue stream)​

Taking a page from cloud platforms, QuickNode has launched a marketplace where:

• Third-party developers can build and sell add-ons
• Revenue is shared between developers and QuickNode
• Customers can extend functionality without switching platforms

While still in early stages, this platform play follows the successful model pioneered by Salesforce, AWS, and other cloud leaders - creating an ecosystem where developers extend the platform's value.

4. Blockchain Integration Fees (Strategic revenue)​

An often overlooked but strategically valuable revenue source:

• Blockchain foundations pay QuickNode to integrate their networks
• Helps new blockchains quickly access developer ecosystems
• Provides QuickNode early-mover advantage on emerging chains

This clever business development strategy effectively has blockchain networks subsidizing QuickNode's expansion to their platforms, creating a win-win for both parties.

The Economics Behind the Model​

QuickNode's business model combines several characteristics of highly profitable software companies:

Infrastructure Economies of Scale​

Like all infrastructure businesses, QuickNode benefits from significant economies of scale:

• Fixed costs are spread across growing customer base
• Bulk hardware and bandwidth procurement reduces per-unit costs
• Operational efficiency improves with scale
• Multi-tenant architecture optimizes resource utilization

Recurring Revenue + Expansion​

The subscription model creates predictable, recurring revenue while usage-based components drive natural expansion:

• Base subscriptions provide stable monthly recurring revenue (MRR)
• As customers grow, they automatically move to higher tiers
• Enterprise contracts lock in 6-12 months of guaranteed revenue
• High switching costs create strong customer retention

Developer-Led Growth Model​

QuickNode follows the modern developer tools playbook:

• Free tier and documentation attract individual developers
• Developers bring QuickNode into their organizations
• Bottom-up adoption reduces customer acquisition costs
• Technical credibility drives organic growth through word-of-mouth

Pricing Strategy: Transparency + Value-Based Tiers​

QuickNode's pricing page reveals a sophisticated approach:

Developer Tier (Free)

• Limited requests per second and compute
• Perfect for small projects and experimentation
• Creates top-of-funnel for future paying customers

Growth Tier ($49/month)

• Increased performance and request limits
• Monitoring and basic support
• Targets startups and early-stage projects

Professional Tier ($99/month)

• Enterprise-grade reliability
• Advanced features and higher limits
• Targets serious projects with production needs

Enterprise Tier (Custom pricing)

• Dedicated infrastructure options
• Premium support with SLAs
• Custom contracts and features

This tiered approach demonstrates a classic "good, better, best" SaaS pricing strategy, with clear value steps as customers scale.

The Numbers Behind the Growth​

QuickNode reported several impressive growth metrics that shed light on their revenue model:

• 4.1x year-over-year revenue growth from 2021 to 2022
• 3.7x growth in gross revenue from H2-2021 to H2-2022
• >40% quarter-over-quarter growth in enterprise revenue in 2022
• 90 enterprise customers closed in 2022
• 177% growth in new accounts
• 264% growth in endpoints deployed

Most telling is that QuickNode maintained this growth trajectory through the crypto bear market - suggesting their revenue is tied more to infrastructure usage than speculative activity.

Future Revenue Expansion​

Looking ahead, QuickNode has several clear paths to revenue growth:

Vertical Expansion

• More premium services beyond basic node access
• Higher-level abstractions and APIs
• Developer tooling that commands higher margins

Enterprise Penetration

• Deepening relationships with Fortune 500 clients
• Expansion from pilot projects to production systems
• Cross-selling additional services to existing customers

Geographic Expansion

• Building regional presence in Asia and Europe
• Supporting regulatory-compliant infrastructure in various jurisdictions
• Catering to local blockchain ecosystems

Comparing to Cloud Infrastructure Economics​

To put QuickNode's model in perspective, it helps to compare to established cloud infrastructure companies:

While QuickNode's exact margins aren't public, their business model most closely resembles high-margin infrastructure-as-a-service companies. The lack of hardware management (compared to traditional hosting) suggests margins similar to software-defined infrastructure providers like Cloudflare.

