Every time I use ChatGPT and select which model to use I slap my hand to my forehead. We love to move fast and ship stuff, but for the love of god, let’s make it easy to use. This is not it! 👇🏻 Today we’re going to chat about UX as a competitive advantage and why products like ChatGPT must invest here to compete in an already crowded AI marketplace.

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The AI marketplace is already crowded

One thing we've learned from the rapid evolution of AI is that the best model today might not hold that title six months down the line. The AI landscape is moving fast, with new features and models emerging constantly, each bringing unique strengths and capabilities.

And let's be real: we're reaching the point where the actual AI models are becoming commoditized. GPT-4, Claude 3, Gemini, DeepSeek … they're all impressive, and they're all getting better at roughly the same rate. As capabilities converge, the tech itself becomes less of a differentiator.

So what happens when everyone has access to roughly equivalent AI models? The deciding factor becomes user experience!

UX as the ultimate moat

Remember the browser wars? Or more recently, streaming services? Once the core technology reaches a certain threshold, users choose based on the experience.

Some AI products are already figuring this out:

1. Claude's Custom Writing Styles – They recognized that people want AI that adapts to them, not the other way around. By letting users define specific writing styles, they've created a sticky feature that's hard to leave behind once you've invested in setting it up.

2. ChatGPT's Canvas – A brilliant feature that lets users visualize and tweak their conversations. It transforms how you interact with AI from a simple back-and-forth chat to a creative partnership that feels intuitive to how you’d work with a human editor. It’s hard to not use this once you start!

3. Google Notebook’s podcasting feature – They understood that creators need tools that fit their workflow, not just raw AI capability. The ability to quickly turn conversations into polished podcast content solves a real user need for creators and has downstream impacts for students, too.

These examples show that they aren't just competing on whose model scores higher on an arbitrary benchmark; they're competing on whose product feels most natural and empowering to use.

Other ways to build a moat with UX

Beyond simple UI, there are several other strategies builders can leverage to create a lasting competitive advantage:

1. Context – The more data and insights you gather about your users, the richer and more relevant the experiences you can create for them. Leveraging extensive context allows your AI to output better responses. I’ve spent months building a Project with context on Claude and it’s now really hard for me to use anything else.

2. Personalization – Deeply understanding people's preferences and behaviors enables you to tailor experiences specifically for them. Highly personalized AI experiences make your product uniquely valuable, creating a switching cost that folks are reluctant to give up.

3. Integration and ecosystem – Embedding AI seamlessly into tools your customers already rely on can make your product indispensable. A well-integrated ecosystem reduces friction and makes people less likely to want to leave, further raising the barrier for competitors. This is one thing Google is doing well and Apple is not doing at all (a huge risk IMO!).

Crossing the chasm requires great UX

The early adopters who flocked to AI tools in the beginning? They'll tolerate complexity. They'll figure out how to wrangle prompts and navigate confusing interfaces if the power is there.

But mainstream users? Not a chance.

Geoffrey Moore's "Crossing the Chasm" theory has never been more relevant than it is for AI products right now. The pragmatists who make up the early majority won't adopt AI tools unless they're easy to understand, reliable, and integrate seamlessly with their existing workflows.

Look at how Claude emphasizes simplicity in its interface, or how Copilot is being integrated directly into Microsoft products people already use. These aren't accidents; they're deliberate strategies to make AI accessible to the next wave of users.

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What this means for Builders

If you're building AI-powered products or integrating AI into existing tools, take note: your competitive advantage isn't just about which model you're using it's about the experience you're creating around it.

The teams winning in AI aren't just picking the best model, they're asking:

• How do we make the tech fully disappear into the background?

• How can we reduce cognitive load for our users?

• What unexpected moments of delight can we create?

• How do we design for both first-time users and power users?

And crucially, they're designing for flexibility. As new models emerge and capabilities evolve, your product architecture needs to adapt without disrupting the user experience.

The bottom line

As builders, we often get seduced by technical challenges. But remember: most people won’t understand the model behind the curtain; they care about what they can do with your product.

The winners in the AI race won't necessarily be those with the cleverest algorithms, but those who create the most intuitive, empowering user experiences. They'll be the ones who make advanced technology feel natural, even obvious.

So next time you're making product decisions, ask yourself: "Are we building for other AI enthusiasts, or are we building for everyone else?"

Because that's where the real opportunity lies.Not just in crossing the AI chasm but in building the bridges that help others cross it too.

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Required reading

Loved this post from where he explores what Google is doing wrong with its AI products.

Creator Economy by Peter Yang

Why are Google's AI Products So Frustrating to Use?

Dear subscribers…

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a year ago · 46 likes · 10 comments · Peter Yang

Another interesting post on design transparency around AI from

ADPList’s Newsletter

How to design clear AI interactions

Hey there! This is a 🔒 subscriber-only edition of ADPList’s newsletter 🔒 designed to make you a better designer and leader. Members get access to exceptional leaders' proven strategies, tactics, and wisdom. For more: Get free 1:1 advisory | Become an ADPList Ambassador…

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a year ago · 14 likes · Allie Paschal

And finally, more thoughts on crossing the chasm from of The Product Compass.

The Product Compass

Crossing the Chasm: The Ultimate Guide For PMs

Hey, Paweł here. Welcome to the premium edition of The Product Compass…

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2 years ago · 44 likes · 3 comments · Paweł Huryn

Keep building! 🚀

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As these spaces have transformed from "friend platforms" to "content and commerce platforms," our hunger for genuine connection online has only grown. This shift has created a whole new category of consumer products that builders are racing to fill. Let's talk about it!

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The friend-shaped void

Remember when social media was actually... social? When your feed was filled with updates from people you knew rather than algorithmically optimized content designed to keep you scrolling and spending? My own digital social spaces have gradually transformed from places of connection to places of consumption.

This transformation hasn't happened by accident. The business models of platforms like Instagram and Facebook depend on engagement and ad revenue, not on the quality of your friendships. And so gradually, they've optimized for content that drives monetization and engagement, not connection.

As these platforms have evolved away from genuine social connection, we find ourselves in the midst of a loneliness epidemic. Half of U.S. adults report experiencing loneliness, a public health crisis that affects mental health, physical well-being, and even lifespan. It's a problem so severe that in 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General declared it a national priority, pointing out that loneliness carries health risks equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. 😱

And so enters what I'm calling "Friend-Tech,” a wave of products helping to tackle loneliness. From Bumble BFF to Replika, from AI companions to community-building platforms, both startups and tech giants are rushing to capitalize on our desperate need for connection.

That said, can you actually engineer authentic connection? Or are we building friend-shaped products that ultimately can't deliver the nutritional value of real friendships?

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The friend-tech landscape

Let's explore how consumer companies are approaching this challenge:

AI companions: Your always-on friend

Products like Replika and Tolan offer always-available companions who never judge, never tire, and never have conflicting schedules. They're available 24/7, programmed to be empathetic and responsive to your needs.

According to Eugenia Kuyda, founder of Replika, some users exchange over 30 messages daily with their AI companions … far more than they might with any human friend. Users report genuine emotional connections with their digital friends.

Is the comfort these AI companions provide substantively different from the parasocial relationships we form with influencers or celebrities? And more importantly, do they serve as a bridge to human connection or a substitute that ultimately keeps us isolated?

Digital pets and companions: The caretaking connection

Another fascinating approach comes from apps that tap into our nurturing instincts through digital pets and companions that require our care.

Finch is a self-care app where you nurture a bird companion named Finch by completing daily well-being tasks. When you meditate, journal, or practice gratitude in real life, your bird grows and evolves. It's a clever inversion! Instead of the app caring for you, you care for this digital creature by caring for yourself.

Pixel Pals brings pixelated pets to your iPhone's Dynamic Island or lock screen. These tiny digital animals (cats, dogs, hedgehogs, and more) need feeding, attention, and play. There's something oddly satisfying about caring for these little creatures throughout the day, creating a sense of companionship through responsibility.

These remind me of the Tamagotchi I had in the 90s, but with a modern twist. They're not trying to replicate human friendship directly but instead, they tap into the psychological benefits of nurturing something outside ourselves, creating connection through care.

Friend-finding apps: Digital matchmaking for friendship

Apps like Bumble BFF, Peanut, and Hey! VINA are essentially dating apps, but for friendship. They apply the same mechanics that worked for romantic connections to platonic ones: swipe, match, chat, meet.

The challenge? Friendship doesn't operate quite like dating. The "click" of friendship is often more subtle, building gradually through repeated, low-stakes interactions rather than high-pressure coffee dates.

I've heard mixed reviews from users of these platforms. Some have formed genuine, lasting friendships. Others report awkward "friend dates" that feel forced, sometimes making them feel even more isolated when these engineered connections don't take root.

Structured community: Fellowship through shared activities

Products like Peoplehood (from the founders of SoulCycle) and Good Inside take a different approach, creating structured environments where connection can happen naturally around shared activities or interests (like parenting!).

These platforms might be closest to replicating the natural habitat of connection. Environments where repeated, purposeful interactions build trust and friendship over time.

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Where we're headed

I believe we're still in the early stages of this market. Just as wellness evolved from simple meditation apps to sophisticated ecosystems blending digital and physical experiences, friend-tech will mature beyond simple matchmaking to more nuanced approaches.

Here's what I'm watching for:

1. Hybrid models: The most promising solutions will blend digital connection with IRL experiences, recognizing that technology works best as a bridge to human contact, not a replacement.

2. Community-driven approaches: Top-down, algorithm-driven connections may give way to bottom-up community building, where users have more agency in creating the spaces they want to inhabit.

3. Plugging into existing systems: Rather than creating separate "friend-finding" spaces, successful products will integrate with activities we already enjoy (work, fitness, hobbies, etc.) making connection a natural byproduct rather than a forced outcome.

4. Beyond "friend-shaped": The most innovative solutions may transcend our current conception of friendship entirely, creating new forms of connection that serve similar psychological needs without mimicking traditional relationships.

The builders' challenge

If you're building in this space, ask yourself:

• What does authentic connection really require, and how can technology facilitate (not simulate) those conditions?

• Are you addressing the root causes of loneliness, or merely treating symptoms?

• Does your product bring people genuinely closer together, or is it creating a comfortable simulation of closeness?

As our formerly social platforms optimize away from actual friendship and toward content and commerce, our collective hunger for connection only grows. The companies that solve this problem thoughtfully will not only build billion-dollar businesses but may help heal a significant social wound.

What do you think? Are you building in this space? Have you used any friend-tech products yourself? I'd love to hear your experiences in the comments below 👇🏻

👋🏻 Hi, it’s me Nickey Skarstad and welcome to Builders, where I break down what it actually takes to build products that people love (and actually use). No fluff, just hard-earned lessons.

A few weeks ago, the CEO of Buzzfeed wrote a manifesto about the devolving arms race we’re seeing on social media platforms as more and more creators and platforms compete for watch-time. While his acronym isn’t perfect SNARF (Stakes, Novelty, Anger, Retention, and Fear!), it surfaced something that’s hard to miss - employing these tactics will help you get more watch-time and drive growth on your platform. But what does this mean for consumer tech and how we build prodcuts? Read on as we explore👇🏻

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A few months back, I wrote about the Dopamine Industrial Complex™️ and how game mechanics are reshaping consumer products. Today, I want to dive deeper into a related phenomenon that's fundamentally changing how we build and market digital products: SNARF.

