The hottest Product Development Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
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The bull case for AI startups

The AI Frontier • 59 implied HN points • 13 Jun 24
🕹 Technology AI Startups Innovation Product Development Market Trends Enterprise
  1. AI startups have a lot of room for innovation, even with big companies investing heavily in AI. There are still many opportunities for new ideas and products.
  2. Startups can take more risks and try out unusual ideas that bigger companies might avoid due to reputation concerns. This freedom can lead to exciting new products.
  3. While big companies have access to a lot of data and resources, startups can be more flexible and connect data from various sources. This can give them an advantage in creating better solutions for customers.

Getting the product on the hands of customers ♥️

André Casal's Substack • 19 implied HN points • 07 Aug 24
💼 Business Entrepreneurship Startups Product Development Marketing Technology
  1. It's important to get feedback from both experienced and beginner developers to improve the product. This will help make the product easier for everyone to use.
  2. The landing page needs continuous updates based on feedback to better attract potential users.
  3. Preparing for a launch on platforms like Product Hunt involves creating promotional content and a support network to maximize visibility and impact.

A production assistant for every show

Substack • 454 implied HN points • 18 Jun 24
🕹 Technology Product Development Content creation Digital marketing AI Tools
  1. Substack now has a video clipper tool that helps you create short, shareable video clips from your content. This can help attract more viewers and subscribers on platforms like TikTok and YouTube.
  2. Automatic transcription and captioning features make it easier for creators to share their work and improve accessibility. This saves time and allows writers to focus more on their content.
  3. A new support chatbot is available for quick answers and assistance. It can also connect you with a human support agent if needed, making it easier to get help on Substack.

What I learned working at a high-growth crypto startup

Parth's Playground • 141 implied HN points • 05 Dec 24
🔮 Crypto Startups Business Growth Product Development Team culture Market Strategy
  1. In a fast-changing startup, there's often no clear right answer. Instead of seeking perfect alignment, focus on taking thoughtful action based on your intuition and feedback.
  2. Expect frequent changes in your role and company direction. Embracing unpredictability can help you adapt quickly and align your work with the company's goals.
  3. It's crucial to build specific knowledge in your field to stand out. Deep expertise leads to better opportunities and helps you make meaningful connections.

Week in review

André Casal's Substack • 19 implied HN points • 05 Aug 24
💼 Business Entrepreneurship Marketing Learning Self-Improvement Product Development
  1. Mastery cycles help you learn skills quickly by breaking the process into steps: try, review, and improve. This keeps you organized and focused on growth.
  2. The Dunning-Kruger effect shows that people often think they're smarter than they are at first. Overcoming challenges makes you more aware of how much there is to learn.
  3. Reflection and planning are just as important as doing the work. Taking time to think about what you've done helps you get better and avoid falling into bad habits.
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User Research Guide For Founders, Part 3: Run Sessions + Identify Insights

Elizabeth Laraki • 79 implied HN points • 17 May 24
💼 Business Startups User Research Product Development Market Analysis
  1. When running user research sessions, make sure to plan the logistics and keep the session length manageable. It's important to stick to your script while encouraging participants to share their thoughts during the session.
  2. After completing the sessions, document the findings by organizing feedback into themes. This will help you identify common issues and insights that can improve your product.
  3. Share the insights in a clear and concise format, highlighting major findings and prioritizing issues that need attention. This helps ensure everyone on your team understands the feedback and can work together on solutions.

A Complete Product Discovery Guide

Untrapping Product Teams • 412 implied HN points • 21 Jun 23
💼 Business Product Management Entrepreneurship Team Dynamics Product Development Innovation
  1. Product discovery is essential to uncover what creates value, while product delivery produces what creates value.
  2. Having a sustainable balance between product discovery and product delivery within one team is crucial for success.
  3. Product discovery is a journey, not a rigid plan, where you set a business outcome as your north star and make decisions along the way.

I launch it, it fails, and I feel like shit

Kenny’s Sub • 179 implied HN points • 11 Feb 24
💼 Business Entrepreneurship Mindset Marketing Product Development Personal Growth
  1. Treat your failures as experiments. Instead of feeling like a failure, see it as a chance to learn and improve.
  2. Try many ideas and reflect on them. The more you try, the better you get at figuring out what works and what doesn’t.
  3. Use mindfulness techniques like meditation and journaling. This helps you understand your feelings and bounce back faster after setbacks.

