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Initiator Creator Newsletter

Initiator Creator - Issue 140

Published 20 days ago • 4 min read

Initiator Creator - Issue #140 - ( Read in browser )

By Saurabh Y. // 28 April 2024

Presented by DesignThingy

This Week's Notes:
Directionless bull

All our efforts get wasted when we get stuck in the cycle of directionless efforts to get better outcomes.

A directionless effort is a bigger blunder than a wrong-direction approach. After all, you can’t say which direction is good or bad without reaching the outcomes, but changing your direction frequently will take you nowhere.

You will be lost forever and your effort will die in the end.

It would be best if you determined the direction first of all for a strong and full effort. Consider all the things that can impact the favorable outcome that you want to achieve. And also, consider all the bad things that can happen in the process and what are the shortfalls that you can tolerate.

After this, you will be able to determine the most appropriate direction to follow with possible outcomes and shortfalls. Also, get a clear vision of when to change your direction.

Did you like it?

Entrepreneur

The Not So Cookie-Cutter Approach to Company Building — 8 Lessons from Zapier - FirstRound

Wade Foster, founder and CEO of Zapier, shares his contrarian takes on building a billion-dollar company — from fundraising advice, go-to-market strategy, and hiring mistakes.

How to make an impact in your first 90 days - Lenny's newsletter

25 quick wins from top leaders at Ramp, Canva, HubSpot, Wiz, Google Gemini, Dropbox, and more

Testing Business Ideas: The Ultimate Validation Experiments Library - Product Compass

Everything the Product Manager needs to validate hypotheses about value, usability, viability, and feasibility.

How to Do Hard Things - Every

A therapy practice helped me face my struggles as a founder

We found PMF. Here were the signs - CommandBar

People make product-market-fit seem like this mythical thing you can pinpoint to an exact moment, but it’s never that.


Marketer

How Dovetail Grows - Product Growth

The story of Dovetail is the story of PLG itself: a obsessive focus on the end user, a commitment to making the product as accessible and valuable as possible, and a belief that if you build something truly great, the rest will follow.

How to build an online community around your content - Ghost

Use this six-step process to build a digital group your members will love.

Reddit's growth to 1 billion monthly users, explained - Substack

This unprecedented growth has led marketing experts to view Reddit as a formidable competitor to the likes of Wikipedia, YouTube, and even Amazon in certain high-value commercial searches.

Reverse Trials - Substack

Companies often find themselves wrestling with the choice between offering a Trial or adopting a Freemium model. My take? Opt for neither, because Reverse Trials are simply.. better.

Developer

8 Google Employees Invented Modern AI. Here’s the Inside Story - Wired

They met by chance, got hooked on an idea, and wrote the “Transformers” paper—the most consequential tech breakthrough in recent history.

Meta and Open - Stratechery

Meta isn’t just licensing Horizon OS, it is also opening up the allowable app model.

Building Bluesky: a Distributed Social Network (Real-World Engineering Challenges) - Pragmatic Engineer

Bluesky is built by around 10 engineers, and has amassed 5 million users since publicly launching in February this year. A deep dive into novel design decisions, moving off AWS, and more.

A Gentle Introduction to CRDTs - VLCN

Conflict Free Replicated Data types (CRDTs) can be tricky. You may spend months reading papers and implementing different algorithms before they finally click and become simple.

Latency numbers every frontend developer should know - Vercel

A frontend take on Jeff Dean's "Latency Numbers Every Programmer Should Know".


Designer

Drams - Framer components inspired by Dieter Rams' principles - Framer

Drams is a platform where Framer components meet Dieter Rams' timeless design ethos and principles.

Ethics in times of growth design - Doc

when the market is contracting, the focus drastically shifts to optimization: how we can make the most, or squeeze the most, from the market base we already have. This extreme focus on marginal growth is when designers are pushed to the limit

3 Models for Framing Software Complexity - Better by Design

Using 37 Signals' visual metaphors to strategically approach software projects.

Wedges — Open-source UI components for React by Lemon Squeezy - Lemon Squeezy

Beautiful UI components for React, lovingly crafted with the Wedges Design System, Radix UI, and Tailwind CSS.

How to generate color palettes for design systems - Matthew Strom

It represents not just a technical solution but a philosophical shift in how we think about color in design systems, emphasizing the balance between creativity and inclusivity.


Interesting Read

The Tyranny of Job Titles: From Vanity Growth to Personal Growth - Ness Labs

People end up doing what will look good rather than what’s actually good.

4 Things About Anger Everyone Should Know - The Friendly Mind

four surprising facts about anger and how they can help you deal with your anger better by changing the way you think about and respond to it.

Why Hope Is Different Than Optimism - Yes Magazine

In conversation, “hope” and “optimism” can often be used as synonyms. But there’s an important gap between them, as psychology research suggests.


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

14 of the Best Nonfiction Books You Should Read - Mark Manson

Mark Manson shared 14 non-fiction books and also provided a brief summary for each book

Sponsored by DesignThingy

We Develop Websites and MVP Products

A Remote Team Transforming User Experiences Through Code. DesignThingy develops pixel-perfect, responsive, semantic, standards-compliant websites and MVP web apps.


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.

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