What is SNARF?

SNARF stands for Stakes, Novelty, Anger, Retention, and Fear. And it's not just a set of tactics, it's the evolved outcome of AI-powered platforms optimizing for engagement at all costs. The acronym was coined by Jonah Peretti, founder of Buzzfeed, who noticed that the “best” content published on Buzzfeed wasn’t getting the most clicks.

Let's break it down:

• Stakes: Artificially elevating the importance of content ("You NEED to know this!")

• Novelty: Manufacturing uniqueness to trigger curiosity ("I've never seen anything like this!")

• Anger: Provoking outrage to drive engagement ("This will make your blood boil!")

• Retention: Using cliffhangers and withholding information ("Wait till the end!")

• Fear: Creating anxiety about missing out or social status ("Everyone knows this but you!")

While this framework originated in content marketing, it's rapidly becoming the blueprint for consumer product design across industries. It’s leaning into anything that might trigger you, and using it as a wedge to get you to pay attention.

Why SNARF is winning

The rise of SNARF isn't accidental. It's the predictable result of two converging forces:

1. AI recommendation systems optimizing for engagement
   When platforms use deep learning to maximize usage without caring about content quality, SNARF naturally emerges as the winning formula.

2. The attention bottleneck
   As the barriers to building products lower (thanks to AI, no-code tools, etc.), the real constraint becomes user attention. This creates a Darwinian environment where your content or product will only survive if it stands out.

The success is undeniable. TikTok built a global empire following this playbook. Meta pivoted its entire product strategy to follow suit. The results speak for themselves: engagement goes up and retention improves.

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Real-world examples

Let's look at how SNARF manifests in products we interact with daily:

Instagram's For You page has become a minefield of emotionally charged content designed to keep you scrolling. Notice how the algorithm increasingly serves you posts designed to provoke strong reactions … whether outrage at a political statement, anxiety about a health claim, or FOMO about a trend you've missed.

TikTok's For You tab is perhaps the most refined SNARF delivery system. As a TikTok creator myself, I've noticed my posts that generate arguments in the comments consistently outperform my more neutral content. The algorithm rewards content that triggers emotional responses, particularly anger and debate.

And it's not just content platforms. SNARF is infiltrating every category of consumer tech:

• Fintech apps: Creating artificial urgency around basic money decisions

• Productivity tools: Using shame and social comparison to drive daily usage

• Health & wellness: Exaggerating consequences of missed activities

• Dating apps: Manufacturing scarcity to drive premium subscriptions

• E-commerce: Creating countdown timers and "limited stock" warnings

Even LinkedIn has embraced game mechanics—a gateway into broader SNARF tactics.

The builder's dilemma

This creates a genuine ethical crossroads for those of us building products:

As user acquisition costs continue to go up and competition for attention intensifies, can we afford not to use these proven engagement tactics? Yet if we embrace them, are we contributing to digital environments that manipulate rather than empower?

The growing backlash

Despite its effectiveness, there are signs that SNARF may have a limited shelf life. Recent research from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that many users would actually pay money for platforms like TikTok and Instagram to not exist—suggesting these products have negative utility despite their popularity.

Consumers are also becoming more aware of manipulation tactics. Screen time reports, digital wellness tools, and growing public chatter around tech ethics are creating more conscious users. Some segments—particularly younger users—are developing a refined BS detector for SNARF tactics.

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Building beyond SNARF

So how do we build products that capture attention without resorting to manipulation? Here’s how to do it right:

1. Transparency as a competitive advantage

Be honest about how your product works. Explain recommendations. Show your work. As users become more sophisticated, transparency becomes a differentiator.

Notion and Figma have both grown primarily through genuine utility rather than psychological manipulation. While they employ some engagement features, they're anchored in actual value creation.

2. Align incentives with user wellbeing

Structure your business model so that your success correlates with user satisfaction, not just engagement. Subscription models tied to genuine value delivery (rather than attention harvesting) create healthier alignment.

Duolingo promotes a quality metric called time spent learning well that optimizes for learning alongside growth.

3. Curate, don't just optimize

Human curation and editorial judgment are making a comeback. While AI can optimize for engagement, it often lacks the judgment to optimize for quality, relevance, and long-term satisfaction.

As big platforms move away from reviewing content, there’s an opportunity for more boutique content curation that has a perspective on what is good. (Please build this!)

4. Design for agency, not addiction

Give users meaningful control over their experience. Help them achieve their actual goals rather than manufacturing needs. Build products that respect time and attention as finite resources.

5. Ethical engagement tactics

Not all engagement tactics are manipulative. Create retention through genuine delight, meaningful achievements, and social connection—not through fear, urgency, and manipulation.

Questions worth asking

Next time you're making product decisions, consider:

• If our metrics improved but users felt worse afterward, would we consider that success?

• Are we solving real problems or manufacturing artificial ones?

• Would we be comfortable explicitly explaining our engagement tactics to users?

• Are we building a product we'd want our own families to use?

• Does our product give people more agency or less?

The opportunity ahead

For all the challenges SNARF presents, it also creates opportunity. As the dominant platforms double down on AI-driven engagement at all costs, they leave space for meaningful alternatives that prioritize quality, satisfaction, and genuine utility.

Builders who pioneer new models that respect user agency may not win the short-term metrics game, but they're positioning themselves for the inevitable shift in consumer preferences.

I'd love to hear how you're navigating these waters. Are you feeling pressure to adopt SNARF tactics? Have you found alternatives that work? Where have you seen this applied in the products you use? Reply to this email or join the conversation in the comments.

P.S. If you found this valuable, check out my previous newsletter on why every product is a game. And if someone forwarded this to you, you can subscribe to Builders here 👇

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👋🏻 Hi, it’s me Nickey Skarstad and welcome to Builders, where I break down what it actually takes to build products that people love (and actually use). No fluff, just hard-earned lessons.

As DeepSeek made a splash this week it got me thinking about how to choose which model to use and how to think about what you might need in a week, a year, and in ten. Your ability to switch it up quickly could make or break you down the road. Read on for how to build for flexibilty👇🏻

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If the launch of DeepSeek this week taught us anything, the model you're using today probably won't be your best option six months from now. And yet, some folks are still building themselves into a corner.

Here's what some AI integrations look like right now:

• Teams are diving deep into OpenAI's SDK, building directly against its specific patterns

• Prompt templates are being hardcoded around GPT-4's quirks and behaviors

• Products are being built around model-specific features like OpenAI's function calling or Claude's XML capabilities

• Error handling and retry logic are tightly coupled to one provider's patterns

When you're racing to ship features, taking time to build abstraction layers feels like unnecessary work. But let me share a story that shows why this matters.

Last year, I was chatting with a friend at a startup that had deeply integrated GPT-4 into their product workflow - custom prompts, fine-tuned response handling, the works. Then Claude 3 dropped, offering cheaper tokens and notably better performance for key tasks. The catch? Switching would require rewriting significant portions of the codebase. They had inadvertently built GPT-4's specific patterns into their system's foundation.

Here’s how to set up your product for an inevitable model change:

1. Create clean abstractions

Treat your AI layer like a pluggable service:

• Build model-agnostic prompt templates

• Standardize output parsing

• Create unified error handling across different providers

• Maintain a clear separation between business logic and AI integration points

2. Design for continuous testing

The teams winning in AI aren't just picking the best model they're constantly evaluating new ones:

• Set up straightforward A/B testing between models

• Measure performance metrics consistently across providers

• Enable using different models for different features based on their strengths

3. Think long-term about costs

Every time you tightly couple your system to a specific model's patterns, you're accumulating technical debt that will cost you later. Don’t optimize dev speed at the expense of operational flexibility.

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Example time

Say you test a handful of different models to power your core feature. In reality, you see something like his:

• Claude 3 was 40% more accurate

• GPT-4 was 30% faster

• DeepSeek was 60% cheaper with comparable results

Now, what you choose and prioritize depends on what you’re building and your unique constraints. Furthermore, what is important today could change as you seek out product market fit. It’s hard to predict the future, building your system to be model-flexible from the beginning will help in the long term.

Next steps

If you're already deep into a rigid implementation, panic! Just kidding, you’re building software and not saving lives, so calm down. Here's where to start:

1. Audit your current AI integrations: how many assumptions are you making about your chosen model's behavior?

2. Document your core AI requirements independent of any specific provider

3. Start building a simple abstraction layer for your next AI feature

4. Set up basic performance monitoring that works across different providers

5. Experiment constantly to stay on top of what’s best for your product

The most important thing is to start thinking about this now. The AI landscape is evolving at an unprecedented pace. New models are emerging monthly (daily?), each with unique strengths and capabilities. The winners in this era won't be the teams that pick the right model today, they'll be the teams that can quickly adapt to the right model tomorrow.

Stay flexible, stay curious, and keep shipping!

---

What are you building? Leave a comment and let me know how you're approaching AI model flexibility in your product. 👇🏻

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Now, this isn't just another feature launch. It's a signal of where consumer product development is heading, and it reveals a crucial truth about building for today's users: We're all competing inside the Dopamine Industrial Complex™️.

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What is dopamine, again?

Your brain releases dopamine, the "feel-good" neurotransmitter, when you experience pleasure or anticipate a reward. It's the same chemical that floods your system when you beat a level in Candy Crush, get a like on Instagram, or see a notification on your phone.

Unfortunately, our brains haven't evolved to handle the constant dopamine hits that modern technology provides. While a hunter-gatherer might've gotten a dopamine rush from finding food or completing a successful hunt (lol but true!), we're now carrying dopamine slot machines in our pockets, triggering these rewards hundreds of times per day.

I loved this YouTube video from Diary of a CEO with Dr. Anna Lembke (Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine and author of Dopamine Nation). This is a critical watch for Builders and anyone who uses a mobile device!

How is this impacting consumer products?

More and more consumer experiences are dripping with dopamine and feel like a game. Games employ psychological triggers that work, so that means more and more consumer products use them. Prediction: as AI lowers the barrier to entry for consumer products, the competition for attention will only intensify. Game-design that pushes dopamine will become a non-starter.

Some examples of consumer products using games to drive user behavior:

• The New York Times didn't just buy Wordle because it was popular. They recognized that games create a daily dopamine-driven habit that keeps users coming back to their platform.

• LinkedIn “put a game on it” to find more ways to engage users and drive DAUs.

• Netflix also added Games in their app.

Non-game examples:

• Beyond just games, TikTok's "For You" page isn't just personalized content, it's a carefully orchestrated dopamine delivery system. Each scroll provides a potential hit, training users to associate the app with instant gratification like our favorite games. Instagram is close on TikTok’s heels.

• Even Donald Trump's social media strategy isn't chaos … it's a dopamine generator. Every inflammatory tweet is designed to make supporters feel righteous and opponents feel outraged. Both emotions trigger dopamine releases that keep people engaged. (Hot take: do we think Trump would have gotten elected if we weren’t so addicted to dopamine … thus making every other candidate positively dull in comparison?)