Can I talk to an AI, please?

Generating Conversation • 46 implied HN points • 07 Nov 24
🕹 Technology AI User Behavior Product Development Market Trends
  1. AI products require users to change their mindset. Instead of expecting a perfect answer right away, users learn to work with AI to get better results over time.
  2. AI doesn't just replace existing tasks; it creates new opportunities. Users can now ask AI to do many things that were difficult or time-consuming before.
  3. Using AI tools gives valuable insights into user behavior. Users feel more comfortable asking simple or repetitive questions that they wouldn't ask a human, providing helpful data for improving the product.

Improving the product

André Casal's Substack • 19 implied HN points • 31 Jul 24
🕹 Technology Product Development Web Development User Experience Software Engineering
  1. Getting user feedback is really important. Talking to customers helps understand their needs, especially beginners in tech.
  2. Watching a seasoned developer use the product can reveal issues and areas for improvement. It's a great way to learn about friction points.
  3. Making things easier for users is key. Simplifying processes and providing good documentation can really help users get started faster and reduce confusion.

Further improvements to the landing page

André Casal's Substack • 19 implied HN points • 30 Jul 24
💼 Business Entrepreneurship Marketing Product Development Customer Feedback User Experience
  1. Improving the landing page is important based on user feedback. It's a continuous process to get high ratings through various updates.
  2. Using tools like Sentry helps in monitoring performance and collecting user feedback. This makes it easier to identify and fix issues.
  3. Conducting customer interviews is valuable for understanding user needs. The insights gained can guide product development and marketing strategies.

Are you putting products on a pedestal?

Kenny’s Sub • 179 implied HN points • 29 Jan 24
💼 Business E-commerce Marketing Entrepreneurship Freelancing Product Development
  1. It's easier to sell services than products. Many successful people started with client work before launching their products because it's more certain and quicker.
  2. Working on client projects helps you learn business skills. You can use these skills to market products later on more effectively.
  3. Balancing client work and product development can be tough. It's important to make time for both, or you might end up feeling overwhelmed and miss out on important parts of your life.

How to have "the talk" with your customers

Kyle Poyar’s Growth Unhinged • 607 implied HN points • 17 Jan 24
💼 Business Marketing Finance Pricing Customer Relationships Product Development
  1. Increase ACV by asking customers about willingness-to-pay without directly asking for a specific price.
  2. Understand that ACV growth involves price increases, product expansion, and knowing what customers value.
  3. As your business scales, consider factors like pricing, packaging, and customer willingness to pay to optimize revenue.

Job-to-be-done Theory and Comparison Table

André Casal's Substack • 19 implied HN points • 26 Jul 24
💼 Business Market Analysis Customer Needs Product Development
  1. Job-to-be-done theory helps define your market by focusing on customer needs and their desired outcomes. Understanding what users want makes it easier to tailor your product.
  2. Creating a survey can help you collect valuable feedback from customers about their unmet needs. This insight can guide you in improving your product and identifying opportunities.
  3. Improving your landing page with comparison criteria and customer testimonials can make it more appealing. It’s important to keep iterating based on customer feedback to better serve their needs.

Ti Amo

Venture Prose • 259 implied HN points • 19 Nov 23
🕹 Technology Social media Startup Product Development Innovation
  1. Launch fast and don't be afraid to release early in the world of social consumer apps
  2. Successful founders in social consumer apps focus on building products intentionally with a deep understanding of user behavior
  3. Social consumer applications revolve around status, communication, and entertainment, where people post, communicate, and get entertained

Sneakily effective innovation

The Uncertainty Mindset (soon to become tbd) • 79 implied HN points • 24 Apr 24
💼 Business Innovation Product Development Strategy Workshops Consulting
  1. Organizations often avoid innovation because they fear failure and think it's too complicated or expensive. Instead, they can use small and simple experiments to explore new ideas safely.
  2. Learning to ask good questions and frame problems well is essential for effective innovation. This helps teams come up with better experiments that can inform their decisions.
  3. Workshops can offer hands-on experience for teams to develop their innovation skills. By collaborating on real challenges, they can create practical solutions that they can apply again in the future.

