September 2022 Summaries

Nemo Blackburn, the Founding Product Manager at Primitives, discussed his job as "creating a vision for the future and charting the path to make it a reality." He combined multiple skillsets into one role by transitioning from UX design to product management. Nemo emphasized the importance of always asking why in his work, which forces him and his team to question assumptions and consider ideas from multiple angles. He also relies on tools like Mode Analytics for database queries and visualizations, as well as Magnet app for window resizing, to improve productivity. Additionally, he prioritizes habits such as writing about his day to compartmentalize days and plan the next workday to boost productivity and happiness at work. Nemo advised knowing the difference between problems you need to solve yourself, delegate, or ignore, and using a system of to-do lists in Notion and Apple notes to manage his inbox and tasks. He also recommends reading "The Advantage" by Patrick Lencioni for every early startup founding teammate.

The co-founder of Ambrook, Jeff Anders, shares his journey from being a designer to becoming a manager. He emphasizes that designers can transition into management by learning leadership skills, mentoring others, and taking initiatives. Jeff recommends starting with small steps, such as practicing what your teammates do or building what you design. This helps build empathy and understanding between departments. Additionally, Jeff highlights the importance of aligning incentives in economics and the environment, citing the example of the Texas energy crisis. He also shares his favorite books, including "The Design of Everyday Things," "Let My People Go Surfing," and recommends podcasts like "How to Save a Planet" and "Ologies." Jeff's advice for product managers, engineers, and designers working together is to grow empathy by designing something that helps you understand the designer's perspective. He stresses the importance of collaboration and mutual understanding in creating amazing products.

Rishab Hegde, Product Lead at Rippling, shared his favorite tools and workflows in an interview. He uses various productivity tools such as Gmail, Jira, G Suite products, Slack, Confluence, Bear, Jam, Threads, and Capture to manage his work and personal life. Rishab emphasizes the importance of communication across teams to maintain alignment and ownership. His desk setup features a M1 MacBook and Stanmore speakers, which he finds helpful for productivity and organization. He recommends following him on Twitter or visiting his personal website for updates.

You are in the business of giving a good meeting when raising your seed round, just like when interviewing great job candidates. A good meeting is novel and engaging, and it can make a big difference, especially in early-stage fundraising where many investors are more investing in the team than the specific idea. To give a good meeting, you should jump right in, especially in remote pitch meetings, keep your answers short, send the deck ahead of time so you can skip it during the meeting, be collaborative, start early to create urgency, and don't forget to ask the VC's questions too.

Daniel Castro, Senior Director of Product Design at Exabeam, shares his insights on finding mentors in design and becoming a better designer. He emphasizes the importance of being aggressive in reaching out to people, using context when sending emails or messages, and constantly learning as one's role changes. He also recommends using the lean UX canvas to accelerate the design process and focusing on understanding the business and industry. Additionally, he stresses the need for designers to take a leadership approach, considering themselves as leaders who can lead the experience of a product, rather than just focusing on their craft. He encourages up-and-coming designers to ask themselves "why should I care?" when presenting their work to executives or stakeholders, and to keep reminding people that their work is important.

Building a bug-free product is essential at any company, but particularly so for startups, where it can be the difference between success and failure in a highly competitive environment. While quality is often considered a team effort, having a dedicated QA person on board can systematize testing and ensure that no bugs make it to production. This guide outlines how to hire the right QA tester for an early-stage startup, including finding the right fit through job postings, interviews, and trial projects, as well as establishing effective communication and processes for working with QA.

Nitzan Goldenberg, a Senior QA Engineer at SeatGeek, shares his insights on must-have tools as a QA leader. He mentions Jam as one of his go-to tools after discovering it, and uses various others such as Jira, GitLab, Jenkins, WebStorm, Slack, Android Studio, MS SQL' Xray, and Kaholo. Nitzan also emphasizes the importance of advancing professionally and technologically to advance at work, and values having a comfortable desk setup that allows him to stand and move around. He is active on LinkedIn and can be followed through his activities there or by joining the TesIL forum in Facebook.

The author of the text shares their process for staying on top of customer feedback, which involves recording and addressing issues in a systematic way. They started with a simple Google sheet but soon found it difficult to manage as their user base grew. To adapt, they set up multiple sources of feedback collection, including private Slack channels, Drift bot, Grain recordings, and email forwarding. The author uses Zapier automation to capture and route the feedback to a Coda table, which serves as their customer feedback hub. They use Linear for engineering issue tracking and follow up with customers after addressing issues. The system is designed to be flexible and scalable, and the author encourages others to share their ideas on how to stay on top of customer feedback.

We developed an easy and repeatable system to spin up quick and cost-effective recruiting for early-stage startups within a day or two. We define sourcing criteria, including specific details about candidates' LinkedIn profiles, and create a Google Doc outlining the ideal candidate. We find a sourcer to work with instead of recruiters, who can help us source candidates without managing their communication with them. The sourcer is contracted for a day a week, reaching out to approximately 150-200 candidates per week. We use Hireflow to streamline outreach and automate email campaigns. Our interview process consists of five steps: founder phone screen and chat, skills evaluation interview, work-style interview, project interview, and reference checks.