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Can we build products ethically in the Dopamine Industrial Complex™️?

This is the thorny question every builder must wrestle with. When we deploy psychological triggers in our products, we're not just pushing pixels we're shaping behaviors, forming habits, and potentially altering brain chemistry. The stakes are real!

Here's the framework I use when thinking about dopamine-driven design:

First, be honest about the impact.

Every notification, streak, or reward mechanism is a psychological lever. Map out exactly how your product influences behavior:

• What compulsions are you creating?

• Who might be most vulnerable?

• What behaviors might spiral out of control?

Second, align rewards with genuine user value. Ask yourself:

• Does this feature help users achieve their stated goals?

• Are we creating habits that improve lives?

• Would we be proud to explain our engagement tactics to users?

Finally, build guardrails. Good products have counterbalances:

• Usage limits and cooling-off periods

• Clear opt-out paths

• Special protections for vulnerable users

• Transparency about how features impact behavior

Your job isn't just shipping features, it's understanding how those features shape human behavior. The products that truly win long-term aren't the ones with the most sophisticated addiction mechanisms. They're the ones that help users exercise agency and become who they want to be.

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Trend watch 👀

I’ll leave you with a final thought. As the Dopamine Industrial Complex™️ reaches new heights, a counter-movement also gains momentum. There's a growing market for what I call "conscious technology,” tools that help users regain control of their attention rather than hijack it.

Parents are seeking low-dopamine alternatives for their kids, and digital wellness startups are attracting VC money. Also gadgets like the getbrick.app and widgets like Blank are all finding their way into more hands.

Where are you seeing “dopamine-design” pop-up? And if dopamine design isn't going anywhere, how are you navigating the ethics of attention in your products? Drop your thoughts in the comments!

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And I’m not the only one. If I've learned anything after reading self-reviews and reviewing people over the last 15 years in tech (especially women), it's that some people are just naturally good at writing their own self-reviews and creating organic visibility for their work/wins, and others ... just aren't. If you fall into the second bucket (like me! and a lot of women I know!), writing a self-review and advocating for your own work is torture.

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Do women have a harder time self-promoting?

The self-promotion paradox hits particularly hard for women in tech. While men who advocate for themselves are seen as confident and capable, women often face social and professional backlash for the same behavior - they're more likely to be perceived as "aggressive" or "bossy" when highlighting their achievements.

More tellingly, when women do self-promote, they typically use more tentative language and are more likely to attribute team success to collaborative effort rather than their individual contributions. Yet paradoxically, women who don't advocate for themselves are less likely to receive promotions than equally qualified peers. It's a classic double-bind: get penalized for speaking up, or get overlooked for staying quiet.

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Enter the HypeBot 📣

Thankfully, there’s something about having someone else do the promoting for you that makes the praise more palatable. Taking this idea a step further, I made a GPT that will call you out when you’re not doing the absolute most to clearly, fairly, and excitedly talk about your work. Send a draft of your performance review through it. Or share something that will promote your work. Get feedback and make it stronger, more salient, and make it ick-free. Try it here.

Make visibility a habit

Take this a step further beyond just performance review time. Creating organic visibility isn't about bragging—it's about building a narrative that helps your team, peers, and leadership understand your impact. Here's how you can weave visibility of your work into your regular workflows:

Celebrate your wins (even the small ones)

• Share progress updates regularly. Whether it's wrapping up a sprint or hitting a milestone, drop a quick update in Slack. "Shipped X today! Onward to Y 🚀" is all it takes.

  

• Document along the way. Keep a running doc or log where you jot down your wins, challenges overcome, or "aha!" moments. This becomes your go-to for performance reviews and storytelling. calls this his “brag book.” From his newsletter :

The idea is that you maintain a document that lists your accomplishments, which can range from the concrete and tangible (i.e. links to a design that you wrote, or some code that you shipped) to the fuzzy and intangible (i.e. the fact that you spent time pair programming with a less experienced engineer to help them ramp up, or that you made a process better, or were on call and responded to an incident).

Bake it into the culture

• Start "what I’m working on Wednesdays.” Encourage your team to share something they're proud of each week. You'll normalize sharing and build a culture of mutual appreciation.

• Pair wins with learning. When you share an achievement, mention a challenge or insight that came with it. It shows humility and growth and makes it feel less self-promotion forward.

Be a connector

• Promote cross-functional wins. Did your work enable another team's success? If so, mention it and tag them when you share the story—this will amplify your visibility without focusing all the attention on you.

• Invite feedback often. Sharing progress with an open ask for feedback turns visibility into a two-way street.

Leverage existing channels

• Piggyback on team or company updates. Add a short blurb about your project to the company newsletter or an all-hands meeting deck.

• Host quick lightning talks. Got five minutes in a team sync? Share a recent insight or demo a cool feature you worked on.

Build in public (internally and externally)

• Keep stakeholders in the loop. Regular, lightweight updates to stakeholders help you narrate the impact you're making without extra effort.

• Consider external audiences. Where appropriate, post about your work on LinkedIn or in industry groups. Thoughtfully framing the impact helps build your personal brand.

• Piggyback on team or company updates. Add a short blurb about your project to the company newsletter or an all-hands meeting deck. Demo work in progress!

Make it reciprocal

• Champion others. Share your teammates’ wins. It'll feel less awkward when you share your own, and people will be more likely to return the favor.

• Create visibility systems. Rotate responsibility for team newsletters or recognition shout-outs, so everyone gets used to giving and receiving visibility.

To wrap

Here's what I wish someone had told me earlier: If you don't tell your story, someone else will - or worse, no one will. You're not being arrogant; you're being a good team player by sharing knowledge and impact.

And remember: The best time to start building visibility was when you started your role. The second best time? Right now!

How do you create visibility for your work? Try the HypeBot and share feedback below 👇

📚 Cultural moment

We're living through a fascinating renaissance in reading culture. Between BookTok making reading viral (400B+ views and counting!) and celebs making book clubs cool again (Reese’s Book Club!), there's more chatter about reading than in years past.

AI has also entered the scene. The publishing industry will evolve as consumers change what they’re reading and how they read it.

And yet, while book clubs are having their main character moment (pun), and AI changes the publishing industry, public libraries are fighting for their lives. Budget cuts, political pressure, book bans, fewer people reading than ever before, you name it – libraries need a win. And that's where Libby comes in, positioned perfectly at the intersection of digital convenience and public good. It's basically "BookTok meets your local library!" Look at this adorable pro-library propaganda!

🧩 What is Libby?

Libby is your library card's digital twin. You plug in your existing library card number, and suddenly you've got access to thousands of ebooks and audiobooks. No late fees, no subscription renewals, just books magically appearing on your device like it's the future we were promised.

The core experience is beautifully simple: browse, borrow, read. Kinda like Netflix, but for books, and completely free.

🗺 What are they trying to do?

Open the app and you'll notice something interesting: they're trying to make borrowing books feel as frictionless as streaming a show. Their mission? Make libraries feel less like dusty buildings and more like modern content platforms.

But I think there's something bigger happening here. Libby isn't just trying to digitize libraries; they're trying to make them relevant for a generation that expects everything to be two taps away.

🧪 How do they measure success?

If I were on their team, I'd be obsessing over two key metrics:

1. Active readers: While downloads matter – it's how many people that are actually reading books through the app that count. Each active reader is proof that libraries still matter in our digital world. Here’s a look at active users over the last two years. This is about ~1% of library cardholders in the US.

   

2. Hold-to-borrow conversion: When someone puts a hold on "Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow," do they actually end up reading it? Low conversion might mean people are getting frustrated with wait times and giving up.

💪 What is working?

Getting started is easy-ish

“Just show me your library card" is a quick way to get you started. One number, and you're in. 66% of Americans have a library card so there’s a clear market for the app. If you don’t have a card, they help you figure out how to get one.

The price is right

In a world where every app is trying to sneak into your monthly budget, Libby's out here being the real MVP. No subscription, no hidden fees, no premium tier – just free books, courtesy of your local library.

It just works

The core experience – borrowing and reading books – is smooth. The e-reader is clean and intuitive, audiobooks play without drama, and everything syncs like it should. You can also use your preferred e-reader. I typically download them on my Kindle.

📈 How can they make it better?

The waitlist situation is ... damning

We get it – libraries have limited copies. But waiting 3 months to read the book everyone's talking about on the Internet feels very 2009. How about letting book clubs "pool" their holds? Or creating a points system where active users get faster access? While this is likely a complicated undertaking due to licensing, getting creative here would go a long way.

Discovery needs work

If I just finished the ACOTAR series, don't just show me what's popular – show me more romantasy. Compare Libby’s content recommendations to TikTok's For You algorithm, which feels like it’s reading my mind, and Libby’s experience is lacking. It knows what I’m reading, but doesn’t personalize.

Make it more social

For an app that's essentially powering thousands of book clubs, it's anti-social. Where's my ability to share highlights? Create reading groups? Host digital book clubs? Reading has become a team sport (thanks, BookTok), but Libby is still playing solo.

💡 How might you 10x the impact?

Use AI to reimagine the e-reading experience

Kindle's been doing the same basic e-reader thing since 2007. But Libby could completely flip the script on how we experience books! Imagine an AI-powered reading companion that brings stories to life. Diving into "Pride and Prejudice"? Get real-time context about Regency-era social customs that'll make you feel like a 19th-century insider. Not only could this be a compelling differentiator, it will also be hard for Amazon to build and scale.

Build the Book Club OS

Imagine if you could organize your entire book club through Libby. Pick books, schedule meetings (virtual or IRL), coordinate with your local library for meeting space, and even get priority access for your group. Turn "waiting forever for a book" into "let's read it together now."

Revenue share with libraries

What if Libby offered premium features that revenue-shared with libraries? Think: book club features like the above, enhanced audiobook quality, exclusive author content, early access to new releases. Users get more features, libraries get more funding, everyone wins.

Note that maintaining a strong Freemium product is critical for accessibility and their mission, but funding a better user experience for everyone with a paid tier could help libraries everywhere. BookShop.org sends profits from book sales back to indie booksellers; what does the library version of this look like?

Make discovery delightful

When you go into a bookstore and bookstore staff has written little book reviews next to books for sale, but browseable. Add short video reviews from librarians and readers. Share quotes from reviews. Make finding your next read as engaging as finding your next binge-watch.

Evolve the brand to be mission-driven

Push the brand to be more culturally relevant, more pro-library, and more mission-driven. Duolingo is not quiet about the fact that its mission is to make learning languages free and universally accessible. Every user could become part of the movement.

📣 Your turn!

What do you think about Libby? Have you tried it? What features would make you use it more? Drop your thoughts below – and hey, what app should we review next? 👇

PS: If you're still paying for Audible or downloading Kindle books from Amazon ... maybe give your local library (and Libby) a try first? The world thanks you. 😉

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Sound familiar? If you're like most of the readers of this newsletter - tech-savvy, college-educated, cares about your career - your reading list probably looks similar. We're problem solvers by nature, always looking for that edge to level up our skills, and it’s no surprise that the content we consume pushes a lot of non-fiction. We also tend to calculate the value of our time and can’t always rationalize fiction when we could be reading/consuming content that helps us pursue our goals.

