Strategy Should Hurt
“A strategy should hurt.” The trade-offs—where you invest time and resources and where you don’t—should be painful and disappointing, either internally or to your customers. There’s no such thing as a strong strategy that prioritizes everything at once. —Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building
Focus Over Compromise
[Good strategies] emphasize focus over compromise. They focus on one aspect of the situation, not trying to be all things to all people. —Good Strategy/Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt A good strategy is single-minded. The whole point of a strategy is to focus your time and money so that
Products for Normies, Products for Sickos
Some products are made to have a perfect balance of features. They are "good enough" for "most people." A milquetoast Wirecutter pick. Those are products for "normies." But some products are made for the extremes, the edges. Those are products for sickos. (As a
Opinionated Is Good
In a user interview years ago, a customer said he found his Tortuga backpack to be too "opinionated." I got a little obsessed with that idea. A product should be opinionated. A designer—and by extension, his products—should have a point of view. Opinions are good. You
Simple is Sticky
The product that's the easiest to understand wins.
Making the Bug the Feature
Learn how Third Culture Bakery turned a bug of gluten-free pastries into a feature.
Navigating Ambiguity
To get promoted, have to be able to make better decisions despite more uncertainty.
The Best Jobs Page I've Ever Seen
The Stripe jobs page [https://stripe.com/jobs] is the best jobs page. Writing the page required a clarity of purpose that's driven the fintech startup's success in raising $1.6B [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/stripe/company_financials], attracting talent [https://twitter.com/patio11], and
Working From Home During a Pandemic
This post was originally an email sent to the Tortuga newsletter [https://manage.kmail-lists.com/subscriptions/subscribe?a=h4CLJm&g=fPVq6J] and has been edited to fit this format. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Today’s newsletter is for everyone working from home during the pandemic. If you’re providing an essential service
Remote Jobs Are Better Than Gig Economy Jobs
Remote jobs hold more potential for spreading economic opportunity and reducing inequality than the non-HQ jobs created by the tech sector. The latter includes gig economy jobs (Uber drivers), contract jobs (Facebook and Google moderators), and the other high-headcount, low wage jobs (Amazon warehouse workers). A Vox profile of Silicon