Jun 7Creating Product Systems (part 0)How to be a hit-making software company and ship repeatable, consistent innovation Product Systems Quarter: Before you think about how to optimize your product team, think about the information in this series first. It’s a 3 part series with this intro. The next few weeks are dedicated to helping you…Product Management8 min read
May 3Product Strategy in Product-led Growth (PLG) companiesA discussion on Product-led growth and how to develop effective strategy to drive superior outcomes Note: I was on Melissa Perri’ s podcast to talk about different aspects of product-led growth and strategy. We covered product strategy and a host of other interesting things in the space. Here is an…17 min read
Jan 4Getting your customer identifier right from day one.Avoiding this one common startup mistake This joint is really for founders and PMs who work in early stage software: Steve Blank (my former instructor and professor at UC Berkeley) famously said that a startup is an organization searching for a repeatable business model. With an emphasis on ‘searching’ —…Startup4 min read
Dec 8, 2021Where to fish to land a Unicorn (in B2B SaaS)A framework for investing and optimizing your company’s outcomes in b2b SaaS Intro Ezinne and I work a lot with founders and CEOs. And in the last decade, we have worked to become decent angel investors — first across Africa and now increasingly in the USA. For some of that time…Strategy11 min read
Jul 30, 2021Younger team members need help with remote work (WFH)Even when they don’t think they do In my very early twenties, I worked at a tech startup and then at Microsoft. Fresh out of grad school, my life was a shell of what it is now. New city, no friends except one from ‘back in the day’ who didn’t…Product Management3 min read
Apr 27, 2021On 37 Signals and Employee activismLooks like this is going to be a think we’re doing in tech companies now, instead of guiding and shaping what is natural for us as people. So I have some thoughts condensed from this Tweet: Tech world blowing up about 37 Signal’s new no causes at work policy…Work2 min read
Oct 19, 2020On Coinbase and Employee activismCoinbase is wasting its time with its new rules on being ‘apolitical’. This isn’t an ideological statement, it’s an expression of the fact that Coinbase is rowing against a tide that is bigger than it. For many people (and yes ‘employee’ is just a particular sub identity of a person)…Activism4 min read
Aug 17, 2020Culture for product-led growth:How to implement flat spaces in your company — So how do you create flat spaces at work? A few weeks back, I wrote about how crucial it is to create “flat spaces” for modern workers like the software creatives I work with every day. …Product6 min read
Jul 24, 2020Meditation for 7/24/2020 — The social fabric of the world is getting more chaoticWhich means the political fabric too. I’m an immigrant, who was born in Nigeria, a developing nation of 200+ million people. I’m also American and now have a dual identity as African American because I stand on the shoulders of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and a lot…Politics3 min read
Jul 21, 2020Meditation for 7/21/2020: Covid-19 is accelerating human changeBut no one knows what we will become “The pandemic will change everything”. Everyone says that now, but I don’t think people realize to what extent. Take the simple things — Zoom meetings have cut short the small ways people socialize when they get to a meeting early. Questions like…Meditation2 min read