The Economics of Durability​

Perhaps most impressive about QuickNode's business model is its ability to weather market cycles. Even as NFT trading volumes and token prices crashed in 2022, QuickNode continued growing. This suggests:

1. Their revenue is tied more to infrastructure usage than transaction value
2. Development activity continues even in bear markets
3. Enterprise adoption provides stability beyond crypto-native customers
4. Their multi-chain approach diversifies risk across blockchain ecosystems

Conclusion: A Sustainable Infrastructure Play​

QuickNode's multi-faceted revenue model showcases the maturation of blockchain infrastructure. By focusing on the fundamentals - reliable service, multiple revenue streams, tiered pricing, and enterprise relationships - they've built a business that can thrive regardless of market conditions.

As blockchain technology continues moving from speculation to utility, companies like QuickNode that provide essential infrastructure stand to benefit from increasing real-world adoption. Their ability to generate revenue from both crypto-native companies and mainstream enterprises positions them as a bridge between these two worlds - and a potentially sustainable business for the long term.

PRFAQ means press release and frequently asked questions. People at Amazon adopt it to write down requirements and important features of yet to be developed products.

Why does it matter?

1. it is customer-centric - Starting with the customer and working backward.
2. it clarifies uncertainties early on and simplifies the following-up work of engineering, product, design, marketing, and sales.
3. it tests people's excitement of the product.

Press Release​

Copied and modified from this article.

Heading: short name for the product that the target customers will understand​

Subheading: One sentence saying who the market is and what the benefit is

Summary: 2–4 sentences that gives a summary of the product and the benefits. Should start with customer and be self-contained so that a person could read only this paragraph and still understand the new product/feature.

Problem : 2–4 sentences describing the problem that a customer faces, which this product solves. Tests your assumptions about the pain-points that you are addressing.

Solution : 2–4 sentences, describing how the new product/feature addresses this problem. Tests your assumptions about how you are solving the pain-points.

Getting started: 1–3 sentences describing how someone can start using this product/feature (if it’s baked into the existing product, say this explicitly). Tests your assumptions about how easy the ramp-up is for your customers to take advantage of the new product/feature.

Internal quote: Someone within your company being quoted about what they like about the product/feature. Tests your assumptions about the value you are creating for your customers and how you position this product within your broader product offerings.

Customer Quote(s): a hypothetical customer saying what they like about the new product/feature. Tests your assumptions about how you want your customers to react to the new product/feature and your ideal customer profile. They should be doing something that they couldn’t do before, doing something much quicker and easier, saving time and effort, or in some other way making their life better. Whatever the benefit is, their delight in the benefit(s) should be exhibited in the quote. This should be multiple quotes from different customers if you have multiple profiles of ideal customers, example: mid-market and F50 customers.

Call to action: 1–2 sentences telling the reader where they can go next to start using the product/feature. Tests your assumptions about whether this is a feature that is automatically on, something they need to turn on, a beta-release, etc.

FAQs​

A set of public frequently-asked questions and their answers. This should be a comprehensive list of everything that a customer might want to know about the product. It should include any reasonable question that comes up when discussing the new product/feature with customers and customer-facing teams during the development of the product/feature.

Internal FAQs​

A set of private, internal frequently-asked questions and their answers in a format that can be understood by every other stakeholder. An FAQ might include wireframes of a product with a strong UX component, or a link to separate wireframe documents, but the PR should rely on text alone. This will allow all internal stakeholders to get clarity on the product/feature.

What success looks like?​

Why is [this product] important to us?​

What are the objectives [this product] trying to achieve?​

How can [this product] fail? Would it cause customer dislikes?​

How much does this work cost?​

• What are the estimated engineering/design/infra hours?
• Are there any external vendor, infrastructure, or ongoing support costs?
• What is the total cost to deliver this feature, including launch and maintenance?

