Northern Lights in the UP
Photos were taken from a pretty old iPhone so the quality isn't great but the experience and seeing it in person is magical.
Alex Niemi
Perplexity’s Comet
Perplexity has been one of my favorite AI tools for a long time. It’s prominently bookmarked in Chrome on all of my computers; I use their extension, I have their Mac and Windows apps installed, and it occupies the spot directly under my thumb on the home screen of
Freshwater Jellyfish in Michigan
On a quick visit to a local lake, we found this little guy powering himself under a dock and onwards. I was shocked because I've spent a lot of time in and around freshwater rivers, lakes, and streams in North America and I've never seen one
Even More Tenets for Effective Product [Marketing] Management
Better Product Marketing Beats a Better Product
Inferior products that have dedicated and engaged Product Marketing people on the team will ALWAYS get more traction than better products that don’t.
It took me two startups and a lot of sleepless nights to realize this, but it’s true. It
More Tenets For Effective Product Management
Replicate (Don't Reinvent) Great UX Patterns
Build a UX pattern library: Whenever you encounter exceptional user experiences, document them systematically. Create a personal repository of screenshots, screen recordings, and bookmarks organized by interaction type. The most successful digital products aren't reinventing UX—they're thoughtfully
Your Product Needs a Domain
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten pushback on acquiring a domain for a product: “We’ll have to get IT involved and loop in Legal. Also, we really should run this up the chain to Terry (CEO) and Angela (CMO) for buy-in before we do
Tenets for Effective Product Management (Interspersed with My Opinions)
Spend 95% of your content-creation time on external-facing material
If you’re building an application for external users (usually the case), greater than 95% of the time that you spend on documentation should be for EXTERNAL consumption. I have a long-standing hypothesis that a company’s chance of success (and
The 160x Engineering Effect: Why Elite Talent Is Your Ultimate Competitive Advantage
The goal of early-stage products is to:
1. Get real user feedback and analytics, in order to:
2. Make informed pivots, until you:
3. Achieve product-market fit (including pricing) or run out of pivots (i.e., capital).
The faster you can iterate and release testable features and functionality - that
How Product Marketing Drives Inside Sales Success for Early-Stage SaaS Products (Part 2)
No product marketing website? No product. It’s that simple.
And, if your product marketing website isn’t EXCELLENT or if you’re not consistently creating and distributing compelling long-form content, then your chance of gaining any meaningful traction is minimal.
And, if you don't have robust analytics
Optimizing Inside Sales for Early-Stage SaaS: The Timing Factor (Part 1)
Imagine that you’re the owner of a thriving local business, Dave’s Daycare, with ambitions to expand. You’ve developed a targeting strategy to identify potential clients — parents who might need quality childcare services — and initiated outreach through calls and emails to your carefully curated prospect list.
Since I’