The hottest Product Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
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Top Design Topics

How Duolingo reignited user growth

Lenny's Newsletter • 9571 implied HN points • 28 Feb 23
💼 Business Tech Marketing Growth Product Leadership
  1. Duolingo achieved 4.5x user growth over four years through innovative strategies like leaderboards and push notifications.
  2. Their focus on improving retention over new user acquisition led to significant improvements in engagement metrics.
  3. Using data and models, like Zynga and MyFitnessPal did, helped Duolingo identify North Star metrics and drive growth effectively.

Now live for all: Substack Notes

Substack Blog • 748 HN points • 11 Apr 23
🕹 Technology Product Network Content Subscription Mobile Apps
  1. Substack Notes is a new space for sharing short-form content and connecting with other writers and readers on the Substack platform.
  2. Notes can help writers grow their audience and revenue by sharing links, images, quick thoughts, and snippets from Substack posts.
  3. Writers can use Notes to recommend others' work, share commentary and inspiration, 'restack' a quote, and provide a behind-the-scenes look into their content.
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Are You Doing Product Management or Bullshit Management?

Untrapping Product Teams • 687 implied HN points • 10 May 23
💼 Business Management Product Decision-making Stakeholders
  1. Companies often misunderstand the role of product management, focusing more on pleasing stakeholders than solving end-users' problems.
  2. Bullshit management happens when product managers get stuck in tasks unrelated to actual product management, like gathering requirements from stakeholders or attending numerous meetings.
  3. To escape bullshit management, focus on evidence-based decision-making, empower teams to make decisions, prioritize learning over planning, and resist anti-patterns that hinder product management success.

Leaving product analytics

timo's substack • 314 implied HN points • 05 Jun 23
🕹 Technology Analytics Product Data Warehousing
  1. Product analytics tools like Amplitude, Mixpanel, and Heap are evolving to offer new features like marketing attribution and user experience analytics.
  2. New players in the market like Kubit are focusing on providing product analytics directly on cloud data warehouses.
  3. The future of analytics is moving towards event analytics, opening up new possibilities and challenges for businesses.

Five product design concepts

A Bit Gamey • 20 implied HN points • 11 Feb 24
🪑 Design Product Simplicity Thinking
  1. Simple design is often harder than complex design but worth it in the end. It's about stripping away unnecessary elements and focusing on core functionality.
  2. First principles thinking, 80/20 rule, MVP, and understanding user journey are important product design concepts. They help in focusing on what truly matters to users and building valuable digital products.
  3. When designing digital products, prioritize simplicity, test underlying assumptions, focus on high-value features, build MVPs for initial user feedback, and ensure a smooth user journey.

Our conference season watchlist

Top of the Lyne • 117 implied HN points • 02 Aug 23
💼 Business Tech Marketing Events Sales Product
  1. September is a busy month for conferences and tech events.
  2. Major conferences like Inbound, SaaStr Annual, and Dreamforce are key events to attend for marketing, sales, and revenue teams.
  3. Various events like Sales Enablement Summit and Pendomonium offer specialized learning opportunities for specific teams within organizations.

Eat a Bit of Candy

Path Nine • 37 implied HN points • 03 Dec 23
🏥 Health & Wellness Reflections Product Reading Listening
  1. Don't take life too seriously, indulge in what you love like Charlie Munger enjoyed candy.
  2. Explore the Cognitive Bias Codex for a roadmap to understanding how we think, live, and work.
  3. Check out reading material like 'Seeking Wisdom' or 'Poor Charlie's Almanack' to enhance decision-making skills and become a better thinker.

Navigating the First 90 Days Without (Too Many) Hiccups

Pragmatism • 64 implied HN points • 07 Mar 23
💼 Business Management Product Strategy Leadership Career
  1. In the first 30 days, focus on building relationships and understanding the company dynamics.
  2. From 30 to 60 days, dive into working with product and engineering counterparts, prioritize quick wins, and showcase thought leadership.
  3. Within 60 to 90 days, become a key stakeholder in planning, ship your first feature, refine the product roadmap, and take ownership of your product suite.