What is the 4P marketing plan?​

• [Product Name] is a [short description of the product/feature] designed for [target user]. It helps them [key benefit or solve a specific problem]. Unlike [existing alternatives], it offers [unique selling point].
• [Product Name] is available on a [pricing model], with plans starting at [$X]. It's [cheaper/more flexible/fairer] than [competitor or traditional approach], especially for [specific use case].
• Customers can access [Product Name] directly through [platform/interface]. It’s fully integrated with [tool or ecosystem] and available globally to [customer segment].
• We’re promoting [Product Name] through [channels like social media, newsletters, PR]. Our messaging focuses on [main customer benefit]. To drive adoption, we’re offering [beta access, early adopter incentives, community rewards, etc.].

What are the dependencies?​

What are the risks?​

Customer FAQ​

Why does [this product] matter to me?​

How to [use this product]?​

How do I know if [this product] is a right solution to my problem?​

Guiding Policies​

1. Keep it simple, easy to be refer to, and easy to be measured.
2. Separate core objectives from stretch objectives.
3. At least 60% of them should be defined by the executors.

OKR Template​

20XX Yearly OKRs

* Core Objective 1:
* Core Objective 2:
* Core Objective 3:
* Stretch Objective 1:
* Stretch Objective 2:

20XXQX OKRs

* Core Objective 1:
  * KR:
  * KR:
* Core Objective 2:
* Stretch Objective 1:

Templates make it easy to think and design clearly and rule out blind spots. (Though it may also introduce blind spots...) Here is a collection of templates that help you build better products.

1. PRFAQ - Press release and frequently asked questions
2. ADR - Architecture decision record
3. OKR - Objectives and key results
4. Eng Design Doc
5. Github Issue and PR
6. Investment Memo

How to define, design, and sell a product that people like to use? How to manage self and a team to deliver results effectively? Here are the answers from industry leaders and renowned professors.

Join us on Telegram or WeChat(id: onetptp) to discuss and upgrade your PM skills.

