Today, I’m launching a new company: Highline BETA. I’m co-founding Highline BETA with Marcus Daniels. I’ve known Marcus a long time and we’ve stayed in touch throughout the years. We’ve now found the right time and opportunity to work together. Highline BETA is something different. We’re a startup co-creation company. What does that mean? It […]
The Product Manager’s Portfolio
It’s not always easy for a product manager to explain her precise role in building product. Every company defines product managers differently, and a product manager’s output is sometimes difficult to see or quantify. Product managers tend to use success metrics as a baseline for their experience (e.g. “We increased conversion by 300%!”) but of […]
Product Strategy for Designers
On Thursday, June 9th I’m teaching a 1-day course on product strategy for designers. It costs $299 for a ticket (or you can get group tickets for your team). If you’re a designer or you know any designers, please check it out. I’m teaching the course for two reasons: Mary Treseler (our editor on Lean […]
Context Matters When Building a Great Product
What are your users doing right before they use your product? What about right after? These are important questions that can help you build a better product. It’s not enough to understand the pain or problem your product solves; you also have to understand the circumstances in which it helps. What time of day is […]
Optimize for Happiness
Last Friday, April 22nd was the 30th anniversary of my brother’s death. He died at 8 years old. I wrote about it a few years ago as a way of celebrating his life and remembering him. Time heals. But it still fucking hurts. Not surprisingly, it’s around this time of year that I really reflect […]
Assembling the Avengers (Or How Startups Evolve Their Team Structures to Scale)
Who doesn’t like the Avengers, right? The first movie was awesome. The second one was…still fun. And the Avengers are heroes. They saved the world. As startups scale they go through a few phases of team building. Where companies end up varies, I’ve been a part of a few different structures and spoken with many […]
The Manager’s Job in a Scaling Startup
As a startup matures people’s roles change. In product, you might start out working on every little detail, triaging bugs, helping design UIs, deciding on how every feature should work and more. In engineering, you’re coding and building stuff every day. Over time if you move into a “management role” you get away from the […]
Responsibility, Accountability and Levelling Up
In hierarchical organizations, levelling up is fairly clear–it means moving up the ladder from one position to the next. Those interested in doing so have a clearer path (although it’s not easy) to more responsibility. Hierarchies with lots of levels have all sorts of issues, but they do make levelling up more obvious. Startups are […]
The Lean Analytics Backchannel
Alistair and I published Lean Analytics in 2013. It’s been 3 years. I can’t believe it’s been that long. And I remain shocked and humbled by the awesome feedback we still get today from people who tell us the book has helped them. It means more than you know. Since releasing Lean Analytics, we’ve always […]
Structure Matters (Scaling Startups)
When you first start a company there’s very little structure involved. You have a couple founders, an idea and (hopefully) a ton of passion for the problem you’re trying to solve. Lean Startup provides a methodology for how to do things, but generally the work and overall experience is pretty chaotic. And that’s totally fine. […]
Founding Partner at 