And yet, we might be missing out on one of the most powerful tools for innovation by skipping the fiction section. It turns out that reading fiction isn't just an escape from our data-driven world - it's a superpower for innovation.

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The growing reading crisis 📉

If working professionals aren’t reading as much fiction these days, surely college students are, right? WRONG! Even elite college students are struggling to read books. They're arriving at top universities, having never finished an entire book in high school! This isn't just an academic problem – it's a creativity crisis waiting to happen.

Why? Because today's quick-hit, excerpt-based reading habits train our brains to skim rather than deeply engage. We're losing the ability to immerse ourselves in complex narratives and alternative perspectives – skills that just so happen to be crucial for innovation.

I imagine this will get worse with AI, which does a lot of thinking for you, making it even easier to be lazy creatively. <shudders>

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The innovation connection 🔄

Bringing this back to building great products. It's not just about technical skills or market research. The best innovations come from:

• Seeing patterns others miss

• Understanding human psychology and behavior

• Thinking laterally and making unexpected connections

• Having deep empathy for users

Guess what develops all of these capabilities? You got it – reading fiction!

Fiction: Your secret weapon 🗡️

Think of fiction as a simulator for your mind. When you read about characters different from yourself, navigate complex plot twists, or imagine entirely new worlds, you're:

• Training your brain to hold multiple perspectives simultaneously

• Developing emotional intelligence and empathy

• Practicing pattern recognition across disparate ideas

• Building mental stamina for complex problem-solving

How it actually works 🧠

When you're deep in a novel, your brain doesn't actually distinguish between reading about an experience and living it. This means you're literally expanding your mental models and reference points for understanding human behavior – crucial for product development!

The neuroscience backs this up. Deep reading (the kind you do with novels, not tweets) activates regions associated with creativity, empathy, and complex problem-solving.

Getting started 🌱

If you haven't read fiction in a while, start small:

• Pick genres you naturally enjoy (sci-fi fans, I see you!)

• Try audiobooks during your commute

• Read for just 15 minutes before bed

• Watch BookTok and get inspired

• Join online reading communities for accountability

Remember: The goal isn't to become a literature professor. It's to expose your mind to new ways of thinking that will make you a better builder.

What do you think? Are you ready to add fiction to your innovation toolkit? Drop a comment with your favorite novel or what you're currently reading! 📖

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🥕 Cultural moment

We’re having a ~moment~ with product and food safety in the US. Between the clean beauty movement and people freaking out on TikTok about what's actually in their food (looking at you, Red 40), there's a growing awareness that we should pay more attention to what we're putting in and on our bodies.

I'm calling it now: this will be A MAJOR topic of discussion in the coming years. With folks like RFK Jr. promising to eradicate the FDA (the regulatory body that keeps tabs on what we allow and don't allow in the products we buy), we’ll spend more time discussing what should be allowed on our shelves. Apps like Yuka are perfectly positioned to ride this wave – they're basically the "will I die if I eat this?" translator we didn't know we needed.

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🧩 What is Yuka?

Think of it as your super knowledgeable friend who reads ingredient labels and knows what they mean. You scan a product's barcode, and boom – Yuka tells you if it's good for you or if you should maybe put it back on the shelf. They've got this really smart scoring system that makes it dead simple to understand what you're about to buy.

🗺️ What are they trying to do?

Download and open the app and the first thing you see is a camera scanner – they know exactly why you're here. Their mission? Make it stupidly easy to know what's in your products. No PhD in chemistry required. The core loop is beautifully simple: scan, learn, decide. Rinse and repeat until your shopping cart is full of green-scored goods ✅.

🧪 How do they measure success?

If I were on their team, I'd be obsessing over two metrics: scan volume and subscriptions. The more people scan, the more valuable their database becomes and this action is a simple proxy for DAUs. And subscriptions? That’s proof that their freemium flywheel is working. Here’s a look at downloads since 2021; they’ve been growing organically since 2021 but have seen an uptick in 2024 (revenue follows a similar pattern).

💪 What is working?

Synthesizing data for you

The way they show good vs. bad ingredients with their color-coding system? It works! It's like they intune what our anxious brains need – simple, clear signals about what's safe and what's sus.

Scanning is easy

They nailed the core use case. When you're standing in Target trying to decide between two moisturizers, you don't want to dig through menus. The scanner is right there, ready to go. It's like having a product ingredient translator in your pocket.

Show me the money (but make it ethical)

In a world where every app seems to be secretly owned by Big Beauty or Big Food, Yuka's taking the road less traveled. They're fully transparent about their funding (we love receipts!) and only make money from users – never from brands trying to buy better scores. Their 2023 revenue breakdown is right there on their website (how's that for transparency?) 👇

📈 How can they make it better?

Show me what I'm missing

Show me a virtual shelf of products I probably use, with their scores visible but blurred unless I subscribe. Make me realize how many red-scored products are lurking in my bathroom cabinet. Give me JOMO!

Make the subscription irresistible

Their freemium model is solid, but the premium pitch could be stronger. Instead of blocking food scans entirely, why not offer a "trial scan" system? Let me scan three food items for free, then show me how many questionable ingredients I just discovered or am eating regularly.

Level up the recommendations

The current "here's what you've scanned" list feels a bit . . . 2019. Where's my personalized clean beauty edit? My "swap these toxic five" suggestions? Give me curated content that makes me feel like I have a personal clean living consultant in my pocket.

Build more trust (because TikTok is asking questions)

Some consumers are side-eyeing the lack of scientists on their team and questioning their data sources. For a company that's basically the judge and jury of product safety, they need to level up their credibility game by contextualizing where their scores come from.

💡 How might you 10x the impact?

Make it social (but make it smart)

Instead of the old-school "share to unlock" feature (very 2010 Dropbox energy), create shareable "Clean Swaps" lists. Let me be the hero who tells my friends which non-toxic deodorant actually works. Build virality through value, not friction.

Create the "Clean Living Score"

Imagine if you could see your overall "clean living score" based on the products you regularly use. Make it a game to improve your score by swapping out toxic products for cleaner alternatives.

Build the clean living community

What if Yuka became the go-to place for clean living discussions? Create spaces where people can share their clean swaps, discuss reactions to common ingredients, and celebrate their toxic-free victories. Think Reddit meets Consumer Reports.

Let me shop it

Why stop at telling me what's toxic when you could tell me and sell me the better option right there? Imagine scanning your toxic drugstore moisturizer and immediately getting matched with clean alternatives you can buy in one tap. Not only would this create a new revenue stream, but it would also close the loop on the "now what?" moment when people discover their go-to products are problematic.

📣 Your turn!

What do you think about Yuka? Have you tried it? What features would make you hit that subscribe button? Drop your thoughts below – and hey, what app should we review next? 👇

PS: If you're not already scanning your products . . . maybe don't start unless you're ready for some uncomfortable truths. Just saying. 😅

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Storytime

For the entirety of my 7-year stint at Etsy, I worked on the seller side of the business. The Etsy selling community was extremely tight in the early days and any product changes had to be thoughtful and aligned with their needs, or we’d face their pushback.

This put healthy pressure on the community and product teams because they had to work hard to 1) understand the real needs of users (gasp!), 2) reconcile them against what was good for the business, and 3) bring sellers along in that process.

Through a lot of trial and error, and some hate mail (mailed to me at Etsy HQ 🙃), we figured out how to involve them in the development process as a true stakeholder. Involving them early made even controversial changes easier to navigate, thanks to their trust and buy-in.

Managing users vs. managing communities

Managing a community is far more complex than managing a user base. Poshmark doesn’t just have users; it has a tightly connected community. People form relationships on and off the platform, often tied to their identity as Poshmark sellers. This dynamic makes preparing for change much harder because decisions impact not just individual users but an entire ecosystem of relationships. Not every product has this level of connection, but for those that do, the approach to change must be fundamentally different.

Why we end up here (spoiler: it’s usually our fault)

Community pushback rarely comes out of nowhere. Whether it’s Poshmark’s fee changes, Reddit’s API pricing, or Etsy’s seller strike, the common thread is clear: leadership often makes decisions without fully understanding their community’s needs — or they’re forced to make tough calls that go against those needs.

Common mistakes we make:

• Prioritizing business health over community health

• Failing to talk to users

• Underestimating how changes affect livelihoods

Sometimes, you’ll still need to make decisions that don’t fully align with your community’s best interests. But even in those cases, it’s critical to bring them along in the process. Being transparent, listening to feedback, and showing empathy can help turn a difficult decision into one your community may not love but can respect.

How to build with your community (not despite them!)

Some of the best product building happens when we treat our communities as partners in the building process. How do you do this?

1. Bring them along

   1. Share challenges openly

   2. Involve power users in early discussions

   3. Create meaningful feedback loops

   4. Show how community input shapes decisions

2. Test together

   1. Run beta programs with volunteer participants

   2. Take feedback on your work in progress

   3. Share what you're learning

   4. Let the community help shape solutions

3. Build trust before you need it

   1. Establish regular community touchpoints

   2. Create transparent decision-making processes

   3. Acknowledge when you're wrong

   4. Share both successes and failures

What do you do if you’ve made a mistake?

If you find yourself in Poshmark's position, here's how to recover with humility:

1. Own it! Poshmark’s CEO responded well. He acknowledged the mistake, didn’t deflect, outlined how he’d make it right, and had a timeline for changes.

2. Listen before acting! Don’t rush to fix without understanding first, gather diverse community perspectives, and show you’re hearing hard feedback.

3. Rebuild by doing the work! Make meaningful changes based on what you hear, keep the communication channels open, and follow through on your promises. Accept that rebuilding trust will take some time!

Moving forward together

So before your next big change, ask yourself:

• Have we involved our community in understanding the problem?

• Are we solving for their success as much as ours?

• Have we earned the trust needed for this change?

• Are we prepared to adjust based on feedback?

Remember: Your community's success is your success. When you treat them as genuine partners in your product's evolution, you not only avoid the revolts—you build something far better than you could have alone.

Share how you bring your community along for the ride in the comments below 👇

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As an operator and angel investor, an ever-increasing amount of AI startups cross my desk. They all have great tech. But to state the obvious: having powerful models isn't that special anymore - it's now expected. What sets winners apart is how they shape and package that tech. UX > models.

Who is doing this well?

Here’s a non-comprehensive list of experiences that are doing it right:

📓 Google NotebookLM:

Their tool feels as natural as cross-referencing your notes. Watch the above TikTok video (with 15 million views!) to see how good, easy-to-use UX will promote itself! Are people talking about your product in this way? If not, what could you do to make them share it more?

