👋Welcome to this week’s edition of 5-Bit Fridays. Your weekly roundup of 5 snackable—and actionable—summaries from the best operators and experts, bringing you concrete advice on how to build and grow a product.
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Happy Friday, everyone!
Two quick housekeeping notes before we get to it. First up, on Wednesday I shared my thoughts on the Vision Pro, Spatial Computing, and the implications of it all. TLDR: It’s cool shit nobody needs. Surprisingly, it was my most popular paid post yet, which was odd because it was my least tactical piece of content I’ve written. Go figure. 🤷
If you missed it, likely because you’re not a paid subscriber yet, then not to worry! Onto the second quick note.
I’ve extended, until Saturday morning, the once-off offer to unlock all my premium content. Usually the trial for a paid HTG plan is just 7 days. But, for the next 24 hours, you can grab a 30 day trial (that’s 4x more time). You can use the trial to a) read all the past editions of my paid column (including that last post on Spatial Computing), as well as b) read the next two coming up.
If you don’t like what you see, just hit cancel anytime.
Hit the button below to make my weekend, as well as I’m sure, learn something new.
Cool cool cool, awkward sales moment over. Onto what you came here for.
In case you missed it this week:
If you have any cash still trapped in crypto exchange, Gemini (🤭), good news: They are returning $1B to customers, paying a $37M fine. Any assets you thought were lost are going to be returned, with their appreciated value.
Klarna’s AI assistant is doing the work of 700 employees. They noted that their OpenAI-powered assistant has engaged in over 2.3 million conversations since launching. This all comes after Klanra announced they stopped hiring any human workers, apart from engineers, late last year.
Spotify’s new ‘Song Psychic’ feature is like a Magic 8 Ball that answers your questions with music. It’s a fun addition that leverages Spotify’s understanding of music and song titles to answer a range of personal questions. A clever idea to drive virality. Give it a go here.
For the first time in 50 years, America made a Moon landing!Intuitive Machine’s privately built spacecraft touched down on the lunar lunar surface last week, with the goal of sending data to private customers.
Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection.
Addition by Subtraction: The Art of Killing Features
How Freemium Almost Killed My Business
Pursuits That Can’t Scale
How to Transform 'Boring' Content Into Viral Hits
+ Quote, chart, recommendation, and extra reads of the week
If you enjoy this weeks curation, consider forwarding it to a friend. ❤️
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We're all super communicators at various points in our lives, but there are some people who can do this consistently with almost everyone. They're the people who manage to connect with anyone. They can strike up a conversation with a stranger and they both feel like they really understand each other. They're the person everyone calls because they make them feel better, and what's interesting is that we've studied these supercommunicators and we've learned two things.
Anyone can do this. They're not exclusively charismatic or extroverts. Often times super communicators are people who just think half an inch deeper about how to communicate, and as a result they get much much better at seeing the opportunities for connection
They aren’t born with the skill, they learned it. And you can too.
— Charles Duhigg
Insight
Supercommunicators know the importance of recognizing—and then matching—each kind of conversation. They know how to hear the complex emotions, subtle negotiations, and deeply held beliefs that color so much of what we say and how we listen.
We all want to be one, so here’s three bits of advice from Charles and Kyle’s conversation.
How To Win Someone Over Without Challenging Their Identity.
We all belong to a tribe to some degree. Whether that’s a tribe that loves artisanal coffee, cold plunges, or Apple’s Vision Pro. And when talking to someone who has different beliefs, supercommunicators know that it’s not about trying to change someones belief and get them to leave a specific tribe, but to recognize that we all belong to many tribes. The goal is to find and emphasize what those tribes you have in common are, so you can find something to connect and bond over.
Practical Tips for Difficult Conversations
Some conversations are emotionally charged. Could be running performance review as a manager with an underperformer, or a chat with the spouse. To help navigate these, supercommunicators do two important things. First, they acknowledge up front that what you’re about to talk about may be uncomfortable and hard, and that because of that, they may say the wrong thing unintentionally. They also say that the other person may say the wrong thing, and that they won’t hold it against them. They emphasize that goal is to work together. Second, they spend time before the chat thinking about what they want out of the conversation, as well as ask the other person what they want out if it. This all creates a good ground for working together.