209. Why are people so quick to proclaim failure for new products?

Hardcore Software • 575 implied HN points • 06 Jun 23
🕹 Technology Innovation Market Product Development Prediction Tech industry
  1. Most new products in the market tend to fail, so predicting failure can be a way to gain social status.
  2. Predicting failure of new products has always been popular and attention-grabbing throughout different eras.
  3. Success in launching a new product heavily depends on navigating risks and uncertainties, making predicting success challenging.

Sacrifice revenue for simplicity

Tiny Empires • 98 implied HN points • 11 Dec 24
💼 Business Entrepreneurship Marketing Sales Product Development Strategy
  1. Sometimes, it's better to simplify your business model even if it means making less money. This can save you time and reduce stress.
  2. Instead of making custom offers for every client, create standard packages to streamline sales. This way, you spend less time on individual deals.
  3. Automating your sales process can help you focus on growth. With self-serve options, clients can buy directly from your website, which saves you effort.

Accelerate by years part II - Self-contained inlang files

Opral (lix & inlang) • 19 implied HN points • 23 Jul 24
🕹 Technology Software Development Systems Design Collaboration Tools Product Development
  1. Making inlang files self-contained can speed up development. Zipping these files means they won't rely on outside git repositories.
  2. With this change, new features can be built much faster. This includes things like collaboration tools and app features that don't depend on git.
  3. Removing the git dependency opens up growth opportunities. It allows designers and translators to get involved and helps the overall ecosystem grow.

MacWorld Interviews Apple CEO John Sculley (1987)

Computer Ads from the Past • 128 implied HN points • 13 Nov 24
🕹 Technology Innovation Business strategy Information Technology Product Development
  1. Apple's strategy is about creating new markets, not just competing for existing ones. They want to stand out by innovating and providing new technologies.
  2. The future of personal computing is focused on making knowledge more accessible to everyone. Apple's vision includes tools that help people learn and be more creative.
  3. The transition to powerful personal computers will change how we interact with information. Future devices will be more user-friendly and tailored to individual needs.

User Research Guide For Founders, Part 2: Plan your Research

Elizabeth Laraki • 59 implied HN points • 06 May 24
💼 Business Startups User Research Market Analysis Product Development Entrepreneurship
  1. Identify who you want to talk to for your research. Focus on people who can actually help answer your questions.
  2. Recruit participants carefully by using screening forms to find the right fit. Make sure your questions are clear and helpful.
  3. Create a detailed research plan and script to guide your sessions. This will help make your research more effective and insightful.

A few themes for 2025

Tanay’s Newsletter • 63 implied HN points • 08 Jan 25
🕹 Technology AI Applications Innovation Market Trends Product Development
  1. AI is getting better at solving problems during its reasoning process. This means we might see smarter AI that can think through complex issues and improve its answers.
  2. Multimodal AI, which handles different types of data like text, images, and videos, is on the rise. In 2025, we can expect more creative and useful applications that actually change how we work.
  3. AI agents, or smart systems that can work independently, are likely to become more common. This year, they might really start acting like human coworkers, helping businesses run more smoothly.

A Systematic Roadmap to Product/Market Fit

Running Lean Mastery • 255 implied HN points • 08 Jul 23
💼 Business Startups Entrepreneurship Marketing Product Development Business Growth
  1. Product/market fit is a significant milestone for startups and achieving it takes time and effort.
  2. By having the right mindset and processes, navigating the early stages of a product can be done systematically like finding your way through a maze.
  3. The Running Lean roadmap consists of three main stages - Business Model Design, Validation, and Growth - leading to product/market fit.

Re-release: ‘Scrum is an awful project management methodology’

Ageling on Agile • 139 implied HN points • 07 Feb 24
💼 Business Management Product Development Team Collaboration Workplace culture Process Improvement
  1. Consider re-evaluating your project management methodology if it is causing stress and hindering productivity. It is important to adapt and make radical changes when necessary.
  2. Embrace an iterative approach in your product delivery process, especially in unpredictable environments. Small steps, clear goals, and team collaboration can lead to valuable results.
  3. Empower your team by giving them ownership of the backlog, focusing on iteration goals, and encouraging discussions and improvements during demos and retrospectives. Allow flexibility and adaptability in your work processes.

