Startup

The remote post-it wall

I wouldn’t normally write a blog post promoting a single product, but I want to make an exception here because it’s…

Tomato, tomato: getting outsourcing right.

Jonny Ive and the industrial design team at Apple can sometimes be heard talking…

What’s the map of your competitive landscape?

Andy Dennis and I have started the process of learning Wardley mapping together with a bit of our downtime. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a method of mapping the components of your business that produce customer value.

Brute force marketing

This is my name for startups that fall into a dubious category: those that don’t survive because the users think the…

Doing ‘nothing’ is sometimes the right option

A big constraint that product teams do not often talk about, or deal with, is the constraint of *having* to make something.

Not making something is not an option. We fetishise work; we want to feel productive, and we’re…

Why do good people leave?

Here’s a warning sign about organisations that comes up again and again: why do good people leave?

“Design like you’re right, and test like you’re wrong.”

The act of writing value propositions

Most of the elevator pitches I’ve ever read were clearly written by people who don’t do it often, are too close to the problem, and subsequently don’t work hard enough to make it crystal clear. It’s one of those mostly undervalued skills — writing a concise vision…

Remote design is hard

Designing remotely, and doing it well, is hard. The best design is collaborative, empathic, and is a conversation. Programming work can decouple people physically, I don’t believe that design works best with people apart from each other.