A Practical Resource Catalog for PMs to Feed Product Sensibility
There’s a notion that product sensibility or intuition is an intangible, binary quality. I think that’s half true. And whether one is born with such talent, one can actively develop an informed intuition with the right exposure.
If you listen to podcasts like “How I built this” or read interviews of successful entrepreneurs, you’ll find a pattern in how these founders discovered their eureka moments.
The story goes:
- you have this problem
- you can’t find a suitable solution in the market
- but you can (probably subconsciously) tap into past experiences, bits of knowledge, and existing tools in the market, and piece them together to formulate a great solution.
For anyone who wants to build great products, finding and feeding those bits of knowledge and insights can build up better product intuition overtime.
So here’s a practical list of resources to bookmark (if you don’t have them already). Set 30 minutes aside everyday to read, learn, and get inspired.
#TLDR version:
- Market insights: CB Insights, Stratechery, a16z
- Cultural trends: Vox — The Goods, Vox Culture, Trend Hunter, Pinterest’s top 100 trends
- Problem discovery: Reddit, product support rooms like Apple’s support community
- Frameworks: OKRs, Growth Marketing Handbook, Strategy framework for startups, GV Library
1. Market Insight & Business Building
If you can’t keep up with the news and Tweets and your inbox, subscribe to these 3 sites for a complete picture of market trends, predictions, and analyses.
A market intelligence platform that produces concise, thoughtful, “first-dibs” summaries of market trends across many industries. Find deep dives into topics like how tech giants are taking on healthcare, market maps of CPG & Retail landscape, live briefing on the future of aging, and more.
Sign up for the weekly newsletter here, even if just for the quirky subject lines (which the team A/B tests for open rates).
Stratechery by Ben Thompson
The creator of the Aggregation Theory, Ben’s brilliant essays gives thoughtful analysis of technology strategy. It’s systems thinking at its best. If you want to learn/refresh fundamental concepts to support your big picture strategy-thinking, bookmark the site for free weekly updates and/or subscribe to his Daily Updates ($10/month). No wonder it’s a favorite amongst VCs and corporate execs.
The infamous Andreesen Horowitz (or a16z to save you 16 letters from typing the full name), is a fantastic resource of business building best practices for entrepreneurs and product creators. From broad concepts around business model innovation and growth to specific recommendations on measuring the right metrics, learn from the collected experience of its general partners.
Here’s a recent favorite to start: Outgrowing Advertising: Multimodal Business Models as a Product Strategy.
If you’re more visual, watch their Youtube videos, here’s a brilliant summary of 10 years of software eating the world.
2. Cultural trends
Culture is the most powerful medium to relate to people. So staying in tune with culture trends means understanding psychographic characters, consumer behaviour, and even just random things that caught the virality bug.
“The Goods” column by Vox is such a treat to read. It breaks down observations of what we buy, why we buy, and why it matters. If you’re into consumer products or retail, start with “the Best of Everything” series.
The “Culture” column is more of a guilty pleasure. Let’s be honest, there’s a lot of coverage on movies, celebrities, but they’re done in good taste. Marketers and PR persons can learn valuable lessons from the Fiji Water Girl meme. Product makers can get inspired by the secret to Marie Kondo’s viral success: give people an experience of control.
If you get past the overwhelming website, you’ll find value in its trend reports on retail, e-commerce, and consumer products. You’ll also find “Trend Hunter AI”, who scours millions of trend data to produce an at-a-glance look of trends in products, people, events, insights, and more. For example, “self-serve kiosks for fresh foods” are currently trending, which speaks to the growing culture of balancing convenience and wellness.
Pinterest’s top 100 trends for 2019
Every year-end, Pinterest Business summarizes the top pinned and searched ideas on its visual platform. (Who knows the creative agency that made those jaw-droppingly gorgeous graphics for this landing page??) This summary covers themes from travel to health & wellness to food and everything lifestyle in between. It gives such a great flavor on what people are seeking inspirations for, like “side hustles at home”, which grew by 690% in search, and that “self care” increased 140% in search.
3. Problem Discovery
It’s shocking how often we still create products by our own assumptions of what our users need, rather than basing on compelling data and feedback from users themselves. Sometimes that means you end up explaining the problem to your customers rather than your solution. So in addition to your existing market research, try below.
First things first, set a screen-time restriction on your phone for your Reddit app, we all know what happens when you get into the “Reddit zone”…
Reddit users are real and expressive, making it a great place to scour problem ideas. Hang out in the subreddits related to your area of interest and listen to real people’s voice. You can find some really interesting stories, unique pain points, and strangers offering creative solutions. Off my chest is a great subreddit to start.
Support rooms of your favourite products
For example, Apple’s support community. This is a bit tedious, but it’s where people share their problems with a great product. Whether it’s a consistent small bug or a user experience issue, others’ problems can be your opportunity.
4. More Frameworks
Perfect for beginning of the year, define and share goals for you and your team with the OKR system (if you don’t already). Start with John Doerr’s book Measure What Matters. OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) is a very simple system forces companies to define and measure their priorities, which are aligned and communicated across the organization. It’s how Intel, Google, and other great companies enable their explosive growth. No time for the book? Watch John’s Ted talk or read this Medium article by The Fundamentals, which includes a OKR template.
This online guide written by Julian Shapiro is such a fantastic resource for those who’s reached product market fit and is looking to drive that steep up-right growth curve. From A/B testing to content marketing, this is that ONE place that summarizes pages of Google Search on best practices and provides useable tools and metrics.
Strategy framework for startups
As the name suggests, this site provides fundamental business building tools and frameworks like opportunity discovery, startup heuristics, business model archetypes. It’s a great start for those looking to pursue a new idea to leverage these tools for structured thinking.
Google Venture’s Library is another great resource of advice and lessons on entrepreneurship, product management, and design, from GV partners.
What are your go-to resources?
Let me know in the comments below!
Hit/hold the 👏 if you enjoyed this piece. And share it with anyone who’s looking for a comprehensive list of resources on product/business building.
Thanks for reading!
— Christine
