I’ve written about why I invested in Athyna. Besides their team, product, and brilliant and unique growth drivers, they’re onto something super powerful, which is how they’re amplifying the undercurrent or super trend that is remote work.

I touched on the idea of going global in that deep dive, but there’s a lot more worth sharing. So I asked Bill who has nothing at all on his plate right now if he could find some time to help with this post. He happily said yes.

Pulling his insights from his experience with Athyna and its impact on the remote hiring landscape, here's a quick snapshot of what’s to come:

• A brief history of remote work

• How global hiring unlocks access to top-tier talent

• Why remote teams offer unbeatable cost-efficiency

• Common challenges of remote work (and how to overcome them)

• The pros and cons of going it alone vs. partnering with a recruitment agency

• Key tips on building and sustaining culture with a remote workforce

• Why hiring in LatAm (or other emerging markets) might just be the competitive edge you need

Unlike me, Bill does a better job at keeping things short. This morning’s letter is a 9-minute reader. ☕

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Today, we’ll be going deep into one of the most relevant trends shaping business today: remote work. Remote work is no longer just an option—it’s becoming the foundation for how great companies build their teams and grow efficiently.

I’ll walk you through why going remote (especially globally) is more than just a way to cut costs; it’s the way to find the best talent, unlock new growth opportunities, and future-proof your business. Let’s get started.

The evolution of remote work

The world of work has changed dramatically over the last few decades. From IBM testing telecommuting back in 1979 to the global pandemic-induced work-from-home revolution in 2020, remote work is now an integral part of business strategies.

Here's a quick timeline for context:

• 1970s-1980s: Telecommuting begins with small tests in companies like IBM and JCPenney. NASA coined the term “telecommuting,” but it was a niche concept.

• 1990s: The internet arrives, enabling broader remote collaboration. Enter the rise of outsourcing and offshoring, particularly in South East Asia.

• 2000s: Skype (2003) and Google Docs (2006) make collaboration across continents easier. Remote work starts to scale.

• 2010s: Tech companies like Automattic, Buffer, and GitLab build fully remote workforces, setting the stage for global adoption.

• 2020: The pandemic forces companies worldwide to embrace remote work—and many are now sticking with it.

The outbreak of Covid led to a mass, rapid adoption of remote working. In both the EU and the U.S., close to 100% of the jobs that could be done remotely transitioned to fully remote, with employees working from home. This shift caused an immediate boom in the use of remote work tools, as shown by Zoom's stock price surge. From January to March 2020, Zoom’s stock price more than doubled, underscoring just how essential remote communication tools had become to the new way of working.

Today it’s the new normal, and if you’re not embracing it, you’re missing out on massive talent pools, cost savings, and efficiency.

Why remote is a game-changer

So why should you go global and hire remotely? Let’s dig into four major reasons: access to high-quality talent, reduced competitive pressure, cost efficiency, and cultural fit.

1. High-Quality Talent, No Boundaries

Building a world-class team is all about finding superstars—and they aren’t all living in San Francisco, New York, or London. In regions like LATAM, companies are producing some of the best talent, with professionals who have experience at top companies like Mercado Libre (worth $86B) and Nubank ($62B).

The ability to hire someone with experience from these powerhouse companies, and pay them just 25% of what you’d pay locally, is an unbeatable advantage.

💡 Key takeaway: Why limit your talent search to one city or region when you can tap into a global network? Talent is everywhere, and remote work lets you hire the best.

2. Less Competitive Pressure

By 2030, the world is expected to face an 87-million-person shortage of tech workers. That means talent competition is going to be fierce—especially if you're fishing in the same small pond as everyone else.

Companies like OpenAI are paying engineers upwards of $900,000 a year. How can startups and mid-sized companies compete? The answer is remote hiring.

When you expand your talent search globally, you sidestep the hyper-competitive hiring wars of Silicon Valley, Sydney, or London. You’re no longer just a small fish in a big ocean—you’re fishing in your own pond, full of top-tier talent.

3. Cost efficiency without compromise

Let’s be real—business is tough. Everyone is trying to save money. And remote hiring, particularly in regions like LATAM, offers an incredible opportunity to find talent at a fraction of the cost you’d pay in traditional tech hubs.

At Athyna, we always ask ourselves: Will this person deliver four times the value by being based in New York, San Francisco, or London? The answer is almost always, no.

💡 Pro tip: If you're looking for cost-effective talent, focus on global tech hubs like São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Bangalore, and Cape Town, where salaries are much more affordable. This doesn’t mean underpaying—it means paying well relative to local markets, and that’s a win-win for everyone.

4. Cultural fit and time zone alignment

One common concern about remote hiring is cultural fit. Will people halfway around the world really integrate well into your company? The answer is yes.

Take LATAM, for example. With a strong cultural alignment with the U.S. and Europe, plus the benefit of similar time zones, these professionals are perfectly positioned for real-time collaboration with your teams. And let’s not forget—there are now more Spanish speakers in the U.S. than in Spain. The cultural overlap is undeniable.

💡 Pro tip: Look for talent in regions with overlapping time zones and cultural alignment. LATAM is an excellent option for U.S. companies, while Eastern Europe offers similar benefits for European organizations.

Challenges of going global (and how to overcome them)

Hiring globally and remotely isn’t without its challenges, of course. Here are the key hurdles—and how to overcome them:

1. Building company culture

Some say remote work makes it harder to build a strong culture. At Athyna, we’ve proven that’s not necessarily true. With 93% engagement in our fully remote team, we’ve built a culture of trust, accountability, and collaboration.

But here's the deal: if you're already struggling with culture in the office, going remote won't fix it. Culture is a leadership issue, and if you can’t build it remotely, it’s likely your whole organization is on borrowed time.

But what are the pillars of good company culture? Communication. Clear, intentional communication is key. Many remote-first companies adopt a “less is more” approach, reducing the number of unnecessary meetings and focusing on written communication. Atlassian, for example, uses its own tools like Confluence to ensure that communication is clear, transparent, and easily accessible to all team members.

Additionally, companies often implement set ‘core hours’ where team members are online at the same time for essential meetings.

💡 Pro tip: Define communication guidelines for your team. Specify which tools are used for what purpose—Slack for real-time updates, email for formal communication, and project management platforms for task tracking. This structure reduces noise and helps the team focus on meaningful communication.

2. Managing time zones

When you're working with a team spread across different time zones, scheduling can become tricky. Teams often find it difficult to coordinate meetings, deadlines, and even casual catch-ups. The issue is exacerbated when there's little or no overlap between the working hours of team members, leading to delays in decision-making and collaboration.

How to overcome it: Successful remote companies like Zapier and GitLab embrace asynchronous communication to mitigate the challenges of time zone differences. Asynchronous work means team members don’t need to be online at the same time to contribute effectively. Instead, they document everything—from project updates to decisions—in shared platforms like Notion, Trello, or Google Docs, where everyone can catch up and contribute on their own schedules.

