This is Product Bites. The only newsletter that calls Product Managers CEOs of the Product (no one else thinks that but who cares). Let’s get into it.
🤌 Till’s Picks
Baby boomers (aka the ones going into retirement now very well off) will look broke compared to current millennials. There's one caveat - only a specific fraction of the millennials - the rest seems pretty screwed (especially if they went big on crypto - oooopsi).
Damnit this advice is so simple. It’s also one of the reasons for the gender pay gap. Deb Liu as usual manages to wrap it nicely and actionable. Ask for more! And even a no might still help you in the long run.
Longer gem about the craft of product mgmt spanning early career to exec-level advice. Till’s fav: "Build a team in the same way you would build a product. Just as you would think about your users and their pain points, you should think about your team and the problems you’re facing so that you have clarity on what you’re solving for."
Building a wrapper around ChatGPT is not a doomed business model. Elad Gil lays out a comprehensive list of various moats to defend against being outcompeted by other startups or incumbents.
💻 Tools
Summarize.tech - Busy watching all those inspirational commencement speeches or pod interviews on YouTube? Summarize the hell out of it. Works like a charm. Try here with this interview from April Dunford about the “Product Storytelling Framework That Sells” (link)
Beautiful.AI - My career started in strategy consulting as an analyst aka the to make nice-looking slides. Seems that career path is withering (wasn’t fun anyways - side note McKinsey announced layoffs - ouch). Create slides with simple prompts, eg. “Top 5 Netflix shows you should watch if you are currently separated and need some uplift and life advice incl. poster, length and imdb rating.” gives you this:
It’s not crazy but gives an idea of where this can be in a few years.
Lookup-YC - YCombinator is a content machine. You got a serious question about building startups or products - find an answer in all recordings they published. eg prompting "what makes a perfect PM” gives us this plus several video links: "A perfect product manager is someone who understands the core business and has a passion for solving customer problems. They should be able to communicate effectively with customers and be an expert in the eyes of the customer. They should also be able to iterate and improve the product to get to product market fit. Finally, they should be able to motivate and inspire the team to get the job done."
ChatGPT Sidebar - Let’s admit it ChatGPT is here to stay and before it takes over our jobs let’s be friends and put it into the sidebar of chrome (you need ChatGPT API keys). Comes in handy a lot (eg. customer asking about that feature again - prompt: create a friendly but decisive reply stating it’s currently not on the roadmap)
🌆 Industry and other stuff
The SaaS pandemic posterchild Zoom is facing growth problems due to low NRR for SME. (link)
Next time your partner says tech is stupid: Alone in the UK Bluetooth proximity on Apple and Google devices saved at least 10k lives during Corona. (link)
Ben Evans is the OG of newsletters and gives every year a great talk about trends that everyone watches or reads (link)
A self-expanding mobile phone. Don’t think it solves a real problem but I CAN’T STOP LOOKING AT IT (link)
Pod: Marc Andreessen and Steven Sinofsky on AI sentience, ethics, love, jobs, ChatGPT vs Sydney and more. (link)
Lux capital LP letter gives a nice take of the current tech market.(link)
I adore Taleb's books but struggle to adapt to them in real life. A reminder on placing the right bets and maximizing optionality. (link)
🤣 Memes to say goodbye
That’s a wrap. Keep building 💪
Till