How to Ask Great Follow Up Questions
Supercommunicators don’t ask about the facts of someones life, rather, they ask how they feel about those facts. Why? Because simply asking about facts can lead to dead ends in a conversation. E.g If someone is a doctor, instead of asking, “What type of medicine do you do practice?” (to which, you won’t have much to follow up with), ask something like “What made you want to be a doctor?”
To drive ongoing conversation, supercommunicators also don’t do the classic communication misstep of answering their own questions once the other person has finished. If someone just told you what they do for work, don’t start telling them automatically what you do, ask them a follow up that’s not a fact-based question.
Want to hear Charles explain why data from experts rarely changes skeptics minds? Watch this quick clip.
One thing you can do with this 🛠️
The next time you have a conversation with someone (be that a stakeholder, customer, a teammate, or a friend), practice active listening and show genuine curiosity. After they share information with you, resist the urge to immediately share your related experiences (tempting, I know). Instead, ask insightful follow-up questions that focus on feelings and motivations.
The goal is to reveal deeper insights into their needs and perspectives, and keep the conversation flowing.
One last reminder, don’t forget to grab your once-off, 30 day free trial, that expires tomorrow morning. p.s I’m close to 100 paid subs, and whoever is the 100th, will get sent a special surprise. 🎁
A PM’s job, despite the incentive systems at most companies, is not to simply ship new features—it’s to drive impact and growth.
And often the best (albeit counter intuitive) way to get there is to prioritize removing a feature. Less for both the user, and for your team to manage, is often more. Remember that complexity tax we spoke about?
But, as companies become more successful and products get larger, that’s often when the last thing being invested in in taking stuff away. Yet, that’s when it’s needed most.
There are some red flags to watch out for to know if you’re adding too much: 🙅♀️
Building because some leader/exec wants it done
Building because one customer asked for it. AKA, features for niches.
Building because you have bandwidth and a backlog. If you have engineering resources laying around, your strategy/roadmap/prioritization is not tight enough.
And after launching, not holding features to clear minimum success criteria.
With features out in the wild, there are some orange flags to keep an eye on, that if lit up, suggest it could be time to give it the boot. 🥾
Poor adoption and usage is the obvious one, but there are subtler ones…
Expensive to maintain, and no clear tie to new revenue
The feature is being used, but it’s cannibalizing the usage of a more important one
The feature is bringing you the wrong type of user, or encouraging user behavior that’s value detractive
User and market needs have changed, or your strategy has
One thing you can do with this 🛠️
The short: Go and remove something :) It’s extremely unlikely everything in your product is deserving of a seat. Find one thing to cut, make a case for why, and then in a few months, do it again.
The longer: You need to develop a strategy and operating practice to kill features, that at a macro level, revolves around a culture of rewarding simplification.
As a rule of thumb, features should be guilty until proven innocent. Arc (read How Arc Grows) is a great case study of this. They innovate and prototype fast, but take things that don’t work away at a similar speed.
If you can’t remember when the last time you sunsetted a feature was, I’d suggest compiling a general checklist you and the team can use to “prove a feature innocent”. Specifics can vary per feature, but it’s a framework you can use for feature retros.
As Aakash suggests, can operationalize this at the strategy and roadmapping planning level. I always include this thread in my roadmap planning—what worked, what didn’t, why, and what we’re doing with that insight. It’s a good forcing function to drive alignment around unshipping.
🪴 Don’t forget gardening 101: pruning encourages new growth for the plant product, rather than focusing on old growth.
You can go way deeper on this in Aakash’s deep dive. Keep reading.
The first paid post I wrote—Make your product hard to buy—made a case for adding friction. I wrote it because popular advice says the opposite: remove friction.
But friction is good. Friction is your friend.
And as Bobby Pinero said, confirming it for us, “I thought reducing friction would increase growth. I was wrong.”
