Product management is dead. There is no point in learning to code. AI agents are going to replace all our jobs. There is a lot of uncertainty and fear about how AI will impact jobs, especially in the tech sector. It remains to be seen how things will play out. But I’m certain that what got us here, won’t get us there. With the landscap...

These are notes from a recent webinar with Ibrahim Bashir and Sangeet Paul Choudary covering platform strategies and generative AI trends. The Coordination Problem This is the biggest problem in business today; work is being organized around specific problems rather than a traditional hierarchy. This is a shift from the past where the ...

Apple Intelligence launched today, something that as an AI enthusiast should make me excited. But honestly, it’s nothing to write home about. It’s hard to see any value in what was released, and for the most part, it feels rushed and janky. I’m a prime target for Apple to get this right. I have an iPhone 12 mini that I love and have no...

December 17, 1903, in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Two brothers stand wet and frozen to the bone. Despite the conditions, they are glowing with accomplishment. They’ve done something no one else has ever done. Successfuly flying a powered aircraft (and doing it three more times for good measure). The race for powered flight was full of ...

There is a revolution underway. A piece of technology is set to transform society. It promises to unlock things like universal knowledge and social equality. But we're not stopping there, it is also going to transform the way we work and unleash a new generation of creators. It's obvious what this technology is. It's the typewriter com...

Living in the Future “Breakthrough insights come from living in the future and tinkering directly with what's new about it—not by having passing ideas about it from a distant vantage point.” “Living in the future is the way you escape the baked-in assumptions of the status quo. It’s how you get directly acquainted with new assumptions ...

If you have worked in tech for any period of time, you have probably seen this image: It is also likely that you have been asked to do this in one form or another. At some point, we all have to draw the owl. We start with a vague idea or set of instructions and have to get to a complete, compelling outcome. It can be hard. It's uncomfo...

The contents of the most important library in the world are unreadable. Not because you lost your library card three years ago. They’re locked in ash and carbon. Nineteen hundred years ago, Mount Vesuvius erupted. We all know what it did to Pompeii, but what it did in Herculaneum is as important. The mud and ash spewing from the volcan...

I was recently poking around with some of my old code. It is a daily newsletter that is AI-generated. It reads the news for the day and then emails me a newsletter of things I should care about as a PM. Even though it wasn’t that long ago that I built this, it is crazy how things have changed. GPT-4 wasn’t out yet, and the OpenAI API d...

As technologists, we spend our lives looking at screens. We go to work and look at screens. We come home and watch other screens. We carry screens with us everywhere. We strap screens to our wrists for the times we can't look at the screens in our pockets. We are surrounded by tech and products, and when we're not it feels foreign. Wor...

I am too controlling of most things to hand them off to AI. For instance, writing this article or writing code. I want my writing to be in my voice and I am still learning to code, so no taking shortcuts there. But, I have found AI to be helpful and practical in automating lots of things. I wanted to share some of these in case they sp...

This is an attempt to distill down the set of principles that guide my approach to product. I'll be the first to admit that I am skeptical of product frameworks. There is not a one-size-fits-all approach to product management. Everyone has their unique take on product management. So take what I say here with a grain of salt, but I hope...

In the 1980s, AT&T commissioned McKinsey to estimate the size of the cellular telephone market. Their report estimated that at the peak there would be 900,000 cellphone subscribers. That is a far cry from reality, today it is estimated that 85-90% of the world owns a phone. People love to bring up this example to poke fun at McKinsey a...

Jeff Bezos once said that the reason Amazon worked was that customers have an "endless supply of wants." As product managers, we live this reality every day. Customer requests come hard and fast. And they never stop. Amid this overwhelming flood, the instinct may be to build whatever they ask for. But the secret to long-term success li...

Newsletters are dead! AI is now the first and last word in the daily news. If you are a journalist or a content creator, it is time to find a new line of work. By now, you have probably heard a declaration like this in the context of every field and every job. Maybe one day, AI optimists will be correct, and computers will do everythin...

