When we launched the first version of Basecamp in 2004, we decided to build software for small companies just like us. We know how growing from four to six or eight employees is a huge move. We know that it’s during those growth moments you need a system to help you keep everyone on the same page, and help your expanding teams be more self-sufficient. Being roughly the same size as our customers was a product-focused, mission-oriented decision we made then and have stuck to ever since.

I was telling Standard MBA students in 2009: "The constraints are your friends. Under-do the competition." Fifteen years later, it's still true, and we're still doing just that.

Your product should focus on solving just one problem extremely well, not 50.

"You've got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology, not the other way around." – Steve Jobs, 1997.

As a product manager, it’s important to hone the minimum set of activities that allow you to keep a product line moving forward productively. One of the most important core product management skills: the ability to triage unsuccessful products and avoid spending unnecessary effort on products that are destined to be losers.

1. make it work
2. make it pretty
3. make it fast but don't forget to (only) think about #3 even before you start with #1

This is one of the fundamental perspectives that first-time entrepreneurs, and especially people who’ve never manufactured (created) a product, get wrong.

The wrong approach and the right approach to startups

Lots of entrepreneurs struggle with pricing. How much to charge? It’s clear that the right price can make all the difference—too low and you miss out on profit; too high and you miss out on sales.

I still see people think "talking to customers" works when validating an idea, but people don't always know what they want. I think real validation of an idea happens with executing it and then people getting their credit card out and paying you for it.

The original iPhone didn’t have copy and paste. It didn’t import SIM contacts for people transitioning over. It didn’t have maps or GPS. It didn’t have 3G. It didn’t have a camera flash, fingerprint unlock, video recording, front camera, or an app store.

Iteration is key.

Loved by management consultants, a 2x2 diagram is a simple—some might say simplistic—way of looking at a problem. You consider each of the various factors in your problem and choose two that are important and that can be classified into discrete values.

At Airtree Ventures, I’ve been lucky enough to meet hundreds of companies across many different verticals, business models and stages. While questions on pricing do come up on occasion, it’s surprising how often it’s overlooked given its direct impact on the success of any business. While a huge amount of effort is poured into product and sales & marketing, there is much less focus on pricing despite the magnitude of difference it can make.

The Class of 2017 is an example of a cohort. All these students share the same date of graduation.

The most important feature for every website that cares about retention of any kind: Stay logged in. Hardly anybody does it right.

Disappointment occurs when expectations don’t match reality. And our expectations for software quality are profoundly unrealistic. Thus, lots of people are continuously disappointed — even enraged — by software bugs. They shouldn’t be.

Деньги ты заработаешь, людей — наймешь. Потраченное время уже не вернешь. Это невосполнимый конечный ресурс в твоей битве с конкурентами.

В году 250 рабочих дней. Это 25 шансов серьезно улучшить продукт. 25 выстрелов в твоей битве. Это мало, поэтому не трать время зря.

Steve Jobs: "there is a tremendous amount of craftsmanship between a great idea and a great product."

How much does it cost Wikipedia to have one more person read an article? How much does it cost Chanel to produce one more bottle of perfume? How about one more digital copy of a Grateful Dead concert?

“We want to limit the length of a review in the product to 140 characters, because we may want to use SMS at some stage. That’s a small change, right?”

Wrong.

Apple’s last quarter was the second most profitable quarter of any company ever in US history. Only ExxonMobile topped them slightly in 2008 when oil was at an all-time high. That’s an astounding and awe-inspiring accomplishment.

Пользователи всегда принимают любые значительные изменения в штыки, с этим надо смириться. Однако это не повод эти изменения не внедрять :)

First make it possible. Then make it beautiful. Then make it fast. Then make it cheap.

One of the side effects of using the iPhone App store so much is that it's started to fundamentally alter my perception of software pricing. So many excellent iPhone applications are either free, or no more than a few bucks at most. That's below the threshold of impulse purchase and squarely in no-brainer territory for anything decent that I happen to be interested in.