Handpicked articles, and resources sent once a week to Product People of all kinds - Product Leads, Product Managers, CEOs, Makers, and Entrepreneurs.
Initiator Creator - Issue 135
Initiator Creator - Issue #135
By Saurabh Y. // 17 September 2023
Developer
Death by a thousand microservices - Renegade Otter
There are multiple pitfalls to building with microservices, and often that minefield is either not fully appreciated or simply ignored. Teams spend months writing highly customized tooling and learning lessons not related at all to the core product.
The Worst Programmer I Know - Dan North
The great thing about measuring developer productivity is that you can quickly identify the bad programmers. I want to tell you about the worst programmer I know, and why I fought to keep him in the team.
Building Meta’s Threads App (Real-World Engineering Challenges) - Pragmatic Engineer
How did the engineering team build the app, and handle an unexpectedly intense launch?
Computers are learning to read our minds - StackOverflow
The home team chats with Gašper Beguš, director of the Berkeley Speech and Computation Lab, about his research into how LLMs—and humans—learn to speak.
Designer
Complexity of Product Design in SaaS Companies and Startups - UX Planet
Exploring the Challenges and Triumphs of Designing for the Ever-Evolving Tech Industry
8 micro tips for remarkably better typography - UX Collective
Small details that will greatly improve the readability and aesthetics of your website
Successful iteration requires going beyond agile - UX Collective
UX design methods are cheaper, faster, and more effective at gathering data than “build, measure, learn” — but agile is designed not to take advantage of them.
Doodle Ipsum - The lorem ipsum of illustrations - Doodle Ipsum
Just customize your doodles, grab the code, and use them on your web prototypes, landing pages, or no-code tools.
Entrepreneur
Your customers hate MVPs. Make a SLC instead. - A Smart Bear
“MVP” is a selfish process, abusing customers so you can “learn.” SLC is an alternate philosophy that results in fast, validated learning, that customers love.
From data-driven to decision-driven - UX Collective
Leading with questions, not looking for answers
Do You Know What Type of Business You Actually Run? - Every
Figuring out which one fits your business can help you focus your attention, decide your profitability model, and nail down your marketing and sales approaches.
How to excel at asynchronous communication with your distributed team - Atlassian
Cut down on meetings and remake team practices, without sacrificing effectiveness.
Marketer
A guide for finding product-market fit in B2B - Lenny's Newsletter
Though there’s no formula for finding PMF, you can significantly increase your odds, and save yourself a lot of time and heartache, by studying the lessons of those who’ve made it.
SEO gap analysis: Outrank your competitors with data - WIX
what an SEO gap analysis is, how it can help you outrank your competitors, and how to conduct your analysis across three essential areas of SEO: content, technical SEO, and backlinks.
How To Find Your Brand Voice - Branding Strategy Insider
Your own voice is an instant signal that helps people recognize you; it engages not only the eardrum, but your other four senses. The same goes for creating a brand voice for social, digital and real-life communities.
Interesting Read
Admitting What Is Obvious - Every
By contrast, admitting what is obvious is freeing and motivating. But it’s terrifying to do it. Sometimes the most obvious truths about ourselves are hard to see because the consequences of those truths seem so dire.
The Surprising Power of The Long Game - Fs
The short game is intermittent. It’s as if Sisyphus pushes his huge boulder halfway up a steep hill, gets tired, lets it roll down the hill, and says to himself, “I’ll come back and do this tomorrow.”
Why Tunnels Could Build Tomorrow's Cities - Every
The history and future of underground infrastructure.
Community Submissions
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Outro
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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.
Initiator Creator - Issue #139 - ( Read in browser ) By Saurabh Y. // 21 April 2024 Presented by DesignThingy This Week's Notes: Ever-increasing Paradigm of Microsites The traditional concept of microsites is elegantly straightforward: build highly specialized small websites to target niche audiences for lead generation, sales, and brand visibility. Mainly utilized by companies, particularly for marketing (esp. engineering as marketing). These microsites are usually free tools, tailored to...
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...
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...