Take GitLab, which has a strong asynchronous culture. Their public handbook outlines how team members can collaborate across time zones without needing everyone online simultaneously. They focus heavily on clear documentation, task ownership, and setting expectations for response times, ensuring projects move forward smoothly, regardless of where people are working from.

💡 Pro tip: Use project management tools like Asana, Monday.com, or Slack alongside document-sharing platforms to create a digital paper trail, so no one misses out on important information, regardless of when they log in.

3. Security standards in a distributed workforce

Security is a major concern for companies operating with remote teams. When employees are working from various locations and using different networks, the risk of cyber threats increases. From data breaches to phishing attacks, ensuring that sensitive company information is protected becomes a top priority.

How to overcome it: Leading remote companies implement strict security protocols to mitigate risks. This includes enforcing VPN use, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and secure password management tools like LastPass or 1Password. Additionally, companies conduct regular security training for employees, teaching them how to identify phishing attempts and handle sensitive data securely.

Deel, for example, prioritizes security in every aspect of its operations. They use encrypted communication tools and require all employees to access company systems through a secure VPN, ensuring that remote work does not compromise the security of their data or operations.

💡 Pro tip: Regularly audit your security practices and update them as needed. Make use of cybersecurity software, and don’t forget to train your remote team regularly on security best practices.

How Athyna does remote right: Internal and external success stories

At Athyna, we practice what we preach. Our internal team is made up of rockstars from companies like AWS, Nubank, Uber, Meta, and more. And we help our clients build high-performing remote teams by placing top talent from LATAM in key roles, from cloud engineers to marketing specialists.

Athyna has taken its recruitment strategies to the next level with its “AI-for-talent” approach, leveraging cutting-edge technology to streamline talent sourcing and improve hiring precision. This strategy is supercharging what’s already working, making it even easier to connect clients with the best global talent. Let’s take a look at how this works...

Our internal talent

Our team at Athyna is a powerhouse of talent, with key hires from:

• AWS & Uber: Our sales and leadership team members have worked at some of the biggest tech companies in the world.

• PedidosYa: Our Head of Talent was a Director at this LATAM giant.

• Nubank: One of our CSMs honed her skills at one of the most successful fintechs in the region.

This talent allows us to compete—and win—against some of the biggest players in the industry.

Client success stories

We’ve also placed top-tier talent with our clients. For example, we’ve helped tech startups build teams of engineers, designers, and content creators.

One client, a friend of the newsletter Tom Alder, hired one of our content assistants to help scale his operations, while larger enterprise clients have built entire cloud engineering teams with our talent. The talent is out there. You just need to know where to look.

How to hire globally: Options for success

So how can you get started with global remote hiring? You have a few options.

Option 1: Go it alone

You can choose to hire globally on your own. This works well if you have an internal recruitment team with experience in international markets. You’ll also need local expertise or boots on the ground to navigate hiring laws and compliance. While this is the most cost-effective option, it can be a tough road if you don’t have the right resources.

Option 2: Find hiring partners

If you want to save time, effort, and risk, you can work with a partner like Athyna. We handle the hard stuff—compliance, payroll, benefits, and sourcing top talent—so you can focus on building your business.

Our recruitment fee model is simple and transparent. Depending on the role, we charge a fee of ~$8-10k for remote hires. And with our 37% blended margin, we offer competitive pricing while delivering top-tier talent.

Final thoughts: Why remote is the future

So, why should you go global and hire remotely? The talent is there. The cost savings are real. And the ability to build a high-performing, culturally aligned team is no longer limited by geography.

Companies like Athyna make it easy to access top talent from emerging tech markets like LATAM, enabling you to grow your team efficiently and effectively. So what are you waiting for? The future of work is remote, and the best teams are out there—just waiting for you to tap into them.

If you’re ready to build a global team, we’re here to help. You can book a call with our team and see how we can help you grow.

Thanks, Bill!

Once again, if you want to learn more about how Athyna can help your company grow, you can learn more here or just book a call directly with them. If you say you came from How They Grow, you’ll get the VIP service, I promise you. 🤝

If you have any questions for me or Bill…drop them in the comments!

As always, thanks for spending time with us here today.

Until next time.

— Jaryd ✌️

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Further Study

• Building an all-remote company from scratch

• The Most Successful Remote First Companies

• Why the Bay Area Times Hires Remotely

• The Latin American Talent Revolution: Why Top Executives Are Turning South

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Friends, there’s unlimited content out there focused on “Accelerating your career!”. Unfortunately, there’s not enough around “Is your career worth accelerating?”.

I want to start this piece by asking you to try watching this clip (it’s less than 90 seconds) from Adam Sandler’s ode to Basketball, Hustle, and not feeling something. I am not a sports fan, but I know I can’t.

Hustle is a basketball film, sure, but more so it’s a story about fighting for your dreams, overcoming your past, and putting in the reps to become a true professional. It’s an entertaining reminder that the path to self-actualization is a series of bets we take on ourselves. 

Changing careers or starting a company could be one of those bets. And if you’re going to do that—regardless of what scale you’re hoping for—you need focus, drive, and a lack of excuses.

Like a tripod, you must have all three. That’s nonnegotiable.

And there’s only one sustainable way to get that: You need to love the game you’re playing.

If you don’t, you probably won’t beat the next person who does. Or as Stanley Sugarman (Sandler) says, “If you don’t, don’t even bother.”

But, if you do love the game, then you’ll obsess and live it. And that is the most fundamental trait needed to win.

So, let me ask you….Do you love the game?

…and is your nonrefundable time being well spent playing the right one?

If you stopped reading right now and just really thought about the answer to that question, this would have been a minute of your time well spent.

But if you want to pull the thread a little more, below we’ll chat about:

1. Why do we play games we don’t love?

2. The result of playing these games; and the biggest opporunnity cost 🔒

3. How to change games 🔒

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1. Why do we play games we don’t love?

I turned 30 a couple of months ago, and a recurring conversation I’ve been having with friends is about changing games…like switching careers or starting something up in pursuit of finding more meaning in work.

I found it interesting that so many of my closest friends were, all around the same time, thinking about the game they were playing. As I thought about it, my take was two-fold:

1. Less interestingly: Turning 30—like January 1st—is an artificial inflection point or “new leaf” in life that probes us to think about change and how we’re spending our time. (Life hack: Any moment can be an equally compelling inflection…like right now if you wanted it to be.)

2. More interestingly: People often stumble into the first phase of their careers—being pulled into a job by following some initial opportunity or idea. When entering the second phase of their career (perhaps at around 30 y/o… although that’s just made up), they can choose to either keep playing the game they landed up in and double down, or decide to start anew, step into another one, and push themselves into a new and more conscious path.

Just thinking about me, my wife, and my immediate friends, that second point becomes very clear:

• I fell into product management accidentally through starting a company

• A friend fell into tech sales because the first real job offer he got happened to be in sales

• A friend fell into operational finance because he joined a brand new startup and that’s what they needed him to do

• My wife fell into content marketing because she was a writer and her first internship happened to be in marketing

I could go on, but you get the picture. It’s easy just to end up doing something because that’s what happened to us, versus doing something because we knew more than anything that’s how we wanted to spend our time.