🦉 Duolingo’s video call with Lily:

Duolingo is bringing voice chat to life in a creative, character-driven way. Video call with Lily helps you practice the language you’re learning and feels much more intuitive than practicing a language cold in ChatGPT. (Note: I work at Duolingo; I’m biased 🙃)

👯 Claude:

While ChatGPT is crushing it on voice chat, Claude’s text responses are better. Their brand (light, airy, fresh) and their tone make it feel like chatting with your brilliant best friend. I often turn to Claude for writing and things that need more nuance because I trust it more and think it does better with tone. Watch it tone police me below 🤯

🪩 Remix AI:

Making AI image generation social, creative, and fun. Remix was the first mover to try to make generative AI social. Their UX is straightforward to use and fun - try it! (Note: I invested in Remix; I’m biased 🙃)

🔎 Cursor:

Writing code in plain English. I’ve been watching a product manager at Duolingo code a prototype using Cursor, and it’s been blowing my mind because they don’t code (or didn’t use to!).

Why are these products doing well? They are all well-used and sticky because they are AS intuitive as their tech is powerful.

💡 Here’s what you should do

If you’re building in the AI space right now, make sure you:

1. Match your UX investment to your model investment

2. Make it as intuitive as it is powerful

3. Solve real-world nuisances, not just technical ones

4. Build for humans, not engineers

5. Read this book and call your mom 🥰

To wrap

Better models won't decide the next wave of AI winners. Better experiences'll decide them.

What other AI products have you noticed that are doing interesting things with their UX? 👇

-Nickey

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Trust matters at work. What's wild, though – after years operating at top growth-stage companies, I rarely see people approach building trust strategically - even though it’s one of the most important things they can do for their career.

If you are trusted at work, you will:

• get cool projects

• get the autonomy you need to crush those projects

• get promoted

• and make more money

I’ve seen early-career people join companies and assume that they can ship something on day zero. I’ve also seen seasoned industry hires, people with ten-plus years of experience, assume their past experience elsewhere will allow them to operate with minimal constraints somewhere new. Keep dreaming!

Enter the Trust Battery 🔋

You know we love a cheeky metaphor to communicate a concept so here we go … every action at work either charges or drains your trust battery.

Ship great work? Battery up. Miss deadlines? Battery down.

Here's what people miss: your career moves at the speed of your trust battery's charge.

Storytime

When I jumped from Etsy to Airbnb in 2017, I started ready to hit the ground running. 7-years of experience at Etsy, and I was used to full autonomy and the freedom to ship with minimal oversight. I expected the same at Airbnb. In reality, it took me a year to build the relationships and trust I needed to operate like I had in my former job.

And this wasn’t just an Airbnb culture trap; it happens at Duolingo, too. When you join, you don’t pick-up where you left off in your former organization, you start from the floor and have to build your way back up.

What does trust unblock?

A full trust battery unblocks:

• Your freedom and flexibility: When your manager and team trust you implicitly, they will give you more autonomy. This means more freedom to take ownership of projects, make decisions, and shape your work in a way that aligns with your strengths and interests.

• Your leadership trajectory: People with high-trust batteries are often the first ones considered for leadership roles. They've proven themselves to be reliable, capable, and committed to the team's success, making them natural choices as opportunities arise.

• Your team’s ability to innovate: Imagine working on a project where everyone trusts each other. Communication flows effortlessly, brainstorming sessions are exciting, and collaboration clicks. A high-trust environment fosters a sense of psychological safety where everyone feels comfortable sharing ideas, taking risks, and supporting each other. All of this unblocks innovation!

How do you “charge” your trust battery?

Here are some of the ways you can “charge” your trust battery:

• Execute consistently with a high-quality bar: Consistently deliver on your promises. Meet deadlines, produce high-quality work, and exceed expectations when you can. This shows people they can rely on you and that you take your commitments seriously. Your reps count!

• Do what you say you’ll do: Say you’re going to do something, then do it!

• Over-communicate: A place where trust slips is in how you communicate with your teams. Share regular progress updates, be honest about challenges, and use clear and concise language. Transparency builds trust and ensures everyone is on the same page.

• When you fuck up, own it: Mistakes happen, and how you handle them is what saves you. Don't point fingers or shy away from responsibility; own it.

How do you know if you’re trusted?

Some signs:

• When leadership asks, "What do you think we should do?" instead of telling you what to do.

• Engineers and designers seek you out to get your early take on ideas.

• You can push back on leaders without drama.

• You can make calls without running everything up the chain.

• You're pulled into strategic discussions, not just execution updates.

• You are first in line to hear news or updates before the rest of the org.

• You’re in meetings where decisions happen.

• Your manager defends your decisions to others.

If you're not seeing these signs, don't sweat it. Trust compounds like interest – start small, be consistent, and watch these things happen over time.

Next steps

This week, pick one project and intentionally over-communicate. Document everything, share daily updates, flag risks early, do what you say you’ll do when you say you’ll do it. Charge that battery up, dear builder!

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A few weeks back, we talked about the easiest way to build product sense: by trying other people’s products. I invest my time here each week because it’s fun and it helps me do my job better (tho ☠️ my screen time). 

Why does this habit work? By diving into the user experience of successful apps, you learn to recognize patterns and best practices that you can reuse in your own context. It’s an easy inspiration machine.

That said, without a bit of structure, you’re just doom-scrolling. How do you structure your doom-scrolling juuuuust enough to make it productive for you?

We’re trying something different this week with a product review. Our first victim is James Clear’s new app called Atoms. Download the app and we’ll sniff out their vision, intuit what they’re measuring, discuss what is working and what they could do better, and riff on how they might 10x their impact.

🧩 What is Atoms?

Back in February, James Clear of Atomic Habits fame dropped a new app called Atoms. All the “tech influencers” I follow on Twitter made a big hoo-hah about it on launch day because it shot to the top of the app store charts. The launch exemplifies a trend we’re seeing more of, creators building sticky networks that create a tight feedback loop for them to launch and grow other products (some digital and some physical like Emily Mariko’s market totes).

I liked this take from Greg Isenberg because I think he’s right in that we’ll see a lot more of this (though time will tell if this specific app will create a new multi-billion dollar category 👀):

In the case of James Clear, who has sold over 15M copies of his book and distributes his newsletter to millions of people, I’m surprised he didn’t do this sooner. He worked with the folks at Tiny and Metalab to bring this to life and the MVP is delightful. 

That said, I’m sure his team learned an important lesson on launch day: launch momentum does not equal sustainable growth. Your app can have a huge volume of initial downloads but fizzle out quickly if it’s not built with growth in mind. I’d guess they’ve reached “trough of sorrow” status as most new products do.

🗺️ What are they trying to do? 

Open the app, go through onboarding, and let’s play out what we think they’re trying to accomplish. James Clear’s niche is people looking to create meaningful changes in their lives. People find him because they hope to change something and use his book to teach themselves how to create a new habit or reset bad old ones.

The app supports the book by being a tactile tool that helps you create a small habit (using their formula: habit, location, time) and then it reminds you to do it daily. The core loop centers on habit creation and the experience is simple but effective! 

I’d guess Clear and his team are hoping enough people will benefit not just from content, but from a habit tool that will further amplify his teachings while growing the Atoms community. Noble goals!

🧪 How do they measure success? 

If I were working on this app at this stage, I’d spend most of my days thinking about retention. Retention is a clear product market fit marker and an obvious signal that the product experience creates meaningful value to the people using it.

If I had to guess just by looking at the product, retention is low because the product execution is weak in getting you to come back consistently. 

💪🏻 What is working?

That said, poke around! Tap on the nav and see how they’ve grouped the user experience (by home, progress, mindset). Go through the core loop (ie. creating a habit and logging it for the day), how does that feel? What do we think is working?

Habit creation is a tight loop

The app onboards you into a habit, doubling as a hook to get you to come back. The flow grounds their formula (define the habit, get specific, ground it in an identity), which you’ve heard before if you’ve read the book. The flow is animated and adds delight to what could easily be a monotonous onboarding experience.

Accountability partners work

They also nudge you to share your habits with an accountability partner. Social pressure works and doubles as an easy word-of-mouth hook. If I were them, I’d lean in here and move this into the core loop ASAP! Create a habit, share it with a friend, etc.

📈 How can they make it better?

The MVP is a good start, but it’s not designed with growth in mind. They’re doing very little to drive retention beyond habit creation, and I doubt that will be enough to get people to come back consistently. If they don’t come back, they don’t share with their friends, they don’t monetize, and then the entire thing fizzles before they even get started! How might they build with retention in mind?

Invest in the streak

They call their streak “repetitions,” but it’s hard to find and not celebrated enough to make me want to stick to it. If I were them, I’d center the experience around the act of completing your daily repetition, make it easy to find, feel delightful af, and better celebrate key milestones like a weekly and monthly streak. People love streaks and this should be a foundational, well-executed pillar.

Monetize later 

I would also ditch monetization at this stage. If the core experience isn’t quite right, charging for it is a losing game. Building out and maintaining a full monetization flow that very few people will use at this stage isn’t the right spend of their team’s time.

💡How might you 10x the impact? 

Here’s a fun frame. If you were leading this team, how would you push the team to not just think in small tweaks but with a 10x mindset? What are some big bets you could make that would truly 10x growth? Some of my ideas:

Lean into community 

One unique aspect of Clear’s empire is his community. How might he leverage it to create more engagement inside the app? I would study some humming online communities (my current fave is Good Inside) to mimic what they’re doing well. Creating roles around behaviors you want to influence (like celebrating when people hit a big milestone) are easy ways to make sure people are both motivated and rewarded for hitting their goals by real people.

Create more structure around habit-type

Finding a more structured way to group people who are forming similar habits could be an easy way to create some camaraderie. Peloton does this with hashtags where you can find other people like you and come together. Could bringing people together around shared goals help bring them back? If I was trying to quit smoking, connecting with people who are like me could be extremely motivating.

Test leaderboards

What if instead of making people outright compete against each other, you instead celebrate people who are the most committed to their habit? Enter: commitment boards. Rising in a leaderboard that celebrates your hard work and dedication is an empowering way to reward and motivate.

📣 Share your thoughts  

Take a look at the app and answer the above questions. What do you think? If you were the Chief Builder™️ on this project, how would you 10x growth? And finally, this was fun, which app should we review together next?

A few weeks back Ezra Klein dropped a podcast that I have not been able to stop thinking about. He interviewed Kyle Chayka, a staff writer at The New Yorker, who was promoting his book “Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture.” The podcast discusses the algorithmically-driven digital world we encounter every day and how it’s influencing our personal taste as we spend more time online.

Personal taste refers to an individual's unique preferences and inclinations towards certain styles, aesthetics, activities, or ideas, shaped by their experiences, culture, personality, and environment. -ChatGPT

Chayka unpacks the implications of living in a ‘filter bubble,’ which reinforces our preexisting beliefs and isolates us from differing viewpoints. He also digs into the ‘commodification of aesthetics,’ which I’ve personally noticed in the real world and in the digital products I consume every day. So much looks the same these days!

The question I’ve been noodling on is what happens when we all consume similar content, will this make more of our individual tastes the same? It’s a great podcast and an interesting read (Should we start a Builder’s book club?!)