Unreasonable Support: Design for the Unhappy Path

The Kahneman Bot • 2 HN points • 19 Feb 24
🪑 Design UX Product Customer Support User Experience
  1. Designing for the unhappy path in user experiences is crucial for creating user loyalty and retention.
  2. Unhappy path design can trigger a sense of reciprocity in users, leading to positive responses to issues or faults.
  3. Providing what users perceive as unreasonable levels of support can result in long-term loyalty and cost-effective retention strategies.

Introducing Substack Notes

Substack Blog • 32 HN points • 05 Apr 23
🕹 Technology Subscription Network Product Social media Internet
  1. Substack is introducing Substack Notes to allow short-form content and recommendations within the platform.
  2. In this subscription-based network, creators are rewarded for valuable work and the focus is on converting casual readers to paying subscribers.
  3. Substack aims to create a constructive discussion space by allowing users to control their subscription universe, keeping out trolls and encouraging valuable contributions.

On the Limits of One Mind

TeamCraft • 6 implied HN points • 20 Nov 23
💼 Business Management Leadership Startups Technology Product
  1. When a CTO takes over as a CPO, it can lead to negative outcomes for both engineering and product functions.
  2. Expecting one individual to excel in both technology and product domains can be detrimental due to cognitive limits and lack of focus.
  3. A dual CTO/CPO role can result in a lack of product thinking, bias towards technical solutions, strategic edge loss, communication challenges, and difficulty in balancing responsibilities.

Engineering Leadership Principles

Software Engineering by Hugo Dias • 19 implied HN points • 03 Mar 23
🕹 Technology Engineering Leadership Management Product Delivery
  1. High-performing teams have clear purpose, small size, stable structure, and autonomy for improvement.
  2. Ensuring project completion, minimizing waiting times, and shipping regularly are key to effective project delivery.
  3. Product success relies on setting clear goals, measuring progress, iterating frequently, and valuing team ideas in feature development.

Shipt: Moving from startup to mature product organization

Behind the Product • 1 HN point • 13 Feb 24
💼 Business Management Product Feedback Analytics Hiring
  1. The shift from project-led to product-led culture is important for growth and longevity.
  2. Structuring a product and tech organization around market segments and operational functions is crucial for a multi-sided marketplace like Shipt.
  3. Emphasizing outcome-focused and metrics-driven problem-solving, and actively seeking and incorporating customer feedback are key priorities for Shipt's product organization.

The Art & Science of Demand Generation

Market-ed-it • 11 implied HN points • 17 Jul 23
💼 Business Marketing Product Innovation Strategy Education
  1. Demand generation is not just about capturing existing demand but also about creating new demand by educating the audience about your product or service.
  2. To create original demand, educate your audience about how your product solves a pain point they may not even be aware of.
  3. Manipulating existing demand involves strategies like content marketing, influencer partnerships, and understanding where your target audience spends time.

Ask Who It's For

Tigerfeathers! • 4 implied HN points • 18 Oct 23
💼 Business Marketing Audience Entrepreneurship Market Product
  1. Gary Dahl's success with the Pet Rock stemmed from targeting a specific audience that resonated with his product.
  2. Identifying a smallest viable audience is crucial for entrepreneurs and creators to tailor their offerings effectively.
  3. Rather than trying to appeal to everyone, focus on finding the right audience that is already interested in what you have to offer.

FAQ: Product and Design in early stage startups

Curious product • 0 implied HN points • 17 Mar 23
💼 Business Product Design Startups
  1. Having a full-time designer is often more beneficial for early stage startups than having a full-time product manager.
  2. In a product squad, engineering, product, and design roles should be balanced and share accountability for the product's success.
  3. Deciding whether product and design should be under the same leadership depends on factors like team development and domain knowledge.

How Notion Used Community to Scale to 20M+ Users

Digital Native • 0 implied HN points • 10 May 23
💼 Business Community Marketing Product Growth Influencer
  1. Notion used community to scale to over 20 million users, proving the importance of leveraging community for growth.
  2. Community can be a versatile tool for startups, serving as both a marketing distribution channel and a source of product feedback.
  3. Building a strong community requires authenticity, relationship-building, and understanding different user preferences, and it can significantly impact product development.