When we start our careers, IMO, we loosely follow our skills and interests and tightly latch onto whatever pays us the most the soonest and makes the parents proud. I mean, at 21, the most important thing is just getting a job that helps us pay rent. I wasn’t exactly trying to answer the meaning of my life back then, and I know many face the pressure from family to pursue a "safe" or "respectable" career path.

The question though, as I’ve seen with my friends, eventually becomes Is that a game we actually love to play? Is this how we want to spend our unrefundable time?

And we must ask it. Because life is too damn short, as I’ve unfortunately very recently experienced with the unexpected passing of my mom, to play games we don’t love. Games that don’t fulfill us and give us joy, energy, and meaning.

Of course, there are plenty of people who found the game they love very early on and are lucky because they just get to keep playing it. You could well be one of them. But, there’s also a very big camp of people who keep playing unloved games.

Either they never ask themselves the question and just keep executing an infinite and unexamined loop until retirement—never having taken the time to truly reflect on what drives them—or they do ask it, but keep wasting time by falling victim to routine, not making any decisions, and keep playing out of two very sticky reasons:

1. Apathy

2. Hustle

Apathy 😑

When founders and PMs do competitive landscaping for an idea, they often fail to mention one of their most threatening competitors—people’s apathy to changing how they do things already.

Apathy = lack of care / awareness = lack of change. And that’s a very hard thing to break through because we’re all suckers to habit, inertia, and running on autopilot.

Applied to this concept of the games we play, apathy can reveal itself as a sunk cost (“But I’ve already put so much time in. Stopping would be a waste.”, just plain fear—fear of failing to do something new, fear of the unknown, or the fear of disappointing others—, or most scary, apathy can reveal itself as total lack of awareness to the problem at all.

Tell me…does this sound at all familiar?

Wake up at 7:30am. Roll out of bed, open up your laptop at 8am. Sit around in your sweatpants, make some coffee. Have a shower. Work for thirty minutes, then mindlessly scroll through some app. Play Wordle. Eat some leftovers for lunch. Stare at the computer until 5ish. Head to gym. Come home and shower. Whip up some dinner or order in. Watch a few episodes of whatever show. Scroll social media. Then go to sleep…because it was a long day.

And then you do that over and over and over again.

By the way, there’s nothing wrong with that day. I’m merely calling out how easy it is to slip into weeks and months of rote/passive routine. Day after day we run on autopilot.

You can see how easy is is to not ever wonder whether the game we’re playing…and that game’s rules, norms, and expectations…are worth sticking to and sinking more of our time into.

That's the danger of an apathetic life…time will pass you by before you realize it.

Hustle 😵‍💫

The second big reason we stick to games we don’t love is out of the opposite to apathy…hustle.

Sometimes we find ourselves playing very lucrative games where the prize for winning is clear…money, ego, and social status.

And if we’re good at that game, it’s even harder to want to stop playing because money and future prospects cloud out the feeling of needing to change and spend our time doing something else.

Simply, it’s very compelling to just want to win the game we’re playing and know about vs to stop, learn a new game, and start again.

The thing is…hustle and apathy are two sides of the same coin.

With apathy, you are either too disinterested to pursue what you want out of life…or with hustle, you’re too vain to realize you are pursuing short-lived things.

Reading this and just knowing these two forces are at play gives you more awerness than most.

Unfortunately, the cost of ignoring either can be severe.

The last two sections of this post are for paid HTG members only. Consider upgrading to support my work, invest in yourself, and go deeper on this topic.

2. The result of playing games we don’t love games

Read more

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Friends, we’ve been overthinking what an MVP should be. And I’d like to propose a simpler, faster, cheaper, and more agile way of figuring out if your idea has any legs.

With this new style of MVP, you could have your problem validated within just a few hours from right now.

The Idea…💡

Start with a meme. Instead of building a landing page or a traditional Minimum Viable Product to test demand, focus on capturing your problem with a funny image. Then, share your meme with a community that you think has the problem.

This is the Meme Viable Problem, and the results are fast, high-signal, and easy to interpret.

Why it matters…🫰

Memes are one of the best modes of concise and thoughtful communication.

People think memes are just joke images, but don’t underrate them! What makes a great joke? A deep insight and commentary on something relatable that’s shared with great brevity.

Memes force clarity and simplicity and prevent you from overthinking the scope of an MVP. The process of making a meme (which is super easy) also creates an opportunity for you to check that you understand what the problem is and can articulate it in a way that resonates with others.

Traditional MVPs can easily focus on the wrong things. Memes get to the heart of your main assumption, and guide you towards (1) the right audience, and (2) speaking the language of that audience.

The bottom line… 🔑

If you can convey the problem you want to solve in a meme and people resonate with it, then the problem is real. If nobody cares for your meme, then either (a) it’s not a real problem, (b) you haven’t captured why people should care about it quite right, or (c) you’re wrong about who has the problem.

All are excellent and validating outcomes that cost $0.

Let’s go a bit deeper, covering:

1. Memes by the numbers, and why they matter

2. 2 problems with the traditional MVP

3. The 3-step Playbook to the Meme Viable Problem

The rest of this post is for paid HTG members only. All the other content in How They Grow is free—only the “Deeper” section of this one newsletter series is paywalled. Consider upgrading to support my work, invest in yourself, and get the juicier scoop.

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Instead of our usual 5-Bit this morning, I’m writing with Doc (aka my buddy Bill Kerr)—founder of Athyna and author of one of my favorite newsletters—Open Source CEO.

Success in pretty much anything is going to be influenced by lots of factors—background, education, wealth, opportunities, luck, etc—but there’s one tool that plays a key role in being a universal equalizer: Reading a good ‘ol book.

Flipping the pages offers a gateway to knowledge, wisdom, and insights that can shape the trajectory of any business (or personal) journey, regardless of where it begins.

I say this because it’s done exactly that for both me and Bill.

Books have always been a cornerstone for both our personal and professional development. We’ve both started companies, we both write newsletters, and we both agree that stealing the hard-won insights from others has been a huge growth lever.

They serve as mentors, providing crystalized advice and lessons from some of the greatest minds across industries. For entrepreneurs, reading is not just a hobby; it’s a strategic advantage.

So, we’re sharing a curated (and trackable) database for you of the top 100 books in business. Use it to find your next read, or follow along with your own reading journey.

Subscribe here to Open Source CEO to enjoy the download.

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Below is a rundown of a few collections, as well as at the end, each of our personal favorites.

Let's see what the fuss is about

The Top 10

1. Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari

2. Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor E. Frankl

3. Principles, Ray Dalio

4. Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman

5. Zero to One, Peter Thiel

6. The 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss

7. Influence, Robert B. Cialdini, PhD

8. The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz

9. Shoe Dog, Phil Knight

10. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand

Bill Gates

• Shoe Dog, Phil Knight

• The Checklist Manifesto, Atul Gawande

• Homo Deus, Yuval Noah Harari

Every morning and every evening I block out an hour and a half for reading, and it's made me substantially better at my job. 