The role of a builder is evolving quickly

So what does this have to do with building stuff? A lot! The job of a builder is going to be completely different in the next decade. The technology stack is collapsing, making technical barriers to entry lower. AI will lower the floor and raise the ceiling. The work you do, which will increasingly be facilitated by AI tools, will be more cross-functional, broader, and less function-specific. You’ll be doing more than before and critiquing AI outputs will become a big part of your job.

Your taste comes into play in this brave new world, because it is what will help you build products that stand out in the increasing sameness of the Internet. We will notice people and products that break through the monoculture. Your taste is what will help you ship stuff that feels unique and fresh!

Will AI taste get there eventually?

The short answer is maybe? In the same way it’s hard to teach humans good taste quickly, my guess is AI will be the same. Personal taste reminds me of the 10,000-hour rule:

The 10,000-hour rule suggests mastering a skill requires about 10,000 hours of practice, emphasizing dedication and persistent effort towards achieving expertise. It's a reminder that success is not instant but a product of consistent, focused work over time. -ChatGPT

It’s similar for you, your taste is generated from traveling the meandering path of life. Your cultural background, personal interests, where you invest your time and spend your energy, all accumulate to build your taste. It’s a beautiful part of being human, as unique as your fingerprints.

AI is different. While AI can generate recs based on criteria and improve over time by learning from patterns and signals, its capability has boundaries. This is good news because it allows you to exploit those boundaries to stay relevant 🙃

Here are some of the hard edges I’ve been noticing with AI:

• Subjectivity is hard: Taste is inherently subjective, shaped by personal experiences, cultural backgrounds, and emotional connections. AI, in its current form, struggles with these nuances because it cannot experience or internalize the world in the way humans do.

• Empathy is inherently human: While AI can simulate responses that seem empathetic, this simulation lacks the genuine understanding and feeling behind true empathy.

• Culture is nuanced: Culture is dynamic, rich, and often abstract, making it difficult for AI to fully understand and integrate into its 'decision-making' process.

While AI can approximate a sense of taste based on data and patterns, it’ll be a while before it can match the depth and complexity of human taste shaped by emotions, culture, and personal experiences. Your humanness keeps ya relevant, lean into it!

How to invest in your taste

The fun thing about taste-building is that the exercise takes you on a self-discovery journey. I love to read and spend a lot of time reading and writing as a way to taste-build (I average a book a week!). I’m also an appreciator of the aesthetics which sends me into museums, thinking about design, deep down the TikTok fashion rabbit hole, etc. Here are other things you can do:

• Lean into the fucking weird. encourages us: “To tilt away from the platforms that make us feel like machines and toward the rooms full of weird artists who make us remember that it is the tilt itself - the err - the weird - that makes us human.” For the love of god keep it weird!

• Create and curate: Put your taste out there by creating and curating. Explore what truly resonates with you by writing about it/recording a video on it/sharing it with people!

• Practice empathy: Do the noble work of seeking to understand our fellow humans. Let their humanity ground you.

• Stay curious: Cultivate a habit of questioning and exploring. Learn to recognize AI content. Question it! Push past it.

• Challenge mimetic desire: Don’t fall into the trap of wanting what others want. Ask yourself often, "Does this truly represent my taste, or am I just an AI normie following the masses?" 🐑

Your taste is a reflection of who you are and what you bring to the world; nurture it, and let it be your signature!

The above Tweet from made me wonder, could anyone other than Greta Gerwig have made the Barbie movie what it was? Truly a reflection of her taste and vision! Here’s how to leverage your taste while you’re building:

• Listen to your gut: Your intuition and your proclivities are what will set your work apart. Learn how to recognize them!

• Keep it quirky (keep it human): Lean into your own quirks and humanness. It doesn’t need to be perfect, it should just reflect you 🪞 If you’re using ChatGPT to help you create, rework in your own voice.

• Authenticity resonates: In a world saturated with copycat ideas and trends, originality absolutely stands out. Infuse your work with elements that reflect your personal journey, preferences, and perspectives.

• Find your niche: What are you uniquely qualified to build, opine on, or design? Lean into your own niche that you’ve carved out through your meandering experiences. I’m trying to do this with this newsletter, is it resonating?!

How do you think about your personal taste? How will AI influence it? How does your taste influence your work? Share more in the comments below!

Leave a comment

-Nickey

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"If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that." -Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Stephen King recommends reading as much and as often as you can if you want to become a great writer. Walt Disney got the idea for Disneyland by taking his daughters to other amusement parks. Hans Zimmer was inspired by the movie scores of his childhood (and parenthood) when he sat down to write the music for Interstellar. The list goes on! 

What if regularly experimenting with a wide array of products, truly immersing yourself in them, becomes the catalyst for your own product genius?

Sounds profound, but I think we all intuitively know that using other products is a good thing. Yet it falls into the well-intentioned category of “I know it’s important but I don’t make time for it as often as I should.” It oft goes unprioritized, no process makes sure it happens, and therefore it doesn’t happen or worse, it happens but nothing comes of it.

So here’s my advice. Consume, consume, consume, and only then, create.

A building block of product sense

I’m calling this “immersive consumption” and it’s an easy way to beef up your product sense. Product sense is your ability to intuitively understand if a product will connect with your customer and the craft to shape it in a way to make sure that it does. It’s a cornerstone skill, one that the best product builders apply every day. It’s also a spicy topic that every builder seems to have a hot take on 🌶️

When I was writing this post, I went in search of some writing to share on this topic and turns out there is a lot of it out there. So many venn diagrams. But which one is best? They’re honestly all good! Product sense is a blend of many different skills (empathy, creativity, market understanding, design sense, and more). It’s more intuition and soft skills, so it’s hard to define. A slippery fish, but rewarding when it’s in your grasp. 

Why consume?

Product sense matters so much as a skill because it quite literally divides good and great products. So how does consuming actually help you build this skill?

Immersing yourself in a diverse set of products helps you build an internal compass for what is good. Being able to call out good products helps you look for this in your products. This isn’t just about appreciating the quality in others' creations; it's about embedding that gold standard into your own work. You're not just observing, you're raising the bar for your own output.

Also by trying a wide array of different products, you’re seeing different problem-solving approaches in practice. You learn how different problems can be approached and solved, enriching your own toolbox of ideas and methods. It's a practical way to enhance your creative thinking and problem-solving skills.

Finally, immersive consumption is not just about understanding products, but also about delving deep into the market itself. This approach allows you to grasp the market dynamics at play—identifying both the headwinds that challenge the industry and the tailwinds propelling it forward.

How do you meaningfully consume? 

Here’s how you can build a process around this for yourself and your team:

• Cast a wide net: Actively seek out and use products from various industries, not just those related to yours. Brainstorm with your team on what to try. What has been inspiring members of your team lately?

• Be mindful about your experience: Pay attention to details—design, usability, customer experience—and think about what makes these products stand out.

• Write down your takeaways: After using a product, take time to reflect on what worked, what didn’t, and why. Screenshots are forever. Have your team do the same. FigJam is a great tool for this!

• Schedule this into your day: Make it a habit to regularly explore new products and innovations. Do this at a monthly team meeting. Make it fun!

• Bring back to your team: Discuss your findings and insights with the team regularly. Have them do the same! Make this recurring on your agenda.

• Use what you learn: Use insights gained to creatively experiment in your own work or projects, applying principles or ideas when relevant.

Other examples

Finally, I’ll leave you with some ChatGPT-generated examples of other product leaders doing just this:

• Steve Jobs and Apple: Jobs was famously inspired by a variety of sources outside the tech industry. For instance, his interest in calligraphy during his college days influenced the development of the typography and fonts used in Macintosh computers. Additionally, Jobs' appreciation of minimalist design, partly inspired by his visits to Japanese Zen gardens, played a crucial role in the design ethos of Apple products.

• Melanie Perkins and Canva: Perkins was inspired to create the platform due to her experience as a university student and tutor in graphic design. She recognized the challenges students faced in learning complex design software like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, finding it "ridiculous" that they had to spend an entire semester just learning where the buttons were. This observation led her to seek a simpler, more accessible solution for graphic design.

• Reid Hoffman and LinkedIn: Before founding LinkedIn, Hoffman worked at PayPal and was heavily influenced by the social dynamics and network effects he observed in the online payment system. His exposure to various social networking platforms and his understanding of professional networking needs led him to create LinkedIn, a platform that combines professional networking with social media elements.

• Emily Weiss and Glossier: Weiss's approach to product development was heavily influenced by the trends and consumer interactions she observed on social media, underscoring the importance of immersive consumption in her creative process​​. Weiss also reviewed other products on her blog Into The Gloss before she made her own.

• Brian Chesky and Airbnb: Chesky, a designer by trade, drew inspiration from his own experiences with lack of affordable accommodations during travels. His background in design helped him appreciate the importance of user experience and aesthetics, which are evident in Airbnb's platform. Chesky's exposure to various design and hospitality concepts influenced the unique user interface and customer experience focus of Airbnb.

• Kevin Systrom and Instagram: Before Instagram, Systrom created a location-based app called Burbn, which had too many features and lacked focus. He was influenced by the simplicity and ease of use of apps like Foursquare and the growing interest in mobile photography, particularly the filters used in apps like Hipstamatic. This led him to pivot Burbn into what became Instagram, focusing on simple photo sharing with aesthetic filters.

• Jan Koum and WhatsApp: Koum, influenced by his early experiences with clunky and expensive SMS services, saw the potential in using the internet for messaging. His exposure to different messaging products and his understanding of the need for a reliable, low-cost communication method led to the creation of WhatsApp, which focused on simplicity, ease of use, and privacy.

In closing

I’d love to hear from you. What products are you trying these days? How does your team do this? What’s inspiring you? Do share in the comments below!

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“Feedback is a gift they say!” I jokingly complain but truly believe in these exercises because they are a crucible moment that forces a check-in with yourself. Are you on track to get the things you want? Y/N. If the answer is no, then what is your plan of action? Let’s make 2024 the year we get the things we want at work ✊

-Nickey 

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When you reach a certain level in your career and hit a certain number of LinkedIn followers (cringe but true), you start to get regular inbound from people asking you for career advice. This is a thrill for me because I get so much energy from answering career questions, talking career strategy, and generally being a walking career ask me anything. 

What question do you suppose I get asked the most? HOW DO I GET PROMOTED? Shocking, I realize. And I hear it most often this time of year because ‘tis the damn season. Promotion obsession had me in its clutches in my early career, though its importance lessened greatly once I had earned more career agency. It’s easy to look back and shake my finger at myself for spending all that energy stressin’, though you could argue that those early promotions set me up for the career agency I have today. Was that stress worth it? The answer is complicated. 

If I had a magic wand, I’d replace your promotion anxiety-doom spiral with a well-crafted plan designed to help you reach your goals. But we all know that’s not realistic. The path to career advancement looks a bit different for everyone and differs by org, by role, by level, by manager, and more. Furthermore, the performance review process and career growth opportunities are hotbeds for structural and systemic bias, making them even more unreachable for marginalized groups (most especially women of color!). 

So given all of the above, how do we orient ourselves on the career growth path? 