• Product Management
  • Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products? - Habits make you do things like no brainers. Businesses that know how to cultivate customer habits have a significant competitive advantage over others. The Hook Model teaches us how to form a user habit in four steps: trigger, action, variable reward and investment.
  • Telemetry Product Management Framework - A key role of product management is to make sure product development efforts are focused. The telemetry spreadsheet helps you visualize the roadmap, balance resource allocation, and hence keeps the project on track.
  • The Hierarchy of Engagement - To maximize the chances of building an enduring non-transactional customer company, we should build enduring engagement in three levels - growing engaged users, retaining users, and self-perpetuating.
  • Elements of Value - When customers evaluate a product or a service, they weigh the perceived value against the asking price. Products and services deliver fundamental elements of value that address four kinds of needs: functional, emotional, life-changing, and social impact.
  • MMRs, neutralizers, differentiators - There are three types of product features: MMRs, neutralizers, and differentiators. Customers often provide feedback on MMRs and neutralizers. The product management team must take responsibility for reinforcing the startup’s differentiator.
  • The 9x Effect - Companies often overweight their new product by a factor of 3 while consumers overweight the old product’s benefits by a factor of 3. So you have to be 9x better than the existing alternatives to win their market, which is called The 9x Effect.
  • 4 Guidelines for Website User Experience - To deliver a better website user experience, we concluded four guidelines from the book Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited: start with simple navigation; make an impressive home page; use visual hierarchies to present information; improve mobile loading speed.
  • Change Aversion - People hate new changes in a product they are already familiar with. To avoid change aversion, you can let users understand in advance and afterward, allow them to switch, ask them to give feedback, and finally remember to follow-through.
• Strategy and Decision Making
  • Good Strategy, Bad Strategy 1 - A good strategy is often surprising but reasonable. A bad strategy is a formalism. Here are four hallmarks to detect bad strategies: fluff; failure to face the challenge; mistaking goals for strategy; bad strategic objectives.
  • Good Strategy, Bad Strategy 2 - Bad strategies are easier to be made in terms of three facts: it’s painful to make a choice; people like to follow templates without thinking; people tend to misbelieve that a positive attitude and a strong desire can earn them everything they want.
  • The Second Curve - When you know where you should go, it is too late to go there; if you always keep your original path, you will miss the road to the future.
  • Case Study: Amazon acquiring Whole Foods - Driven by the goal to take a cut of all economic activity, Amazon decides to develop grocery services. However, its grocery business has no first-and-best customer due to cost disadvantage. By acquiring Whole Foods, Amazon is buying more than a retailer - it’s buying a customer.
• Marketing
  • What is a Market? - If two people buy the same product for the same reason but have no way they could reference each other, they are not part of the same market.
  • Diffusion of innovation - How does your product gain popularity? Answers from the model, the chasm, and the math.
  • TAL and the Chasm
  • Why take niche-and-next approach? - If the goal is to take over the mainstream market, why should we focus on the niche market in the beginning? First, You have to satisfy your customers so that they can be reference-able to others. Second, pragmatists favor market leaders. So be a big fish in a small pond.
  • Growth Phase 1: PMF - According to Ryan Holiday, to begin with PMF, we need to start with MVP and evolve with feedback, use data and information to back PMF, understand the needs of customers as early as possible and develop answers with the Socrates method.
  • Growth Phase 2: growth hack - How to find your growth hack? Ryan Holiday has some advice for you. Target a few hundred or a thousand key people, not millions. Do not target all people - target the right people. Focus on new user sign-ups instead of awareness. Use growth techniques.
  • Growth Team - A growth team is a team with the responsibility to measure and improve the flow of users. There are three mandatory skills of a growth leader: building growth models, developing experimentation models and creating customer acquisition channels.
  • AARRR Model - AARRR is a startup metrics developed by Dave McClure: Acquisition - how do users find you? Activation - do users have a great first experience? Retention - do users come back? Referral - do users tell others? Revenue - how do you make money?
  • Buyer Persona - To better sell products, you need to know your customers better. A generic buyer profile doesn’t help in knowing his buying decision. The most effective way to build buyer personas is to interview buyers who have weighed their options but finally made the decision you expect.
  • CAC / LTV / PBP - Customer Acquisition Cost is the cost to convert a customer to buy a product/service. Lifetime Value is the estimated net profit we can make from a customer. Payback Period refers to the period of time required to recoup the funds expended in an investment.
  • Lean Analytics: Simplified - Data and metrics play a vital role in business. The book Lean Analytics suggests some metrics for start-up founders to assess their success. By choosing the metrics more effectively, the entrepreneur can navigate through the unknown more effectively.