Oprah Winfrey

• Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

• The Road, Cormac McCarthy

• Becoming, Michelle Obama

Books were my pass to personal freedom. I learned to read at age three, and soon discovered there was a whole world to conquer that went beyond our farm in Mississippi.

Sam Altman

• The Beginning of Infinity, David Deutsch

• Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman

• Meditations, Marcus Aurelius

Melanie Perkins

• The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, Robin Sharma

• Designing the Obvious, Robert Hoekman

Steve Jobs

• The Innovator's Dilemma, Clayton M. Christensen

• Autobiography of a Yogi, Paramahansa Yogananda

• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas S. Kuhn

One way to remember who you are is to remember who your heroes are.

Brian Chesky

• High Output Management, Andrew S. Grove

• The Ride of a Lifetime, Robert Iger

• Blitzscaling, Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh

Sheryl Sandberg

• Harry Potter, J. K. Rowling

• The Lean Startup, Eric Ries

• Play Nice But Win, Michael Dell

I probably shouldn’t admit this since I work in the tech industry, but I still prefer reading paper books.

And a few from me and Bill

My recommendations

Non-fiction:

• Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling, Matthew Dicks

• I Will Teach You To Be Rich, Ramit Sethi

• Letters From A Stoic, Seneca

• Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets, Nassim Nicholas Taleb

• Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, Nassim Nicholas Taleb

• A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson

• The Body: A Guide for Occupants, Bill Bryson

• Good Strategy / Bad Strategy, Richard Rumelt

• Never Split The Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It, Chriss Voss

• In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, Michael Pollan

• Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, Steven Pinker

• Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman

• The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe: How to Know What's Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake, Steven Novella

• The Charism Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism, Olivia Fox Cabane

• Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant, Kim Marbourgne

• Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, James Nestor

• Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams, Matthew Walker

• Hidden Genius: The Secret Ways of Thinking That Power the World’s Most Successful People, Polina Marinova Pompliano

• Principles: Life & Work, Ray Dalio

• The End Of The World Is Just The Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization, Peter Zeihan

And life is too short just to read non-fiction. So, I’m always reading at least a few just for fun books throughout the year. I’d suggest the same—don’t be boring.

Here are 5 that I loved:

• The Silo Trilogy (Wool, Shift, Dust), Hugh Howey

• This Perfect Day, Ira Levin

• The Stand, Steven King

• 1984, George Orwell

• Wayward Pines Trilogy (Pines, Wayward, The Last Town), Blake Crouch

Bill’s recommendations

Non-fiction

• Elon Musk, Walter Isaacson

• The Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel

• Guns, Germs & Steel, Jared Diamond

• Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari

• Principles, Ray Dalio

• At Home: A Short History of Private Life, Bill Bryson

• Shoe Dog, Phil Knight

• The Ride of a Lifetime, Robert Iger

I also believe massively in the power of fiction. It’s great for me to be able to switch off but you can also learn a lot from the best fiction.

Fiction

• Ready Player One, Ernest Cline

• Project Hail Mary & The Martian, Andy Weir

• The Dune Series, Frank Herbert

• A Song of Ice & Fire, George R.R. Martin

• The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood

• The Road, Cormac McCarthy

• 1984 & Animal Farm, George Orwell

I’ll leave you with this. Books are more than just sources of information or a way to shape your thinking. They’re a way to pull the thread and follow your curiosity down all sorts of unexpected (and delightful) paths.

My reading level has fluctuated over the years, but the best advice is to find some level of disciplined approach to reading and applying the lessons learned.

Honestly, reading is a flywheel. Once you get going it’s a very hard-to-break habit—and as the wheel keeps spinning, all the nuggets ingested compound until all sorts of wonderful dots connect.

Find your next read here.

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Alrighty, that’s everything for today. If you haven’t yet, go swing Bill a follow over at the Open Source CEO newsletter—he shares stories from building Athyna, interviews with legendary builders, and just all around is one of the more helpful writers out there.

Until next time.
—Jaryd

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Hey guys!

I’ve been enjoying mixing in these short letters focused on a single idea. It’s a nice balance of the regular deep dives that cover multiple ideas. I’d like to keep doing this more. And not just because I get a lot of energy writing them, but because the feedback from you has been great.

Going forward I’ll aim to publish one From The Garden piece every two-ish weeks. Most of the time, I’ll use this column to expand on something I’ve learned during my research for the deep dives—thus driving home what I think is one valuable lesson that can help you build and grow your product.

Often founders or operators are dropping an insane wealth of information on me when I interview them for our pieces, and I just can’t cover all of it. So think of this series as the outfielder that makes sure nothing worth catching gets past us.

Today we’re talking about something that will squeeze far more juice out of the features you build and launch. If you want your next release to have greater adoption, usage, and impact for next to no effort, keep reading…

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• Questlists: Send users on fun, self-guided, interactive quests.

• Surveys: In-product feedback, from NPS to 😍🤮 and everything in between.

We’re busy buying CommandBar ourselves right now at my company. There’s no code required for any of it which is great, it integrates with all our tools, and there’s a 2-week trial period to feel the CommandBar difference.

Let’s try this thing together and make all our users happier.

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*Sponsored

The default adoption trick

Have you ever poured your heart and soul into building a feature only to check the charts every day and see a sad adoption curve?

I have.

*Queue the words smallest violin 🎻

I’ve been in post-release meetings where we talk about underwhelming incremental gains in a feature’s usage, each time feeling a little more frustrated that more people aren’t discovering what we built.

Then comes the (usually annoying unless you’re using CommandBar) popups, banners, emails, and modals—doing what we can from a growth perspective to just push people to start using something.

Having polished and useful features that are mostly ignored isn’t all that uncommon. We build features we believe in, but there’s always the uphill battle of getting users to actually try them.

But that’s the problem…

As product builders, we so often fall into the trap of creating features that require users to discover and adopt them actively.

So, here’s the idea: 👇

When performers step on stage, they just grab the mic and start their thing. Unless ironically, they’re not tapping their mic saying, “Is this thing on?”. Of course it’s on, and it’s not something they even think about because they’re on stage to get something else done. However, if the mic wasn’t on or stopped working—they’d instantly know and not be able to get their job done.

Why don’t we build more products like that? Things that solve real problems and become essential to a workflow, but are default On for everyone.

That’s how to have your adoption metrics start at 100% vs 0%.

The Problem with Opt-In Features

Launching features that users need to find and enable comes with inherent challenges:

1. Discovery hurdles: When things get added to and buried in the UI, the chances increase that people may never stumble upon your new functionality. This is amplified in complex products.

2. Adoption friction: Even when discovered, the extra steps needed to activate can limit usage.

3. Impact lag: The time between launch and decent adoption will delay realizing your expected customer and business value.

4. Learning lag: When you have a slow adoption curve, you have a slow learning cycle.

5. Resource drain: Marketing and growth teams end up spending time trying to drive awareness and adoption. Also, morale sometimes gets shot when early numbers aren’t that hot.