Unlocking career growth mode

After watching many of my peers drive their career growth through the years, I've picked up on key themes and principles that are vectors for career growth. Enterprising people tend to create their own magic wand and make their own luck and here’s how they do it:

🪡 Focus on your craft 

If you focus on one single thing at work, make this your thing! Craft matters. Shipping good shit is IT. I sit in calibration sessions, in product reviews, and read dozens of specs each week, and it’s easy to see when someone knows their shit and is a true master of their craft. This mastery is a portal you should seek out because once you slip through it you’re beyond promotion!

💸 Optimize for impact 

Not everywhere you work will let you have the autonomy to choose what you work on. But dear builder, get good at advocating to work on the things you know will make a difference. This is a skill, and you are uniquely poised to advocate for yourself in this way because you are closest to the customer.

🆘 Find a sponsor 

Write down one person who is advocating for you at work. If you’re staring at a list of zero names, you’re in a bad place. How to fix? Refine your craft and make an impact and sponsors will come out of the woodwork. Also, ask people to play this role for you. Ideally, your manager is also doing this for you, if yours isn’t find one who will. 

🕴️Manage your manager 

You drive the relationship you have with your manager. Full stop. Getting good at this upward management is a hard-won skill and it’s one you can start building tomorrow. How do you do this? You use your regularly scheduled check-ins as a constant drumbeat on your work and its impact. Ask for feedback at least once a month. Share your career ambitions and where you want to go. Go so far as to outline how your manager can help you get there. You’d be surprised at how few people own this relationship, and how far it will take you if you wield it well. 

📣 Share your ambitions

A lot of people who want something are quiet about what they want. Especially women. They are trained to stay silent, to not advocate for themselves, and to make their ambitions small at work. Retrain yourself. Jettison the cringe and just tell people what you want already.

🔧 Create your own role 

If you’ve got an idea for a new team or new role that should be spun up, hit the pavement and bring it to life. As a manager, I hate to stand in the way of well-directed “start-up energy” because it usually means that the person is passionate and obsessed with the problem/idea enough that they’re going to do what it takes to figure it out.

🗺️ Project manage your growth

Did you know that making a plan drastically reduces stress because what you stress about is the absence of a plan? Use a simple framework like WOOP (Wish, Outcome, Obstacles, Plan) to take your goals from idea to reality.

🌶️ Argue what it would take to replace you 

I read this great post on LinkedIn last week from a former coworker, who advocates understanding what it would take to replace yourself at work, and to use that as leverage to get promoted. For example, if backfilling your role would require two people, you’re probably under-leveled, underpaid, or should be given more people to grow your team.

🛑 Call out bias 

Sounds obvious but if the promotion process at your organization is not fair for you it’s not fair for anyone. Call out bias when you see it and push your organization to do better when it comes to equitable and inclusive performance processes.

👋 Go somewhere else to make it happen 

Sometimes you’re not in a good spot for promotion. And getting to a spot where it’s more likely to happen, is going to take a ton of energy that doesn’t feel worth it. If you’re here, consider leaving. You can often negotiate up elsewhere and then can spend your energy mastering the craft somewhere else. Having an honest conversation with yourself on likeliness and timeline is healthy. Have this conversation with your manager too.

Career growth 101

I’ll leave us with some great reads on career growth:

• The Magic Loop | Lenny’s Newsletter 

• How to get promoted | Lenny’s newsletter 

• Learning vs. Impact | Perspectives by Deb Liu

• To get promoted, get better at complexity, autonomy, and throughput | The Hard Parts of Growth by Ami Vora

To have hundreds of thousands of people laid-off means that hundreds of thousands of people are now processing their experience of being laid-off, and working to get closure. Unfortunately, the way companies lay off employees typically centers the employer and not the person going through the change. The TikToks of people being let go this week were super cringy yet at the same time real and I’m glad people shared them 🤷🏻‍♀️

As a builder it’s sometimes your job to carry out team changes of this kind (and others) and centering the humans while you do it is a skill you need to build. Read on for a primer.

-Nickey

As a builder, you’ve likely already been impacted by the tech recession we’re sailing through. I hope the impact has been small and inconsequential for you but in reality, it probably hasn’t been. Over 200,000 people have already been laid off in the tech sector alone which is ominous. [Editor’s Note: I updated this number and somehow we’re already at 7,000 in 2024 alone!] Where does it stop? 

As someone who has been playing the tech game for 13 years, this ain’t my first rodeo. A normal part of walking the path of a long career is a side quest (or several), that centers around tackling an unexpected challenge that you need to complete to get back on the path. It could be a team change, a role change, a reorg, a layoff, or any number of things that people in our industry are going through right now. You are on your own hero’s journey and it is guaranteed that you’ll encounter some unplanned for shit at some point. It’s a part of the game.

Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey is used as a storytelling tool, but if you squint it also describes the arc of a good career. On my hero’s journey, a lot of the trials and failures have happened around having to change course during fluid times, like the beginning of covid (which I’m still processing tbh!). That first brush with hard decisions and changes-of-course breaks you. But as with all hard things your skin gets thicker with practice and by the fourth time it still sucks but you are at the very least better at doing it. If only more people talked about how to do this stuff well.

Your job is to land the plane safely and help people process the experience

As a builder, times like these can be extremely stressful as you’re responsible for both delivering business results in an unpredictable market, all while keeping spirits up so your team can ship. You’re also making hard decisions and then having to implement those hard decisions in a hopefully human-centric and thoughtful way.

Making hard decisions like sunsetting a team, changing strategic direction, or having to lay off someone, is gutting. And doing this while keeping the wheels on the bus for the rest of the team is just really fucking hard. To me, doing any of the above with grace and style happens when care about the humans involved and consider their well-being in your decision calculus.

If you read anything about helping people process change or loss, a big theme that continuously presents itself is how to create closure when change happens. Helping people process change so they can move forward is incredibly important, yet we rarely do it as managers. The majority of us are not therapists or psychologists, yet a lot of that foundational knowledge comes into play during change moments and we lack the training to do it well.

I can’t tell you a time I’ve sat in a meeting about a big change that will impact a team where someone asked, how do we help this person or team process this experience and get closure after it’s done (that wasn’t coming from me 😌). There’s a lot of room for builders to get better here.

Why help people process an experience?

Helping people go through and then process an experience has simple knock-on effects that will help your team be high-performing down the road. It’ll also help people leaving hold their heads high. High-performing teams have trust, psychological safety, and morale so they can innovate. To keep a team humming, it means you have to manage them through crises in ways that aren’t dispiriting.

So why is closure important? And why should you create it intentionally?

• It keeps team morale high: Creating closure can help improve team morale and prevent any negative feelings or unfinished business from lingering. This is especially important if the project was particularly challenging or stressful.

• It keeps velocity high: When team members have closure on a project, they can move on to their next work with a fresh mind and be more productive as they move forward.

• It allows you to be better next time: Reviewing and reflecting on the project can help identify any lessons learned that can be applied to future projects. Build smarter, build better next time!

• It preserves the hard-won learnings: Documenting and archiving the project's process, outcomes, and lessons learned will preserve hard-won learnings and allow them to be passed along to make future teams smarter.

• It builds respect for the leader, team, and company: People leave companies, don’t let them leave with a bad taste in their mouth.

How to create closure for teams

So how do you actually help a team process an experience and get closure so they can move forward? Here’s a punch list:

• Ace the communications: It is so important to be transparent and upfront about what is happening and why it’s happening. This will give the team time to mentally prepare for the end and allow them to wrap up any remaining tasks. Don’t slack on perfecting who knows, when they know, and how they are told, and what you say. This matters a great deal and in my experience, people often fuck up the hardest here.

• Carve out time to review and reflect: Host a retrospective as a team to look back on the work that was done. Review and reflect on your successes and challenges. This can help team members feel a sense of accomplishment and closure. It can also help identify any lessons learned that can be applied to future projects.

• Celebrate achievements: Recognize and celebrate the team's achievements and contributions to the project. These exercises make people feel seen, make their work feel valued, boost morale and give team members a sense of accomplishment that they can carry to other things.

• Document and archive the project: Document the project's process, outcomes, and lessons learned in an accessible way. Make sure the project's work and knowledge is not lost and can be accessed by future team members or stakeholders.

• Thank the team: Show appreciation for the team's hard work and dedication to the project in company-wide forums. And don’t be stingy with bonuses, baby.

Required reading during the dark times

Finally, I’ll leave you with some more reading on changing course and building better during times like these:

• Matt Mochary on Lenny’s Podcast - Great words of wisdom from a CEO coach who helps CEO process/act on some of the things above!

• Rising Strong: How the Ability to Reset Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brené Brown - Need to reread, it’s been too long!

• The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz - Seminal, everyone should read this.

• Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Dan Heath and Chip Heath - Helping people want to change is another helpful frame on making course changes.

• Building layoffs on a Healthy Foundation by Kellan Elliott-McCrea - Used to work with Kellan at Etsy long ago and can confirm he cares deeply about the humans

Article image by Veranika Zhuraulevich

Yours truly,

Nickey

—

Someone recently asked me why Duolingo has such an incredible product experience (in their words: “that continues to get better”) and my quick answer was pretty simple. Duolingo has a strong culture of dogfooding. They were surprised this was my answer, and while obviously there’s a lot more happening to continuously improve the product experience behind the scenes, dogfooding is the string that ties it all together. Ask any successful consumer-facing product person and there is a good chance they’ll say something similar. They use it, their work-peers use it, and they all collectively push to make it better every day through the experience of using it and talking about it.

It’s already well-accepted that there are many benefits from this practice. And yet, to bake this into the cultural fabric of your organization, this needs to be operationalized. Moving from “we should do this” to “we’re doing this” is always hard. Anytime something needs to be operationalized inside of an organization, there’s a chance that it just doesn’t come to life in the right way, it isn’t prioritized, or it falls over somewhere on the execution path. Here are my recommendations on how to operationalize dogfooding so it levels-up your product experience.

But first, what is dogfooding?

Before we get into the meat of this post (pun!), here’s a quick segue into dogfooding more generally. This term comes from an infamous 1970s commercial where Lorne Greene feeds his dog Alpo dog food. Ie. it’s good enough for HIS OWN dog. Until I wrote this post though, I assumed this meant he sampled his own dog’s food. This is so gross, but such a better metaphor 😜 File this under NOW YOU KNOW and here’s the actual commercial because I was feeling the nostalgia:

Dogfooding starts at the top 

At Duolingo, we promote dogfooding at every turn at all levels of the organization. Duolingo’s CEO famously uses the product every morning, across different states and on different devices. He is often the first to catch when shit is broken and regularly reports bugs and issues with the experience because he’s using it every single day. This trickles down to his direct reports and theirs and profoundly impacts the organization’s behavior because it creates a shared baseline on the state of the product that allows the team to discuss current and future improvements easily.

At Airbnb, Brian Chesky invites guests into his own home as a host. Literally! This man is besties with Obama so I’m sure he runs a full CIA-grade background check on all his guests BUT STILL, this is not a thing he has to do. He does it because he understands the value and perspective it allows him to bring to his job.