  • Lean Analytics: Slides
  • Mobile Analytics Metrics
  • How to run a tech community? - Why do people need the tech community? What is the value proposition of it? What are the interesting examples we can learn from? Why does it align with your blockchain company?
  • SaaS Sales Performance Metrics - David Schneider, ServiceNow's President of Customer Ops, shares his sales performance metrics for SaaS companies that are aiming for hyper-scale.
  • Persuasive Copywriting - Copywriting is the simplest and most direct way of impressing your customers. Persuasive copywriting = three means of persuasion + copywriting. Three means of persuasion are emotion, logic, and credibility.
  • 6 Elements to Create Sticky Ideas - Why some stories managed to spread quickly, live long and prosper? In Made to Stick, Heath brothers summarize six elements to create sticky ideas -- Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, and Story, SUCCES for short.
• People Management
  • Tips for First-time Managers - Julie Zhuo, the vice president of product design at Facebook, based on her own experiences as a first-time manager, gives some useful advice on how to become a good manager in her book The Making of a Manager.
  • Managerial Leverage - Managerial leverages can maximize the output of an organization. Those leverages are information gathering, information-giving, decision-making, nudging and being a role model.
  • Task-Relevant Maturity - A manager’s most important responsibility is to elicit top performance from his subordinates. Unfortunately, one management style does not fit all. A fundamental variable to find the best management style is task-relevant maturity (TRM) of the subordinates.
    • Managers and Bozos - Steve Jobs coined the phrase “bozo management”. Bozos referred to the professional managers who know how to manage but don’t know how to DO anything. It turns out the best managers are great individual contributors who never ever want to be a manager but decide to be one.
  • Responsibilities with RACI and DACI - When the organization grows too big, it becomes unclear that who should do what and who should decide what to do. RACI and DACI are here to clarify those responsibilities.
  • 3 Skills to Boost Group Performance - It is a common misbelief that the performance of a group hinges on the average capacity of its members. The truth is, the interaction and communication among group members are much more impactful. From the book The Culture Code, we conclude three skills to improve group performance: creating a safe working environment, showing your vulnerabilities, establishing a common purpose.
  • Making progress 30km/day - The Amundsen team successfully reached the South Pole first and won the competition with the Scott team. The success of the Amundsen team lies in their abundant resources and making progress 30km per day no matter what the weather is.
  • Good to Great - Leading a company to leap from good to great is like pushing a giant flywheel to breakthrough. Disciplined people, disciplined thought and disciplined action are indispensable.
  • Bikeshedding - Bikeshedding refers to the fact that members of an organization give disproportionate weight to trivial issues. To overcome the bikeshedding, we should have a clear agenda of the meeting and not mix complex topics with easy ones.
  • Ownership - The authors of the book Extreme Ownership were once task unit leaders of US Navy SEAL in Iraq. They draw on their experiences in the battlefields and conclude five rules for successfully leading a Navy SEAL team, providing useful references for any organization.
  • Building momentum for startup - The acceleration of rockets takes a propeller, and the acceleration of startups take the similar. There are two propellers: 1. Listen to the customer. 2. fast execution. How to achieve these two? Here is the answer from Suhail Doshi.
• UX Research
  • How Dropbox scale its design research - Dropbox's design research team grew from 4 members to 30+ today. How do they scale the efforts healthily, even when the headcount for the team is limited? More researches usually mean more harm if they are done improperly.
• Communication
  • Nonviolent Communication - Judgments and violence are tragic expressions of unmet needs. Nonviolent communication can improve communication quality by valuing everyone’s needs. It is NOT about being nice or making others do what we want.
  • Tailoring the arguments for persuading the decision maker - To improve the chances of success in persuading decision-makers, the way of message delivering should be considered carefully. There are five decision-making categories and they should be treated with different strategies.
  • Bullshit Detector - North Americans bullshit the most. Develop your mental device to detect deception, dishonesty, corruption, fraud, insincerity, hypocrisy and falsity.
  • Small Talking - Initiating a conversation with strangers is the biggest social fear. Actually, people often appreciate it when you make an effort to speak with them. Here we provide some ideas on how to start a small talk, what we should talk about and how to end it in a courteous way.
  • Exactly What to Say: Keywords for Impacts - There are several keywords and templates of sentences that can help you influence people. For example, a sentence like “I’m not sure it’s for you, but” is a non-intrusive recommendation. Saying “are you open-minded to do something” can encourage people to do something.
• Managing Self
  • Time Management: Principles - It is very inspiring to learn time management from system admins (SAs) because we share the same challenges such as endless interruptions, simultaneous projects, and rush requests. SAs’ principles of time management may solve your problem of time management.