The Power of Default On

I didn’t break my back validating this number, but it feels right enough: 95% of users keep their default settings.

That could be the end of this essay. 🤣

But to go deeper, defaulting new features to "On" clearly has a lot of potential.

• You get immediate widespread impact (since your reach is 100% on day 1).

• You save yourself the need for adoption campaigns.

• There’s a far higher likelihood that your users experience value.

• Your ROI timeline shortens significantly (assuming the feature works)

• Your feedback loops for iteration are orders of magnitude faster.

• There’s a higher potential for viral growth if the feature enhances sharing or some network effect.

But good doesn’t come without some considerations…

• There’s the risk of surprising or confusing users.

• There’s the potential for performance impacts if not carefully implemented.

• Your new default may conflict with your user’s expectations or preferences.

Implementing the Default Adoption Trick

So what’s the best way to approach smart defaults?

1. Validate!: You want to spend more time in discovery to make sure you’re right that the feature adds value for most users. This is an emphasis on assumption testing before building. The extra time spent here is fine because you’re accelerating your time to impact on the other side of the release.

2. Design for discoverability: Even if on by default, make the feature's presence and benefits clear to users. The selfish benefit is that you still want users to know you’re shipping valuable stuff for them.

3. Provide easy opt-out: Always give users control with a simple way to disable the feature. I’ll show you an example of this in a second.

4. Monitor closely: This should go without saying, but it’s almost more important to track usage, performance metrics, and feedback immediately post-launch when you have 100% adoption from the get-go. For one, because the risk is higher of something going wrong or having a negative impact. And two, because you can validate if your impact hypothesis was right much faster. So whether the data brings you good or bad news, you want to be extra on top of it when using smart defaults.

5. Iterate quickly: You’ll be learning a lot faster, so have resources at the ready to make any changes based on early data and user reactions.

If you have a basic checklist or process that you use for product development and planning, consider adding a new line item there to remind yourself to ask: “Is there a smart default opportunity here?”

And if the answer is Yes, there is!; then be sure to ask yourself these 5 questions before defaulting anything to On.

1. Are we sure this being automatically On would help users?

2. How might this affect different user segments? Does everyone need/benefit from it being On, or just some people?

3. Can our infrastructure handle widespread and rapid adoption?

4. Are there any legal or privacy concerns? Especially for data-related features.

5. Is there a phased rollout approach we can follow with a subset of users to test our hypothesis before reaching everyone?

Real-World Examples

Smart defaults are on all around us. Here are a few that come to mind:

Gmail's Smart Compose ✍️
Default on: Predictive text suggestions appear as users type.
Impact: Increased email composition speed for billions of users.

Spotify's Autoplay 🎶
Default on: Automatically plays similar songs when a playlist or album ends.
Impact: Increased listening time and discovery of new music without any effort.

FB/IG/TikTok’s Feed Algorithm 📰
Default on: Automatically curates content based on user behavior.
Impact: Increased engagement and discovery of relevant content.

Google Maps' Live Traffic Updates 🗺️
Default on: Provides real-time traffic information.
Impact: Improved route planning and reduced travel times for billions of users.

Cars’ Automatic Headlights 🚘
Default on: Lights that turn on automatically when it gets dark.
Impact: Safer roads since nobody forgets lights when they need them the most.

Substack’s Pricing and Boosts 💱
Default on: Localized pricing and local payment methods at checkout.
Impact: Paid writers drive more subscription revenue with no extra effort.

Substack is actually one of my favorite examples. Obviously, I may be biased as someone who writes on Substack and gets to benefit from this. But truly, bias aside, they are nailing the default On strategy. When I spoke to who used to run growth at Substack, he told me Substack’s philosophy was always to build things that were default On. And when I explore the Substack settings page, I can see all the features just working behind the scenes for me—all toggled to On.

Just like a microphone, I now expect these things to be working and would be annoyed and impacted if they were taken away. A very smooth layering of value to their core product. 👏

This leads us to the final point…

The Takeaway

While defaulting features to "On" can drive rapid adoption, the real magic lies in designing features so seamlessly integrated that users don't perceive them as separate entities to be turned on or off. You want to build things that feel like natural extensions of your product's core functionality, enhancing the user experience without disrupting it.

By leaning into the default adoption trick and considering very early in the prioritization process what features could be automatically On, we’re ultimately shifting our focus from driving feature adoption to creating features that drive themselves. It’s an approach that not only maximizes impact but also aligns what we build more closely with genuine user needs, because if we focus on building (mostly) what we deem everyone wants On, we’re innately probably choosing the most important things for our customers.

In the end, the best features are those that users didn't even realize they were missing—until they suddenly can't imagine using the product without them.

Before we say goodbye…

Here’s what I use to grow 🛠️

• I use Attio as my go-to CRM to manage all my newsletter sponsorships deal flow and learn more about my email network. (Learn more)

• I use Sidebar as a leadership program to accelerate my growth as a product leader. An excellent community for founders and senior leaders. (Learn more)

• I use Dovetail as our team’s customer insight hub, helping us spot patterns in feedback across channels. (Learn more)

👉 View my full stack.

How I can help you 🤝

Are you a founder looking to grow your business without breaking the bank? If so, I’ve invested in a company (Athyna) that can help you find incredible talent and build out your global team in less than 5 days. Their product, service, and worldwide talent pool are just amazing (and so affordable). Learn more here ↗

And that’s everything for today’s letter.

If you found this idea useful, feel free to forward it to someone. Or you can hit the heart button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack.

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Until next time.
—Jaryd

Hey everyone,

When we think of friction, our minds immediately race to things in our onboarding flow. Things like too many questions being asked at signup, the cognitive load of our UI, our pricing being too restrictive, or maybe site speed causing a drop-off.

The list of product friction goes on. But that’s just it—we always think about our product friction. And that type of friction is usually easy to put a finger on, and also to optimize against. It’s the stuff growth teams spend a ton of time tinkering with.

For example, if we find that people are not buying what we’re putting out there (i.e. low conversion rates), the obvious reaction is we think we need to improve our product. Add some missing features. Adjust our pricing to offer a better deal, or just market ourselves better to folks.

Simply put: Most of us think the best way to win people over is to push harder.

That is all very local thinking though. Because another type of friction exists outside of our product, inside your users’ everyday lives, and in their off-platform workflows.

These are the obstacles we don’t see: The hidden frictions. Unfortunately, no funnel analysis will tell you what it is. Quantitative data doesn’t have the answer. What you have to do is go and ask folks the right questions. But, most questions we ask users won’t reveal these hidden frictions that pull them back, because often, they don’t even know what they are.

This is, to whip up a memorable name for it here, The New Couch Problem. And because we are all here to grow our products and get more customers, it’s so key that we know what it is and how to navigate it.

Just to illustrate. Imagine you’re a PM running an e-commerce site for custom-made furniture. Your customer reviews are through the roof, and you have a clear signal that people love the products they get. But you see in your data that many folks are spending hours creating their ideal furniture and adding them to their cart, but then…they vanish. And this drop-off is most glaring in the sofa category.