At Etsy when I led the team working on the Seller Experience, I ran an Etsy shop. In fact, the majority of early Etsy employees ran Etsy shops. It was extremely time-consuming, but it gave me deep empathy for the struggle of getting to that first sale. It also helped me understand the administrative side of running a shop which directly impacted the work I did daily with my team. I’m also running a year-long streak on Duolingo because it helps me contribute in a more real way.

So TL;DR: start at the top and go down your organizational tree. Make sure your leadership team is using the product often, make sure the product team is using the product, and god-damn-it make sure even the intern is using it every day. If you don’t have influence over these groups at the very least make sure your team is using it, you’ll all be better for it.

Dogfooding is incentivized

While social pressure is an extremely effective tool, it’s not enough. Here’s another huge motivational lever you can pull: Pay people to do it. As I was preparing to write this post, I asked my LinkedIn followers how the companies they work for incentive dogfooding and here were some of the highlights:

• Whatnot gives employees a monthly stipend to spend on the platform.

• Airbnb gives everyone a quarterly stipend on Airbnb that you can use to stay on the platform (I miss this dearly!)

• Etsy promotes Admin sellers internally and hosts Admin craft shows at their HQ.

• Duolingo runs two yearly language learning challenges that offer financial incentives if you complete them.

• And the list goes on!

Not everyone has the same 24-hours

This is as good a time as ever to remind you that not everyone has the same 24 hours. What does that mean? It means paying people to incentivize a behavior you’re looking for is a good way to make sure it happens. If you’re asking for people’s time, especially asking them to spend time doing it when it will sometimes fall outside of work hours, make sure that time is compensated. Or make sure it falls neatly into their workweek. Pay them for their labor, and said labor is more likely to happen.

Dogfooding is ritualized

Beyond tangible incentives, another way to motivate folks to use your product is to build company-wide rituals and programs that are staffed and supported for success. Here are some ways I’ve seen this done successfully at different organizations:

• Build a program that runs at least a couple of times a year. Duolingo runs a bi-yearly program that incentivizes people to use the product every day. The program is run by a team of cross-functional leaders (engineers who build the platform, a technical program manager who coordinates program details across stakeholders, etc.). When the program launches it’s promoted to the entire company by leadership to drive participation.

• Run a bug-bashing session. Before you ship something, get your team together to run through all the changes you’re making to “find all the bugs” (though you’re really just dogfooding what will be the new product experience). Make this a synchronous event and encourage people to share feedback out loud while you’re together. Keep tabs on the feedback shared and follow-up on it later.

  

• Run an internal beta program. When a thing is built and you’re ready to get feedback from a wider set of people, release it to the company. Share that this is happening, how they can access it, and what kind of feedback you’re looking for. Promote it using org-wide communication channels (like all-team Slack channels, or company-wide all hands). Or better still, build into the product something that pushes people to use the product:

  

• Build tools that make dogfooding and reporting feedback low friction. Duolingo has something called “Shake to Report” which allows any admin to leave feedback that creates a JIRA ticket and gets reviewed by a real human. This makes reporting issues and feedback stupidly simple.

  

• Make it fun. Don’t make this lame or people will hate you 🤭 When I worked on Duolingo Classes (which was sunset last year, RIP), we created a monthly dogfooding program where the team competed to take the most Classes and winners were both incentivized with money but also with custom emojis that you could only get if you won. Leaderboards didn’t hurt either.

Dogfooding is resourced

Finally, and most importantly, resource the work that enables more dogfooding. Things like building dogfooding programs, building tools that support said programs, creating larger more company-wide rituals all take people and time to bring to life. It takes a village, so don’t make this one person’s job or it’ll never get off the ground.

How do you dogfood?

Now, this is far far easier to do when what you’re building is easy to fit into your daily routine. But what do you do if it’s not a daily use case? How is this done where you work? What has motivated you to use your product more? Share your experience in the comments below 👇🏻

(Cover art by the talented Nika Polonskaya)

As a builder, you’ve likely already been impacted by the tech recession we’re sailing through. I hope the impact has been small and inconsequential but in reality, it probably hasn’t been. Over 150,000 people have already been laid off in the tech sector alone which is ominous. Where does it stop? 

As someone who has been playing the tech game for 13 years, this ain’t my first rodeo. A normal part of walking the path of a long career is a side quest (or several), that centers around tackling an unexpected challenge that you need to complete to get back on the path. It could be a team change, a role change, a reorg, a layoff, or any number of things that people in our industry are going through right now. You are on your own hero’s journey and it is guaranteed that you’ll encounter some unplanned for shit at some point. It’s a part of the game.

Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey is used as a storytelling tool, but if you squint it also describes the arc of a good career. On my hero’s journey, a lot of the trials and failure stuff has happened around making decisions and then having to change course during fluid times, like the beginning of covid (which I’m still processing tbh!). That first brush with hard decisions and changes of course breaks you. But as with all hard things your skin gets thicker with practice and by the fourth time it still sucks but you are at the very least better at doing it. If only more people talked about how to do this stuff well.

Your job is to land the plane safely and help people process the experience

As a builder, times like these can be extremely stressful as you’re responsible for both delivering business results in an unpredictable market, all while keeping spirits up so your team can ship. You’re also making hard decisions and then having to implement those hard decisions in a hopefully human-centric and thoughtful way.

Making hard decisions, while maintaining velocity, and acting with grace (and a little bit of style) is really fucking hard. To me the grace and style part comes into play when you actually care about the humans involved and consider their well-being in your decision calculus.

If you read anything about helping people process change or loss, a big theme that continuously presents itself is how to create closure when change happens. Helping people process change so they can move forward is incredibly important, yet it’s rarely something we do as managers. The majority of us are not therapists or psychologists, yet a lot of that foundational knowledge comes into play during change moments and we lack the training to do it well.

I can’t tell you a time I’ve sat in a meeting about a big change that will impact a team where someone asked, how do we help this person or team process this experience and get closure after it’s done (that wasn’t coming from me 😌). There’s a lot of room for builders to get better here.

Why help people process an experience?

Helping people go through and then process an experience has simple knock-on effects that will help your team be high-performing down the road. High-performing teams have trust, psychological safety, and morale so they can innovate. In order to keep a team humming, it means you have to manage them through crises in ways that aren’t dispiriting.

So why is closure important? And why should you create it intentionally?

• It keeps team morale high: Creating closure can help improve team morale and prevent any negative feelings or unfinished business from lingering. This is especially important if the project was particularly challenging or stressful.

• It keeps velocity high: When team members have closure on a project, they can move on to their next work with a fresh mind and be more productive as they move forward.

• It allows you to be better next time: Reviewing and reflecting on the project can help identify any lessons learned that can be applied to future projects. Build smarter, build better next time!

• It preserves the hard-won learnings: Documenting and archiving the project's process, outcomes, and lessons learned will preserve hard-won learnings and allow them to be passed along to make future teams smarter.

• It builds respect for the leader, team, and company: People leave companies, don’t let them leave with a bad taste in their mouth.

How to create closure for teams

So how do you actually help a team process an experience and get closure so they can move forward? Here’s a punch list:

• Ace the communications: It is so important to be transparent and upfront about what is happening and why it’s happening. This will give the team time to mentally prepare for the end and allow them to wrap up any remaining tasks. Don’t slack on perfecting who knows, when they know, and how they are told, and what you say. This matters a great deal and in my experience, people often fuck up the hardest here.

• Carve out time to review and reflect: Host a retrospective as a team to look back on the work that was done. Review and reflect on your successes and challenges. This can help team members feel a sense of accomplishment and closure. It can also help identify any lessons learned that can be applied to future projects.

• Celebrate achievements: Recognize and celebrate the team's achievements and contributions to the project. These exercises make people feel seen, make their work feel valued, and boost morale and give team members a sense of accomplishment that they can carry to other things.

• Document and archive the project: Document the project's process, outcomes, and lessons learned in an accessible way. Make sure the project's work and knowledge is not lost and can be accessed by future team members or stakeholders.

• Thank the team: Show appreciation for the team's hard work and dedication to the project in company-wide forums. And don’t be stingy with bonuses, baby.

Required reading during the dark times

Finally, I’ll leave you with some more reading on changing course and building better during times like these:

• Matt Mochary on Lenny’s Podcast - Great words of wisdom from a CEO coach who helps CEO process/act on some of the things above!

• Rising Strong: How the Ability to Reset Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brené Brown - Need to reread, it’s been too long!

• The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz - Seminal, everyone should read this.

• Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Dan Heath and Chip Heath - Helping people want to change is another helpful frame on making course changes.

• Building layoffs on a Healthy Foundation by Kellan Elliott-McCrea - Used to work with Kellan at Etsy long ago and can confirm he cares deeply about the humans

Article image by Veranika Zhuraulevich

FOR YOUR BOSS

A tender relationship that you want to foster, and what better way to do this than to implant your ideas and ideals inside their head.

1. The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Success by Diana Chapman, Kaley Klemp, and Jim Dethmer - A friend recently recommended that I read this because their thesis on being a present and trust-based leader “sounded like something Nickey would be into.” They were not wrong. I just started this and it’s already chock-full of my notes and shaping my worldviews.

2. Leadership Is a Relationship: How to Put People First in the Digital World by Willys Devoll and Michael S. Erwin - I heard Mike Erwin on a recent Brené Brown podcast and really picked up what he was putting down. I believe his core thesis to be true. Invest in your relationships and your work gets easier, the shit you ship gets better, and things just start to click in ways they wouldn’t have otherwise.

3. Adrift: America in 100 Charts by Scott Galloway - This might be a little dark tbh, but as builders understanding the weird micro and macro environments we live in is essential to nailing the work we put out into the world.

FOR YOUR DIRECTS/MENTEES

A great moment to acknowledge the weird power structures that we are a part of and a moment to focus on the power of our craft. This list is by a handful of movers and shakers all designed to make ya (re)think.

1. Take Back Your Power: Ten New Rules for Women at Work by - An active, growth-mindset-shaped, set of tools that help women overcome the inequities at work.

2. Pay Up: The Future of Women and Work by Reshma Saujani - A great primer (especially for men who are often uneducated here) on the barriers working women, especially mothers, face at work.

3. Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making by Tony Fadell - A fantastic peek into a brilliant builder’s mind.

FOR EVERYONE

I know we invariably want to buy our coworker’s business books because it’s what we have in common and show up to do every day, but sometimes the best way to take care of ourselves is to NOT think about work. Here are two of the most palatable, liked-by-everyone, fiction books I read this year.

1. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin - A trio of friends turned game-builders and the story of how they change the world through their games. One of the best books I read this year.

2. Fairy Tale by Stephen King - A surprising genre hop for Stephen King, master of horror, to pen a fairy tale … but I loved it. His writing style is easy, the storyline sweet and surprising, and there is a dog that you’ll grow to love. What more could you want?

*THE EXCEPTION

I do have an exception on the “books are the best gift” rule and it is for anyone who does a service for you (like childcare workers, cleaning staff, your doorman, administrative help, etc.). In those cases CASH is always appropriate. No one wants socks or a keychain, be strong and don’t do it!

What would you buy your boss, your directs, your mentees, or your coworkers? Or what was the best gift you’ve gotten from a coworker? I want to hear your ideas in the comments below 👇🏻