Elliot Smith

Maxwell Plus - Lessons Learned

(This post also appeared over on the MSV blog.) It is easy to announce a new investment in a new company when all we need to talk about is the potential of an opportunity. But we don’t speak enough about the companies that don’t make it.  Maxwell Plus

product

Thoughts on service and tech startups

Some definitions. The rest of this post will only make sense if we’re on the same page about what a technology and service business is. The scenarios I am describing combine human-delivered specialty service and a technology platform enabling that service delivery. In the long term, these companies tend

product

Let your users start over

I wish that more products had an option to reset to factory settings. Whether I haven’t used a product in a long time or have found a new way to set things up, there are plenty of reasons to return to square one. In a world where more and

The Signal and the Noise Review

Nate Silver’s The Signal and the Noise successfully walks the fine line of communicating a complex set of ideas in enough detail to be both interesting and informative. The book introduces the reader to statistical modelling through examples in sports, politics, finance, and science. It makes no attempt to

startups

Lessons from one too many model spreadsheets

Few things can be as helpful and potentially time-wasting as modelling your business with a spreadsheet and setting metrics. A clear model of how you make money is a great tool to help identify bottlenecks or risks. On the other hand, it is very easy for models and the team

startups

Know which type of goals you're chasing

It’s important that you know what kind of company you are working for. In particular, if your company has reached the stage where things are steady and predictable or if they remain mostly unknown. Some companies, especially bigger ones, tend to move in a fixed direction. Goals and projects

product

Talk to your users

Once, a long time ago, I was at an event where a local 'business leader' came to talk. Their talk was the story of their business, how they grew it and what made it successful. By some metrics their business was a success. It wasn't a

Notes from the four Silicon Valley Product Group Books

Over the last three months I read all four of the currently published SVPG books They cover a large range of topics in what they call ‘the product operating model’. This model spans high level product strategy, day to day product discovery and fields like product marketing. I recently collated

product

Avoiding antipatterns in product discovery

Product discovery works best when you have no favourite ideas. Spending time with real users validating problems and potential solutions is a critical part of good product discovery. Often ideas that sound great around the office white board fall flat when tested with real users. An important part of maturing

books

Book Review: INSPIRED by Marty Cagan of SVPG

I have found myself on somewhat of a SVPG book binge recently. A binge kicked off from an episode of Lenny’s podcast with Marty Cagan on what he calls ‘Product Management Theater’. Product management theater is the idea that many product teams end up doing things that sound like

The Minimum Marketable Difference

There are lots of reasons that startups don’t make it. Sometimes they build the wrong thing. Sometimes they build the right thing too early. Sometimes, amongst all the others, they build something great but can’t convince the world to use it. That’s what this post is about.

product

My path to working in Product

There was never a moment where I felt that destiny was pulling me towards a career in product. Though I have come to realize that those moments tend to live mostly in fiction. Despite all that, I currently find myself as Head of Product in a growing technology startup. I

Products Should Solve Real Problems

There's an idea that gets thrown around a lot which is to build products (or businesses) to solve problems you have first hand experience with. Solve a problem for yourself. If your career is in tech, especially the 'building tech for tech people' subcategory, it can

AI

Making a living when AI raises the bar.

With the recent release of Sora from Open AI there's once again a flood of online sentiment around the end of all jobs for creatives. The technology is impressive, lets get that out the way early. There's something about video that feels more impressive than text

Edits and Egos

Asking for feedback on your work is an important part of improving. Sometimes, receiving that feedback can feel extremely personal. Whether it’s writing, slides, code or anything else we can tie ourselves up in our creations. Learning to separate ourselves from our work is an important step, one I’

Performance vs Diagnostic Metrics

The value of any tracked metric is in the actions it inspires. Numbers on a wall or a slide deck don’t mean anything on their own. They’re signposts and signals to help guide behaviour. Making the metrics go up or down can be very rewarding. Some metrics however,

Chat is poor UX for most users.

Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT have rapidly become commonplace tools. They’re the most transparent AI application I can think of, users know they’re interacting with an AI. Despite that, I see chat as a complex and difficult user experience for most applications. It’s similar to interacting

How to avoid picking terrible metrics

The only sure fire way I know to change something, is to start by measuring it. That’s true at a personal level for things like a 5k time as well as in a professional setting for SMART goals, OKRs or whatever variant is currently in fashion. While wanting to

programming

Three things that helped my side projects drag on for years.

This year alone, I've spent months on a side project that would have once taken me a weekend. I'm glad I did, because for the longest time I waited for that perfect weekend and got nothing done. So after lots of doing nothing, then a long

product

The hardest part of prioritising product

The most difficult part of building product with limited features is priortisation. The hardest part of prioritisation is staying consistent. After many years and many 'methods' I can say that sticking to one thing long enough to see results is most of the hard work. These days I

writing

Write more crappy blog posts

If you hold off hitting publish until a great idea comes along, your writing probably wont be ready to capture it. Why it matters: Every now and then you'll have a thought. One you think is novel enough to be worth sharing. If you are at all compelled

product

Just because it's old, doesn't make it tech debt.

I spent a very long time incorrectly thinking that obsolete abstractions were tech debt.

books

Zero to Production in Rust - Book Review

This week I finally finished working my way through this book. The very short summary is that its good, if you're new to Rust or want to dive a little deeper into it, check it out. https://www.zero2prod.com/index.html A few more thoughts: * Working with

society

Population Density

I've spent the last two weeks in Japan. Mostly in big cities like Tokyo. In being here there's something that stands out in stark contrast to my every day experience living in a small to mid sized city in Australia (Brisbane). While no place is perfect

Assuming everyone is a gullible moron

Somebody lied on the internet. Happens every day. Yet, for some reason there’s a great temptation to engage. A temptation to step in and correct the lie. I’d say this is equally as true when the lie is obvious. I see this most on Twitter but it happens