What do you think the problem is? What’s the friction?

The first time I heard this real case study in a Hidden Brain episode, my guess was very far off. And I bet that yours is too.

The answer?

People didn’t know what to do with their existing sofa. Most people are not sitting on the floor when they get a new couch, they’re replacing an old one. So, what do you do to get rid of the old for the new? Can you just leave it on the street? 🤷 Well, until you figure it out, you’re going to pause on hitting buy.

In this example, you’re losing many would-be customers to this hidden hindrance of not knowing how to deal with the logistics. Investing in levers like lower prices, more abandoned cart emails, or a better checkout flow may bring small gains, but they miss the real thorn in the foot. And pushing harder isn’t going to do it.

FYI, the solution was for the brand to add an ancillary service that offered to collect a customer’s old couch when they delivered their new one, and then take care of recycling. This removed the burden from the buyer and was a huge unlock in conversion rates.

This is just one of several examples of non-obvious friction outside of a product that holds people who are often already sold on a product back from otherwise pulling the trigger and making a purchase.

Here’s one important way to help find these types of issues:

Okay. Let’s talk blockers, how to find those obstacles we don’t see, and what you can do to get potential customers to complete the sale.

Quick note: I’ve dropped the paywall on this piece because it just made so much more sense to rather do a sponsored edition today. I only ever work with partners that are extremely high quality and super relevant to helping you at work. And in this letter’s case, one current partner is just so relevant to the solution to this problem, I had to recommend them. 👇

Understand your customers in the fastest, and deepest, way possible*

If you’re speaking to customers, the answers to their hidden friction often already exist. It’s in the data.

To identify themes and remove guesswork across all your customer findings, this week’s partner, Dovetail, is actually the perfect solution.

Dovetail takes in all your sources of customer info—interviews, documents, sales memos, market research, surveys, PDFs, decks, etc—and uses powerful search (with AI) to help you and your team find the answer and make customer-first, data-backed, decisions faster than ever before.

Their free plan is crazy generous. You get unlimited use of all the features, the only limitation is one project. Try it out; decide what to build next. Thank me later.

Try Dovetail for free

Examples of sneaky obstacles

Here are four other cases that I think highlight The New Couch Problem well. Notice how what hindered user adoption was usually:

1. Something subtle;

2. A psychological thing;

3. And obvious/intuitive when discovered.

(Those 3 things by the way I think are the key traits of hidden friction)

Okay, the first example is my favorite case: Instant Pot.

Instant Pot launched in 2010, and it took the world by storm. It made for great infomercials and people flocked to get their hands on one. Folks hailed it as a great at-home innovation. However, Instant Pot was really just a rebrand of a technology that had been around since the 1600s—the pressure cooker.

Instant Pot was super successful because they were a marketing-led play that leveraged a key insight into a hidden friction around pressure cookers: people were scared of them, thinking they might explode from the pressure once the lid was locked.

Yup, fear is definitely going to slow your adoption. So, their marketing brilliance was to not even mention the word “pressure” once anywhere and to build a brand and product that seemed friendly and safe.

Unlikely they’d have been so successful as The Pressure Pot 🤔.

The next example is a famous one: the old marketing legend about cakes and eggs.

In the 1920s, companies like Pillsbury and General Mills created boxed cake mixes as part of a push toward convenience in the kitchen. The mix had powdered eggs and all the necessary ingredients for a delicious cake—just add water.

But, by the 50s, sales of the cake mixes had plateaued. Companies couldn’t convince more consumers to switch from homemade.

Then along came psychologist Ernest Dichter, who discovered through focus groups the hidden friction: their cake mixes were too convenient, and women (their main demo back then) felt guilty using them.

A huge insight that led to the smallest of changes—they simply tweaked the recipe to require one or two fresh eggs to be added, thus forcing a bit more planning and work that gave consumers more ownership.

Sales skyrocketed.

Okay, an example outside of the kitchen…

Stacy Alonso, working at a shelter for women and children experiencing domestic abuse and homelessness, noticed a recurring pattern: Women would often appear at the shelter, stare at it for hours, walk up to the door, and then walk away.

Puzzled, she investigated and discovered a hidden friction: the "no pets allowed" sign on the door.

Alonso was also shocked to learn that in many cases, without family to stay with or money for a hotel, women go back to their abusive situation to remain with their beloved pet.

Despite the clear benefits of escaping abuse, many women couldn't bear to leave their pets behind. The solution? They created a facility on the same grounds where women could safely shelter their pets, removing this significant barrier to seeking help.

“They check in to the women’s shelter, and the pets are right next door at Noah’s,” she told CNN. “And they’re free of abuse and safe.”

What an awesome illustration of this problem.

The final example I thought I’d share isn’t specific to a brand, but it's a good general one for tech products. It applies because it checks the three boxes of a hidden friction: Subtle, Psychological, and Intuitive.

Credit to Max Dixon for this concept which I learned in Lenny's Podcast ep: The Surprising Truth About What Closes Deals

It's what Matt calls FOFU: The Fear of Fucking Up.

In short, in the B2B software buying process, people often don’t need to be convinced that some new product is better than the status quo. They already know the solution is great and will benefit them, so no amount of FOMO will get them to pull the trigger.

The problem is they’re afraid because their reputation is on the line. The fear of making mistakes, looking incompetent, or disrupting existing workflows is a really powerful deterrent. People often fall back to the safe bet—what they do today.

To sell really well and overcome this hurdle, as Max says, “We've got to help instill the confidence in the customer that you're making a great decision. I've got your back. You're going to look like a hero, not like a fool.” In other words, you need to know when it’s time to stop pushing benefits and to start focusing on minimizing any risk concerns they have.

Two main ways to find your product’s invisible and demotivating force

The pre-launch approach

If you want to find any hidden friction before you launch your product, then during discovery, you need to be like a chef peeling away the onion. You do this by asking lots of probing "why" questions to understand the root cause of the problem you’re solving.

For instance, open-ended questions like "Why do you think this issue arises?" or "What do you believe is the underlying reason for this challenge?" can be very revealing.

The name of the game is encouraging users to share their thought processes, motivations, and contextual factors that contribute to the problem.

You want to know things like whose opinion they care about around their usage of your product, and what they do before and after they have the problem.

The more you understand the big picture in your user’s life, the better you can create an incredibly helpful solution to one small aspect of it.

The Fix-it! approach

If you’ve already launched a product, then it should be pretty easy to pull up a log of prospective customers who’ve abandoned purchasing whatever you’re selling.

From here, you want to do a deep dive into the needs and backgrounds of disappearing customers.

We did this at my first startup, which was a talent<>job marketplace for models, actors, and creators. We saw that producers were posting projects seeking models, models would apply that fitted their criteria, and they’d view the applications, but they would not request to cast them.

We were confused. All the signals of a booking were there.

So I went to their offices and spoke with them. What I learned was that they were hesitant to book because many of the models who were applying had agents, and the producers who knew the agents didn’t want to upset their friends in any way.