In his case, he’s referring to cutting friction by adding a freemium version to his SaaS product—Equals. Seemingly a good move for a PLG motion…
Key quote
At Intercom, we struggled with the reputation of being unfairly and obscurely priced. We were particularly sensitive to this critique. The last thing we wanted was for Equals to be perceived this way as well. After all, pricing is hard.
At the same time, we were watching the darlings of SaaS—companies like Notion, Figma, and Airtable—enjoy massive adoption. We thought it must be because they have a free tier and consumer-like pricing. I felt it was obvious we should do the same.
I sent a memo to our investors and employees spelling out the rationale behind the decision to introduce a free plan. Almost everyone agreed with me. I had to be right, right?
When we announced our Series A in November 2022, we lowered the onboarding friction and opened up Equals to the world. There were no more onboarding calls required, we slashed prices for current and future customers, and we offered a generous new free plan.
We sat back, ready to watch the masses sign up. And sign up, they did. For a little while.
The needle moved—until it didn’t.
Within a month, we 4x'd the number of companies using Equals on a daily and weekly basis. Then, over the next six months, the business stalled. We struggled to retain customers and turn free workspaces into paid subscriptions. We stopped growing the number of active customers using Equals, which translated into essentially flat revenue growth.
Removing friction, like making your product free, in the short term can look like a win. You get more people signing. That’s a nice number to see climb.
But not all users are equal. If you have a lemonade stand, who cares if you have 4x more foot traffic if everyone wants orange juice.
AKA: Free access to tools doesn’t always lead to more engaged customers.
What Bobby found was that his retention tanked. Equals needed some friction because it meant people actually activated and saw the value of the product.
So, they shifted to a free trial (credit card required) and combined it with some necessary steps (like connecting a data source).
In short: you need the right amount of friction.
One thing you can do with this 🛠️
Onboarding is an area worth regular, if not constant, attention. As Bobby says, “Onboarding is a game of convincing a new user to keep going. The allure of seeing a new product is the strongest motivator a new user has to complete complex set-up tasks. The second the new user can see and use your product, their motivation for completing set-up goes out the window.”
So, go forth and make sure you walk your users on that first-mile experience through the necessary steps for them to understand your value proposition and find that aha moment as soon as they land on your product.
If you're unhappy with how you’re currently activating, converting, and monetizing prospect—on the flip side of the coin to Aakash’s unshipping advice—don’t just think about what you can remove, think about what you can add. As Bobby’s story drives home: there are worse things than friction.
Scale, apart from being a word so over used in B2B and enterprise messaging that it’s a little nauseating, is overrated.
I know, because when I built my first company it was all I cared about. A scalable business. The next Airbnb. Why? Probably because it tickled my ego to build something that could become enormous. It never did, but that’s not the point.
Now, if I ever did my own startup again, I actually want the opposite. Scale seems stressful. Give me a lifestyle business any day of the week. I’m very happy to work on scalable products, but I don’t wanna own my own one. 😅
I once wrote that every entrepreneur’s dream is to succeed at building an impossibly hard business and then finally open a local coffee shop to be happy.
I got a flurry of replies with people swapping out “coffee shop” for their preferred lifestyle enterprise — farm, ranch, restaurant, pub, orchard, bookstore, sports club, gym, ice cream parlor, hot dog stand, falafel stand, landscaping business, movie theater, library, flower shop, music studio, beach bar … there were more.
Even among high profile people, we see examples. One extreme case in point: Zuck (fka Mark Zuckerberg). He’s arguably built the biggest scale thing. As of some time in 2023, Facebook had more than 3 BILLION monthly active users.
Yet these days, a lot of what we see and appreciate from Zuck (and what it frankly seems like he gets a disproportionate amount of joy from) are his pursuits that can’t scale. He’s picked up martial arts and dedicated himself to mastering it. He’s adult-boyscouting with skills such as archery. Now he’s picked up cattle ranching too. And all of this seems integrated into life as more of a family man.
There’s nothing wrong with chasing something big. But scale isn’t the only definition of success. “Enough” can be found with smaller ideas.
