Lessons from a summer past

November 16, 2023

Hey everyone!

A mid-month update as I’ve actually had *a lot* going on.

First off, thank you to everyone who bought our book, The Product Momentum Gap. It has been over a month since its release and we’re still #1 on some Amazon country sites - so THANK YOU!

I have been writing a lot over the last few weeks but haven’t had time to update all of you, so I thought I’d send a quick round up to catch you all up.

Experiences lead to content

I had a very terrible experience over the summer. After some poor choices and red flags ignored, I ended up working with a team that had some serious inefficiencies and toxic behaviour.

But all’s well that ends well, and I managed to write a few learnings from my time there.

A team that learns together, laughs together. But this team wasn’t learning or laughing. They were pointing fingers at each other instead of giving feedback about what was working, and what wasn’t.

I didn’t think I’d have to say this in 2023 but yes… your API-first product absolutely needs a product manager.

Nailing positioning and messaging in marketing is like setting the right foundation for a house. Miss it, and you're basically building on quicksand. You can’t expect to fill a leaky bucket just by adding more water.

This is the story of a team who believed that because they had gone through an arduous exercise of outlining Jobs-to-be-Done, they didn’t need product outcomes or objectives of any sort to guide the product development team.

*Sing to the tune of “This is the story of a girl”

Good products can still fail if there’s shit marketing behind it. Even more when you’re talking to your audience like they’re robots. Understanding needs and making your copy and approach human-centered can change everything.

Until next time ✌️

Andrea