So, despite a far more convenient and budget-friendly way to book talent (something they needed), this hidden friction of not wanting to “step on anyone’s toes” was blocking transactions.

We fixed it by working more closely with the agencies, establishing partnerships, creating new types of filters, and addressing this concern directly in our messaging and job listing experience. This was a huge unlock for us.

Some other quick ideas

• Use session recording tools like Amplitude, Sprig, or Hotjar to watch actual user behavior and identify points of hesitation or confusion.

• Implement event tracking to measure the time between key actions. Unusually long gaps may signal hidden friction. From here, you can go speak to these people to understand what may be happening behind the scenes.

• Read the reviews of competitors and look out for subtle, not directly related to the product, questions/concerns people have.

• For each feature you have, consider how you want people to feel when using it. And from there, use language and design that aligns with users' emotional state and goals.

I’ll leave you with this: Just like there was for us at my startup—there could easily be a hidden friction out there holding your product back from growing at a much faster clip.

The main point of this essay was less about a clear action and more about getting you thinking about it as a concept, and putting it on your radar. It’s not always about the frictions we mostly try to optimize for.

It’s often something more human that pulls people away from an action they’d otherwise be ready to take.

Thanks for reading. I’ll see you next time.

—Jaryd

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Hi everyone,

Here’s how I imagine a recent product interview at Apple went down:

• Apple PM: How do you feel about your iPhone?

• User: Well, it’s really important to me, and I feel like it’s a necessary evil in today’s world. But truth be told, I really hate how much time I spend on it. Being on a screen so much does not make me happy and I wish there was a better way.

• Apple PM: Hmm, that’s interesting. So what if we could do something to stop you from scrolling so much?

• User: Oh my that would be lovely. Please do!

[Apple exec reads the feedback]

Eureka! Let’s stick two screens right in front of your eyeballs, just 1 inch in fact. You won’t have to worry about scrolling because you’ll basically just be inside the screen. Instead of using one iPhone in your hand, we’ll just strap the equivalent of four iPhones to your forehead.

[Me—the user—sees the end product]

Aah yes, you guys nailed it. This is exactly how I want to talk with my wife! No more iPhone screens to distract us from the present moment and make us feel like shit after hours of usage.

Now when I open up about my tough day at work, Julia can smile lifelessly back at me (strange choice of photo there, Apple) waiting for her ad roll to finish first. I mean, have you seen Minority Report?

Folks—and I say this as a tech enthusiast—the future is looking scary.

There are serious questions to be asked about Spatial Computing’s effect on human health, well-being, and frankly, our sanity.

There is just too much data to link to that shows the correlation between screen time and mental health. But here’s one fun chart to illustrate by Humane Tech.

But really, all the data you need is to just to ask yourself: Do you enjoy the days when you just binge your phone and your screens? Exactly.

Quick disclaimer: This post isn’t our usual flavor. Instead of actionable breakdowns of a topic (like the ones on M&A, friction, and velocity), there isn’t much on the tactical menu today.

Rather, this is me sharing my take on what could well become a very big part of our reality (will it be “reality” though?) and a few of the implications. There is one big “here’s what you can do about it” bit of advice at the end, but not to mislead you, it’s not all that profound. Although, it is the only action item that I think matters.

Today’s post will cover:

• Vision Pro: The ChatGPT of Spatial Computing

• The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly ✨

• Everything or Nothing ✨

• The chasm, and how we can hold the line ✨

Alright, let’s talk Vision Pro and Spatial Computing. AKA—cool shit that nobody needs.

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Vision Pro: The ChatGPT of Spatial Computing

The team over at Cupertino, as usual, were not the first folks to invent a headset that does AR or VR. Google played their hand with Google Glass, and Meta has been working on Quest for while.

But, the reason I’m picking on Apple today is simple: Apple have impeccable skill at a) making something go mainstream, and b) justifying other folks to start investing in a space. Nobody was really fussed or talking much about Spatial Computing—which is really just AR and VR—before the Vision Pro came out.

This makes the beautifully crafted, and packaged, $3,500 headset that hit the shelves a few weeks ago, in my view, an inflection point for the space.

A great analogous here is OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and how it changed the trajectory of AI forever. Now, like it or not, we live in a world that’s full of AI. And it will continue to become an ever increasing part of our lives. For good and for bad.

I think Apple just did this with Spatial Computing, and I’m terrified of how this, for one, is going to impact our mental health—and that of the kids.

I have not tried the headset personally, but from what I’ve heard, the 8K and 4K visuals are incredibly good. In expected Apple fashion, they’ve created and irresistible pitch of usability through attention to detail in design, form, function and finesse.

Once you’ve tightened the headband and allowed the device to scan all your biometrics, the real world floods into view. Suddenly, all your favorite apps are imposed on your surroundings.

Except, unlike as this image below misleading suggests, you are not looking through the Vision Pro and seeing the world with Augmented Reality layered on. No, the cameras and sensors (of which there are many) do the looking out and around for you. They then feed the image back to you. It’s called video passthrough, presenting you a real time view of what'‘s going on outside.

No matter how you cut the cake, it’s a virtual experience locking you up inside its own created world. But the problem, unlike with most VR like graphics (think Metaverse vibe) which clearly feel computer generated, passthrough technology looks incredibly realistic. It feels real.

That is deeply problematic: When the cookie doesn’t taste so sweet, it tricks you into eating more than you should.

And this life-replicating view of the world presents a real use case for AR. But it’s putting us on path to living in pixel-land in here. 👇

And sure, you might think there’s no way we’re all going to spend our days running around with ski goggles strapped to our heads with 2 hour battery life.

You’d be absolutely right. Except, this is by the far the worst version of the product Apple will every make. And Apple building in the Spatial Computing space is just welcoming in more innovators and investors.

So, as I pointed out in our OpenAI analysis just one month after ChatGPT went public, our future is determined by The Law of Accelerating Returns.

Simply put, it’s compound interest for technological progress.

That means the rate of change in technology exponentially increases. We’ve seen that overall as humanity, but also in each and every single revolution that happened, and with specific technologies inside those revolutions, like computers.

This is true again for phones strapped to our head. Things will be way more problematic when the a) the device is much smaller (think a pair of glasses), b) it’s much cheaper, and c) there are way more use cases and apps.

All of that is inevitable. I promise you.

It really makes me ask the question: Did Apple think for a second about the implications of this beyond on their bottom line?

Apple isn’t a startup. They’re a market-defining company with incredible responsibility. They don’t have to make things users want, because they’re well-versed in making things first, and making users want them after.

For Apple, build it and we will come is true.

But for products that present real risk, that trope sounds a lot more like an opioid dealer to me.🤷

Is this actually where the pendulum is swinging?

You don’t need me to tell you that the past decade, if not more, has just brought us more and more screen time. More time plugged in. More apps.