  • Time Management: Focus - Focus is the best friend of productivity. A fundamental work we can do to stay focused is to de-clutter our brain. Always be aware of stress and sleep level. Remember an un-distracting environment is necessary. Deal with interruptions effectively.
  • Time Management: Routines - Routines are useful tools in time management since they enable us to think once and do many. A routine can be anything in real life that has certain patterns. Try to develop your own routines!
  • Time Management: Cycle System - The key to perfect follow-through is the cycle system. It is called the cycle because it repeats every day and the output of one day is the input to the next. Three tools are used in the process - a to-do list, a calendar and a list of long-term goals.
  • Time Management: Cycle System in Action - The cycle system enables people to follow through. It suggests every day should start with your to-do list, hours needed and plans. The secrets also lie in writing down goals and scheduling things with the calendar, instead of your brain.
  • Work-life balance - Some job and career choices are fundamentally incompatible with being meaningfully engaged on a day-to-day basis with a young family. We should be careful with time frame and approach balance in a balanced way.
  • How to Get Rich? - How to get rich without getting lucky? Naval Ravikant summarized a few tips for you. Seek wealth instead of money or status. Understand that ethical wealth creation is possible. Ignore people playing status games. You’re not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity.
  • Taking truly restful breaks - People will burn out when having too much pressure. A truly restful break can help them to recover willpower and the power of attention. To take truly restful breaks, you need to fully switch off, take short breaks early and often and get out of the office.
  • Loving long with healthy diets - American Journal of Medicine says, disease, not age, is the most significant cause of death among over-100-year-old patients. And diets tend to the primary reason for disease. People often underestimate how food affects their physical and mental health.
  • Productivity Tips from Professionals - MIT surveyed nearly 20,000 professionals from around the world - 50% from North America, 21% from Europe, 19% from Asia, and the rest from Australia, South America, and Africa. Takeaways are ...
• Business Model
  • Stages of Company Building - Initial Product > PMF > GTM Scale & Consistency > Org Building > Enduring Public Company
  • Economic Moat - An economic moat is the ability to maintain advantages over its competitors. It can provide protection for business’ long-term profits and market share. Technology is not an economic moat as it will always be duplicated.
  • Why Startups Have to Innovate? - Why startups have to innovate? Anna Karenina principle answers this question. Each successful company earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem whereas all failed are the same. If a startup does not innovate but copy from the market leader, people will not buy it.
  • Intangible Economy - The intangible economy is rising. It has three characteristics: Intangible assets can expand rapidly. Intangible assets are high-risk and irrecoverable investments. Intangible assets are easy to be duplicated.
  • Infinite Game - Business can operate like an Infinite Game and the ultimate goal of participants is to stay in the game as long as possible. In order to achieve that, businesses should get back to long-term thinking. In the book The Infinite Game, the author suggests companies need to have a Just Cause, build trusting teams, be flexible to changes, and learn from worthy rivals so as to gain advantages in the game.
• Leadership
  • Definition of Technology Leadership - We engineers often boast about leadership without a clear definition of what we are saying. Here are the definitions to distill the clarity from those chaotic ramblings of the mass.
  • Technology Leadership Radar - How to evaluate the performance of a technology leader? Each company or individual has its own answer with engineering rubrics. And those rubrics usually focus on a specific role - IC (Software Engineer, Product Manager, Designer) or Engineering Manager. Is there a grand unified framework to evaluate the potential business impact that a technology leader could make?
  • Start with Why - People don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it. Simon Sinek coined a phrase ‘Golden Circle’ which has three tiers, from core to exterior - why, how, and what. However, average leaders think from what, how, to why.
• Corporate Ladder
  • Sponsor - Successful Caucasian men receive more career guidance than women and multicultural professionals even though more women have mentors than men. The reason is mentors can not help with promotions but sponsors can.
  • 12 Habits that can Boost Women's Promotion - There are 12 habits American women think would be helpful to their promotions. For example, remember to claim your achievements often because others will not notice and reward your contributions unless you say it. Also, you need to be aware that expertise is not the only criteria.
• EP Doc Templates
  • EP Doc Templates - Templates make it easy to think and design clearly and rule out blind spots. (Though it may also introduce blind spots...) Here is a collection of templates that help you build better products.
  • PRFAQ - PRFAQ means press release and fequently asked questions. People at Amazon adopt it to write down requirements and important features of yet to be developed products.
  • ADR - ADR means Architectural Decision Record, a mini-doc to capture significant architectural changes that are not worth a full design doc.
  • OKR - A simple template for OKR with guiding policies.
  • Investment Memo - Template for writing an investment memo to capture the learning process before spending a large amount of money.