#4 Prototyping / Pre-Order Campaign

Mountain Labs Newsletter • 39 implied HN points • 27 May 24
🕹 Technology Prototyping Product Development Hardware Startups Innovation
  1. Mountain Labs successfully got 77 pre-orders for their Air Quality Monitor in just 6 weeks. This is a good sign of interest from customers.
  2. They have a clear prototyping process, starting from a breadboard to a punched-card prototype, before making the final PCB design. Each step helps them test and improve their product.
  3. Collecting pre-orders helps Mountain Labs plan their first batch of manufacturing. They aim to sell the product at $99, making it affordable for many people.

Inside Rewind’s path to 170 Series A offers

Kyle Poyar’s Growth Unhinged • 433 implied HN points • 10 Jan 24
💼 Business Startups Funding Product Development Monetization Entrepreneurship
  1. Rewind's success story includes starting with a different product and pivoting to a viral AI hit
  2. The decision to monetize from day one helped Rewind grow rapidly but required continuous iteration on pricing strategies
  3. Rewind's approach to leveraging product-led growth (PLG) includes emphasizing viral loops and frequent product launches

Lessons from customer evaluations of an AI product

The AI Frontier • 59 implied HN points • 18 Apr 24
🕹 Technology AI Product Development Data Quality Market Trends
  1. Customers who have experience with AI products often have a better understanding of what to look for. They know what works and what doesn't, so they can more easily evaluate new AI tools.
  2. The quality of data is super important for AI performance. If the data is good, the answers will be better, so paying attention to data quality is key.
  3. Expectations around AI products can be tricky. Some people think AI is not useful, while others expect it to know everything. It's important to set clear expectations about what AI can do.

Beyond Functionality: Measuring the Social Dimension of User Experience

UX Psychology • 218 implied HN points • 13 Oct 23
🕹 Technology UX Design Social Interaction Research User engagement Product Development
  1. Measurements of user experience are expanding beyond just functionality and usability to include social dimensions, reflecting the importance of catering to users' social needs and interactions in digital products.
  2. Key social factors like self-expression, social learning, relatedness, communication, and social approval significantly impact user engagement, highlighting the need to address these aspects in UX design.
  3. Newly developed Social UX Scales, such as Identification, Social Interaction, Social Stimulation, and Social Acceptance, offer tools to effectively measure and improve social aspects of modern technology experiences.

#3 Industrial Design

Mountain Labs Newsletter • 59 implied HN points • 17 Apr 24
🪑 Design Industrial Design Product Development User Experience Prototyping
  1. When developing a hardware product, focus on three key areas: energy, communication, and form factor. Energy determines if your device runs on batteries or needs to be plugged in.
  2. For B2B products, start with communication needs since they often integrate with other systems. But for B2C products, prioritize the look and feel of the device first.
  3. Always check the costs and manufacturability of your components. If it’s too expensive or hard to make, revisit your choices before moving forward with the design.

Steve Jobs vs. the Haters

Litverse • 219 implied HN points • 26 Sep 23
🕹 Technology Tech History Product Development User Experience
  1. In 1997, Steve Jobs made strategic decisions for Apple that were heavily criticized, such as discontinuing OpenDoc and embracing a closed system approach.
  2. Jobs believed in prioritizing user experience over technology, leading to the success of Apple products despite criticism from early tech adopters.
  3. The essence of successful products lies in making life better through simplicity and providing a seamless, convenient user experience, as shown by Jobs' approach with Apple.

The Case for Being a Hyper-Responsive Leader

America 2.0 (by Gary Sheng) • 216 implied HN points • 07 Jun 23
💼 Business Leadership Product Development Politics Collaboration Community Building
  1. Responsiveness is crucial for successful leadership in various fields like product development, community building, and politics.
  2. Being hyper-responsive fosters trust, builds brand loyalty, and enhances products or services.
  3. Maintaining a high level of responsiveness can differentiate you, attract allies, and lead to collaborations and growth.