So, is this the direction we as end users really want to continue, or is Apple with their trillions of dollars and influence artificially pulling the pendulum against us? Jay Clouse describes this phenomenon well:

Trends are like a pendulum. The pendulum itself represents the culture's collective attention and it swings from one extreme to another. As it swings closer to one end of the spectrum, it picks up speed and momentum — but it has a limit.

At some point, the pendulum swings in the opposite direction. What was cool becomes uncool, and what was uncool becomes cool (and back and forth and back and forth). The pendulum is a powerful force. You want to be just ahead of the pendulum. You want to be ahead of the culture in identifying a different approach so that you feel momentum at your back as the culture catches up.

I haven’t done enough of my own research to give you numbers, but this is not what I think people want. I think the real trend is:

• Community, and in real life community in particular.

• Anti-screens. People in general are not happy with their screen time and phone relationships. Hence the rise of dumb devices and screen less tech (Humane, Rabbit).

We’re plugged in enough as it is. This feels like innovation for the sake of innovation and profit—not with us in mind.

I would really love to know what you think about the pendulum. I could be wrong here. What do you think the real trend is?

Either way, let’s talk implications.

✨ The rest of this post is for paid subscribers only. But, you can keep reading for free. For just this post, and for the next 24 hours only, grab a 30 day free trial. You’ll also get the next 2 paid posts, and unlock all past editions. ✨

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Hi, friends 👋

I’ve been really looking forward to writing this post for a while now. M&A is something my team and I have been working on for the past 2ish years, and it’s also something I’ve been fortunate to have experienced from both the buyer and seller side.

Sometimes things go well, but very often, it’s a shit show. Company A likes the idea of owning Company Y (for reasons we’ll talk about), both companies sell each other on why the deal makes sense (often making overly ambitious promises), and then comes the hard part—the post-deal integration.

Combining teams, culture, technology, data, or other advantages is an extremely hard process. When all is said and done, value is often eroded, great people churn, customers get pissed, and it ends up being a bad acquisition.

Of course there are great acquisitions too. Meta for one certainly would not have been the type of company to add $200B in shareholder value in a single day if they hadn’t acquired Instagram.

Simply, M&A can be one of the greatest levers to pull as a company to grow. But it can also be a death kiss.

So, let’s unpack this powerful growth/anti-growth lever. This deep dive rifts off my own first-hand knowledge, lots of deep research, and also the very generous help of my investor friend, , who has way more knowledge of, and proximity to, acquisitions than I do.

Here’s what we’ll cover in today’s subscriber-only post (I think this is going to be one of my better posts yet).

1. Why acquisitions?

2. Bad acquisition

   1. What makes a bad acquisition?

   2. Examples

   3. The bad bonus: And how do you recover? 🩹

3. Good acquisition

   1. What makes a good acquisition?

   2. Examples

4. Discussion: What are some “dream” acquisitions?

Cool, let’s talk deals baby. 🤝

p.s If you’re not a paid reader yet and are on the fence, besides unlocking this post right now and past premium editions, here’s the next three topics I’ve been thinking about writing in this column:

• The new couch problem

• Is your product like a Japanese coffee shop? If not, why is should be.

• The sparkle emoji is not the answer

To keep getting these posts, support my work, and generally just invest in your product and career (the best investment you can make), consider upgrading to paid. There’s also a 7 day free trial

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Hi, friends 👋

Last week I put a stake in the ground saying that beehiiv will likely win the newsletter market. According to their numbers guy, Edward W., they grew 10x between 2022 and 2023 across customer, revenue, and MRR. And as per Lightspeed who led their Series A, they see beehiiv growing quickly beyond their current niche of email newsletters and into their larger TAM: the $100B email marketing category.

Why I think they will win, and why I agree with Lightspeed’s assessment that they will outgrow their current market, really boils down to their exceedingly fast and tenacious moves in the right direction.

And velocity just means how quick you’re shipping new product work. AKA, the speed that you launch incremental value to customers.

It’s also one of those things that’s hard to put a metric against. But it’s also a lot like product-market fit, because you should know when you have it. If you have to ask if you’re moving fast enough, you’re probably not. Even if you do have it, you’ll always want more of it.

To be clear, speed (an output) isn’t the be-all-and-end-all. The simple obsession with launching new features for the sake of speed can be detrimental. Impact (an outcome) matters more. So does strategy, which is how you prioritize multiple intended outcomes.

But for startups, how fast you move is one of the biggest predicators for success. That’s because speed drives your learning cycle and ability to nimbly adjust to market feedback, which for a company that knows very little, knowledge and validated assumptions from the market mean everything. As the man with the most proximity to startups, Paul Graham, said:

The mere rate of shipping new features is a surprisingly accurate predictor of startup success. In this domain, at least, slowness is way more likely to be due to inability than prudence. The startups that do things slowly don't do them any better. Just slower.

To put that visually:

Now, outside of inspiration from the beehiiv deep dive, I chose to write this post for a few personal reasons. For one, I was responsible for fucking up my own teams velocity at my first startup. I knew very little about building product in 2016, and I made several bad decisions which impacted our early success or, rather lack of it.

Two, I’m frustrated by my current teams velocity. I feel the slowness, and I wanted to put thought to paper around how I can help my team move faster.

So, in todays subscriber-only post, here’s what we’ll be covering.

1. Briefly, how to know if you’re moving quick enough

2. Primarily, what kills a teams velocity

3. Finally, tactical things you can do to help your team move faster

4. Bonus, an exclusive quote from Tyler around beehiiv’s secret to speed

Let’s get into it. 🏎️

p.s If you’re not a paid reader yet and are on the fence, besides unlocking this post right now and joining us for a walk in the garden (see what I did there?), here’s the next three topics I’ve been thinking about writing in this column:

• The new couch problem

• Is your product like a Japanese toliet? If not, why is should be.

• What makes a shitty acquisition

To keep getting these posts, support my work, and generally just invest in your product and career (the best investment you can make), consider upgrading to paid. (It’s expensible too)

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Before we unpack that seemingly absurd idea, here’s a quick note about this new column: From The Garden

This is a series I’ve been looking forward to writing for a very long time. It’s the corner of this newsletter where I will share my opinions, observations, and hotter takes on things in tech, product, and startups.

All in, my goal is to continue helping you become a sharper product manager, founder, and builder.

I’ve been looking forward to it because I feel this will be my most freeform writing yet. My deep dives are very analytical, deep (8-10K words), and based on tons of research. That’s not to say these won’t be backed by research, but I plan on being more free-flowing, brief, and raw over here.

To get my broad thoughts and discuss them with me, this content is only for paying members. The Substack version of OnlyFans, I guess. ✨

As I mentioned in this post, everything I’ve been writing for the past year (company deep dives, 5-bits etc.) will always be free. To the 10,852 of you who’ve signed up so far, not to worry, you will always get what you came here for for free.

But, for the folks who want more and have found value in my writing over the past year, consider upgrading to…

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So, as I go for walks (…around the metaphorical garden…) and see and think about things, I’ll come back here and share ideas with you…From The Garden.

I’m excited, and I hope you enjoy.

Alrighty, onto my first more out-there idea: make your product hard to buy.

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