You're about to get a masterclass in writing from a guy who spent some time in the slammer. Sounds a bit wild, right? But hold up – this isn't just any ex-con. We're talking about Gary Halbert, a true legend in the world of copywriting. Yeah, his past had its rough spots, but that didn't stop him from creating some of the most killer s...

What if I told you that product management frameworks were useless? That none of them works any better than any of the rest. Product management frameworks seem to multiply by the second, there are too many to keep track of. I found all of these in about 20 minutes of searching. (Admittedly, some were taken from my blog, where I advocat...

Right off the bat, we have to talk about the title of this post. Up until I was about to hit publish, it was called “Why Doesn’t Jira Have Dark Mode?”. But as I was doing some last-minute research, I came across an update that they were finally adding a dark theme. Despite them finally doing what seemed obvious, there are still valuabl...

I have wanted to write this post ever since I found this picture of Jeff Bezos announcing the Fire Phone. As a fan of Amazon’s approach to Product, I've spent lots of time diving into their various products. Their strategy is anchored in the customer. And for each product (successful or failed), you can see the customer at the core of ...

Like most of the world, I have gotten swept up in the ChatGPT hype. I was using it a ton when it launched. Using it on personal projects, at work, and looking for ways to incorporate it into products. But as time went on the shine faded. It gave wrong answers, made things up, or I often felt I could do higher quality work without it. B...

Recently the case was made that Amazon has one of the best venture portfolios of all time. It takes VC level swings on projects it self funds. And when they pay off - they pay off big time. Ben Gilbert encapsulated this idea by saying, “AWS is a venture bet in their portfolio that they own 100% of.” In another world, AWS would have bee...

Two caveats here (always a fun way to start an article): • I’m not trying to make any type of statement with this one. People can and should each do their research on Ed Snowden. The same thing goes for Joe Rogan. I’m not sharing my opinion on either person just some things I found interesting. More than anything sharing some tangentia...

In 2006 Creative Technologies sued Apple.The reason for the suit? Apple allegedly stole ideas and designs that led to the iPod. The case was eventually settled for $100 million. In another act of borrowing, Apple added a mouse to their computers after Steve Jobs saw one at Xerox PARC. To be fair Apple did change the mouse up, theirs ha...

When a market looks homogenous and saturated, how can you stand out? How do you differentiate your product to carve out market share? These were the questions asked by companies trying to get into video hosting in the early 2000's. At the time YouTube had begun to assert its dominance in the space. It was the first video platform to al...

I enjoyed this breakdown of Apple’s audio strategy from Aakash Gupta. The level of long-term product strategy and execution at Apple is hard to match. What struck me was the amount of added value Apple drove for consumers by combining products. Any of the products in its music ecosystem (Beats, AirPods, iPhone, Apple Music) would have ...

In the last two years I have written 46 blog posts. 20% are about Amazon or reference them. I’m more obsessed with Amazon than I ever thought I would be. (My bank account and mailman can verify this). Considering how they have shaped multiple industries, they deserve to have a lot written about them. Experimentation has been core to bo...

Kevin Weil is my newest product hero. He came from outside of product and technology. But hard work, focus, and determination led him to success. At a rapid pace he landed leadership roles at Twitter, Instagram, and now Planet. I had somehow missed his career and product leadership until recently. But once I heard him on 20VC, I had to...

What if there was an algorithm for success in your career? Navigating your career can often feel like wandering through a maze. There are countless paths and options you could take. It's hard to know where to turn and when to choose a different path. With the acceleration in AI, you may soon be able to have an algorithm that can tell y...

Hulu and YouTube are great case studies in why having a clear strategy matters. They are an even more interesting example because they chose opposite strategies. Despite both being streaming platforms, they chose strategies that fit their unique needs and constraints. In the early days of Hulu you were likely to discover that more show...

This past week I was working through a product problem with a few other people. I knew little about the space. And the problem was a bit abstract. When we started talking I kinda felt like this guy: Starting from scratch and with only a few data points to go on, we spent some time talking it out. After 30 minutes or so it felt like we ...