Nay, more can be found in smaller ideas. As Josh Miller (CEO at Arc) alluded to: chasing scale strips you of some humanity.
And I think Anu hits the nail on the head: Chasing scale seems to be a kind of early life affliction. But, the more you chase it, the bigger the thing you chase gets.
And the bigger the thing gets that chases you, the scarier the whole thing becomes.
Here’s how she put it: “My theory is that chasing things that scale makes you need therapy, and the therapy is pursuing things that can’t scale.”
One thing you can do with this 🛠️
Work wise: If you’re teasing the idea of doing your own startup, challenge yourself to think a bit smaller. What’s an idea that cuts across a hobby of yours that at first glance doesn’t seem to be “big enough”?
Life wise: Not all hobbies have to come with some end goal in mind. Love Chess? Then play it as much as you want, and don’t overthink “But am I good enough?”. Enjoy cooking? Who cares if your food is terrible. Do it because you like doing it. While we all love to do things to get better at them (which inevitably does happen the more you do it), remind yourself that’s not always the point.
, outside of inspiring me to create a hero post recently (thank you sir), has done something else.
He’s studied 261 viral campaigns across every type of business, categorized his findings, and in a recent talk he gave, he shared 5 big lessons.
Here’s the punchline: Serious ≠ boring. Virality ≠ consumer.
Expanded, here’s the 5 big things Tom found drove viral hits.
Humor: People are driven by things that amuse them. The key is not just to be funny, but to connect with the audience on a level that creates the feeling of “they get me.”What to do? Find a common insight that everyone secretly agrees on → then make it public.
Surprise: People respond well to positive and unexpected things. A good surprise is a mix of expected + unexpected. Balance is key.What to do? Take a usual expected thing → then change *one* element only (don't overcomplicate your twist!)
Participation: People value things more significantly when they help create them. Involving them in the creation or evolution of a feature/event/campaign can boost engagement. What to do? Encourage user-generated content or interactive elements where the audience contributes to the campaign.
Status: We have a natural tendency to seek ways to improve how others perceive us. Content that enhances the audience's status or identity can be 10x more effective compared to content that’s not. What to do? Create campaigns that make the audience feel more knowledgeable, ahead of the curve, or part of an elite group.
Existing Resources: Leveraging existing resources like employees, users, data, and product features is key to going viral. It’s the only way to get the snowball rolling fast. What to do? Utilize all of your in-house networks and platforms (that are already available in the company) to maximize impact.
One thing you can do with this 🛠️
Especially you’re a marketer, I’d definitely (1) watch Tom’s talk on this, and (2) consider subscribing to his newsletter,
. It’s a goldmine of, well, marketing and growth ideas. :)
But if you’re not a marketer, I’d suggest the same. 🕺
And with our main 5bits for the week done...
1. Quote of the week 💡
“I’ve often said that I wish people could realize all their dreams and wealth and fame so that they could see that it’s not where you’re going to find your sense of completion … No matter what you gain, ego will not let you rest. He will tell you that you cannot stop until you’ve left an indelible mark on the earth, until you’ve achieved immortality … As far as I can tell, it’s just about letting the universe know what you want and working toward it while letting go of how it comes to pass. Your job is not to figure out how it’s going to happen for you, but to open the door in your head. And when the door opens in real life, just walk through it.”
I’ve always used a blank, ruled line, notebook from Moleskin to do my journaling.
But when I finished my last one, I decided to give something a little more structured a try. Why? To learn to journal better and to get some new inspiration for how I journal.
I found this one by MindJournal, and I’m a big fan. There are a series of unique exercises that act as training wheels, and then after a month, you’re given free reign.
If you’re in the market for a journal, or are thinking of starting a practice (it’s been hugely helpful for me), you should check this one out.
If you learned anything new, the best way to support me and this newsletter is to give this post a share to help more folks discover HTG. Or, if you really want to go the extra mile, I’d be incredibly grateful if you considered upgrading to paid.
Such a great read as always dear Jaryd! Have a great weekend!
Hello Jaryd,
I have stopped receiving your newsletters in my inbox. Any particular reason? I got all of them till 31st Jan'24.