• Listen to customers

  • Continuously communicate with customers
    • Making friends with customers is the simplest strategy: once they become your friends, you can bother them for feedback frequently. To a certain extent, sending chat messages is easier than emails and meetings.
  • Pick customers you serve
    • Exclude customers who are not painful about the problem you are solving
    • Exclude customers who want features that you haven't made yet

• Fast execution

  • Define just the right scope
    • Usually, satisfy the simplest use case and wait to see what else people want. You will naturally know what to do next.
  • Develop an intuition for problem-solving
    • The product is a combination of art and science. Too data-driven products lack soul and surprise. How to practice intuition? Try to validate ideas without code.
  • Maximize autonomy and promote a culture of prioritization by persuasion. At the same time, allow teams to choose their work based on their emotions, lives, and interests. Use persuasiveness and dynamic adjustment to drive progress.

• Listen to Your Customers

  • Continuously communicate with customers
    • Making friends with customers is the simplest strategy: once you become friends, you can easily and casually ask for their feedback. At a certain point, sending a short message is easier than emailing or having meetings.
  • Selectively choose your customers
    • Eliminate customers who do not feel the pain of the problems you solve
    • Remove customers who want features that you have not yet developed

• Execute Quickly

  • Define the right scope
    • Generally, meet the most basic use case, and then wait to see what else people want. You will naturally know what to do next.
  • Cultivate a good intuition for problem-solving
    • Product is a blend of art and science. Overly data-driven products lack soul and surprise. How to practice intuition? Validate ideas without using code as much as possible.
  • Maximize autonomy and promote a culture of prioritization by persuasion. At the same time, allow teams to choose their work based on their emotions, lives, and interests. Drive progress through persuasion and dynamic adjustments.

There are billions of mediocre products in the world, and no one can experience them all in a lifetime. The vast majority of these are subpar; people don't need mediocre products. What people need are a few truly excellent ones. Creating excellence requires focus, and focus means saying no to good things because they hinder your ability to create something great.

One common mistake that website builders make is designing their sites like a product brochure. They go to great lengths to provide visitors with extensive details, but in reality, such websites fail to retain users.

The reason is that most people do not want to spend a lot of time figuring out how things work. They prefer to find answers through trial and error or simply by clicking around.

From a user's perspective, a good website allows them to discover what they need through their own exploration and experimentation. Based on the content from Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited, we have summarized four essential principles for designing a good website.

Start with a Clear and Simple Navigation Bar​

When users first visit a website, they often struggle to understand the scale of the site. Without knowing the website's structure, they may choose to leave. This is why a navigation bar is so crucial. On every page, users should be able to locate their current position, return to the homepage, search for keywords, and find information on how to use the site. Most importantly, the navigation bar must be clear and straightforward.

Design an Impressive Homepage​

The homepage is typically the most frequently visited page on the entire site, making its importance undeniable. Users' first impression of our website also depends on the homepage. Therefore, it is essential to design a visually striking homepage. Additionally, we need to ensure that the homepage conveys the most important information to visitors—our website's vision and goals. For example, we could include a tagline next to the website logo that describes the site's vision.

Use Visual Hierarchy to Present Information​

Users generally do not read text line by line when visiting a website; instead, they skim through the text to retrieve the information they need. If we want to convey specific information to users, we should learn to utilize visual hierarchy. The rule is simple—highlight key information. This way, users will understand what to focus on and where to click.

Improve Loading Speed on Mobile Devices​

A few years ago, creating responsive web pages was just a nice-to-have feature, but now it is essential. With the rapid advancement of mobile devices, users have increasingly high expectations for mobile websites and tend to spend more time surfing on their phones. At the same time, users are more likely to lose patience when loading speeds are slow. On one hand, we need to continually enrich and enhance the content and interactivity of mobile pages; on the other hand, we should strive to improve the loading speed of mobile websites to create the best user experience.