profile

Initiator Creator Newsletter

Initiator Creator - Issue 125

Published 12 months ago • 3 min read

Initiator Creator - Issue #125

By Saurabh Y. // 6 May 2023

Developer

How Uber Forecast Demand at Airports - Uber

Uber built a new models for demand-forecasting and effective queue length on the top of the Michelangelo platform, productionized it, and integrated with current Driver app

How Figma draws inspiration from the gaming world - Figma

Engineering Manager Alice Ching discusses the parallels between developing gaming interfaces and building Figma and FigJam, and why our tech stack is more similar to a game engine's tech stack than a web stack.

How LinkedIn Adopted A GraphQL Architecture for Product Development - LinkedIn

how the GraphQL layer is architected for use by LinkedIn's internal engineers to build member and customer facing applications.

How to do linear regression and correlation analysis - Lenny's Newsletter

Steps, methods, tools, and use cases for locating predictable user actions and improving retention

Blur camera background - Chrome

Background Blur API is not enabled in Chrome, but it can be experimented with in Chrome 114 by explicitly enabling the functionality. You can activate it locally by enabling the "Experimental Web Platform features" flag


Designer

Fonts can die. Are we doing enough to save them? - UX Collective

Fonts that fail to adapt to new technologies can become outdated and fall out of use. However, beyond this, are we also limiting type diversity by only reviving certain fonts?

Prompt-Driven Design - Felicis

Prompts are commands given via text or voice that tell software what to do.

Heliograph - Mixpanel's brand design system - Mixpanel

Heliographs are tools used for optical communication. Typically, mirrors are used to reflect sunlight as flashes of light, transmitting Morse code over vast distances.

Resigns and gains, how the negotiation works in UX teams - UX Collective

Some recommendations to consider when approaching hard conversations from UX teams.


Entrepreneur

Founder & CEO is kinda a BS title - Hey

Unless your company is probably 100+, CEO isn't really a job anyway. It's more of a role someone needs to play occasionally.

I’m Sorry, But Those Are Vanity Metrics - FirstRound

how to prevent teams from getting seduced by vanity metrics — and tips on honing their instincts for real, productive measurement.

Building For The End - OpenView

Millsy led monetization at Runkeeper through the Asics acquisition, and had a brief stint in e-commerce before landing at HubSpot. He is currently overseeing their  product-led growth strategy and self-service business.

3 Phase Project Closure Process For Project Managers To Know - DPM

Without a proper project closure process, projects can exist in a state of limbo where nobody's really sure if any more work is being done.

Connecting New Subscribers with Value - Substack

the stuff you do to improve retention usually makes your product better, making it more compelling to potential customers.


Marketer

How live shopping is shaping the future of retail - Digiday

The idea is similar to QVC shopping channels, but across social media platforms and oftentimes are hosted by content creators. In recent years, giants from Meta to Amazon have experimented with live shopping features.

Inside Hootsuite’s Product-led Growth Journey - OpenView

You don’t hear much about the successful transitions from a sales-led focused business to a product-led business.

7 examples of product-led growth in mobile apps - UX Collective

How the top 1% of apps grow through PLG (Duolingo, Bumble & more)

The Future of SEO in a Post-ChatGPT World - Animalz

While SEO isn’t dying, it is undergoing substantial changes, accelerated by generative AI, and it’s worth hazarding a few educated guesses about what it might look like on the other side.


Interesting Read

What is Parkinson's Law and why is it sabotaging your productivity? - Atlassian

Parkinson’s Law is the old adage that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion. The term was first coined by Cyril Northcote Parkinson in a humorous essay he wrote for “The Economist” in 1955.

How to set yourself free with ritual - Psyche

For a life of harmonious ease, find the rhythm in the everyday: make your world your temple and submit to its sacred ritual

It’s Okay to Outgrow the Life You Thought You Wanted - Medium

How do we untether ourselves from the people we imagined we’d become?


Community Submissions

If you like to share a project or article with the rest of the readers then please DM me at @ICforpreneurs or hit reply


Outro

🙏Thank you for reading Initiator Creator issue #125

Forward to a Product Person and let them know where they can subscribe Initiator Creator.

Want to get featured? Submit an article for us to include or hit reply.

Anything else? Hit reply to send us feedback, review or say hello.

Initiator Creator Newsletter

Handpicked articles, and resources sent once a week to Product People of all kinds - Product Leads, Product Managers, CEOs, Makers, and Entrepreneurs.

Read more from Initiator Creator Newsletter

Initiator Creator - Issue #138 By Saurabh Y. // 17 March 2024 Presented by DesignThingy This Week's Notes: Phase II Starts Here This week's issue came 22 weeks after the last issue, a lot of things have changed. The purpose of the Initiator Creator was not clear from the start. Some of you know about and tested the tools that we created last year but we dropped all of them without releasing them for you all because of the poor market fit. After taking a long break and spending my time...

about 1 month ago • 5 min read

Initiator Creator - Issue #137 By Saurabh Y. // 08 October 2023 Entrepreneur Mediocre Success Is Worse Than Outright Failure - Every Avoid the messy middle and aim for unambiguous results You Can't Hack Product Positioning - Felicis This problem is acute in SaaS where it is exceedingly rare for there to be true product moats; many startups end up competing on distribution and positioning. Big Tech’s Biggest Bets - Matthew Ball Or What It Takes to Build a Billion-User Platform Next-gen content...

6 months ago • 3 min read

Initiator Creator - Issue #136 By Saurabh Y. // 24 September 2023 Developer TypeScript Origins: The Documentary - Youtube The Documentary features core contributors and community members like Anders Hejlsberg, Steve Lucco, Luke Hoban, Daniel Rosenwasser, Ryan Cavanaugh, Amanda Silver, Matt Pocock, Josh Goldberg & many more How Microsoft does Quality Assurance (QA) - Pragmatic Engineer Microsoft has played an outsized role in the development and importance of quality assurance across the...

7 months ago • 2 min read
Share this post