🌱 5-Bit Fridays: Societal waves, overfitting, engineering crits, attention vs anxiety, and the soul of your
🌱 5-Bit Fridays: Societal waves, overfitting, engineering crits, attention vs anxiety, and the soul of your
#59
👋 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!
Very quick one before we jump in: If you’re a founder of an angel/seed/or Series A/B backed startup, let me know by dropping a reply to this email with a quick thumbs up or a “me”. 🙏
In case you missed it this week:
ByteDance execs believe China will not allow TikTok sale. Also, China says moves to ban TikTok will 'eventually backfire on US.'
BeReal faces an uncertain future. Growth has stalled at the French social media app that aimed to counter position itself against Instagram/TikTok, and leaders of BeReal are apparently mulling an uncertain Series C funding round or a sale.
Elon Musk, who is suing to force OpenAI to make its tech open source, said his competing company, xAI, will make the code for its chatbot, Grok, public this week.
Nvidia is expanding their VC footprint. The chipmaker has invested in nearly three dozen startups over the past year. The deals form part of Nvidia’s strategy to strengthen its own role in the rapidly growing AI ecosystem.
Spotify has started rolling out music videos in 11 countries. The new feature comes as TikTok was forced to remove music from its platform following a dispute with Universal.
Today at a glance:
The Biggest Waves Across Productivity, Jobs, Shopping, Health, and Social
Attention Vs. Anxiety
Overfitting
How Figma engineers feedback with eng crits
The soul of your work
+ 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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Cool, let’s get to it.
(#1) The Biggest Waves Across Productivity, Jobs, Shopping, Health, and Social
is one of my go to sources for having a pulse on the evolving landscape that drives consumer products. And in a recent post of his, he goes into the weeds of a few seismic waves he sees on the behavior front. Key quote
One of my mentors and former colleagues, Mike Volpi, once gave me a good framework for startups: startups are like surfing.
You have three components: you have the surfer, you have the surfboard, and you have the wave. The surfer is the founder, probably the most important element; if you don’t have a good surfer, good luck catching a wave. The board is the product. It matters, of course, though a savvy surfer can fine-tune her board over time. (A good surfer can also probably overcome a bad board, but not vice versa.) The more challenging element to control is the wave. What kind of wave are you gonna get?
From the early-stage venture perspective, the wave is the toughest variable; there are a lot of exogenous factors. Where are we in the cycle? How big will this market be? Is there a “why now” for this product? The wave is full of “known unknowns.”There are technology waves and there are behavior waves—changes in the underlying tech and changes in the people who shape and use the tech.
— Rex Woodbury via
Insight
There are all sorts of waves you can hitch your startup to. The biggest undercurrent is simply exponential technological progress. But above that are more specific waves that can, and are, creating massive and enduring businesses. Think AI, Spatial Computing, and battery advancements for EVs.
Those are all significant and compelling why nows? for any builder in the space. But Rex gets into some interesting behavior waves, which as he notes, “often show up in a new generation’s attitudes, behaviors, and worldviews.”
I always find those shifts more fascinating.
Rex covers 5 shifts across productivity, jobs, shopping, health, and social, but I just want to highlight one: Shopping
The biggest wave in commerce, in my mind, can be summed up in the word circularity. Sustainability is bleeding into commerce; consumers want to shop secondhand, and brands want to do good by their customers and by the environment. Ask any brand or retailer what’s top-of-mind for them, and two topics consistently come up: (1) resale and (2) excess inventory. The two are interrelated, and both build on circularity.
And the data tells the story…resale is growing 11x faster than broader retail.
One thing you can do with this 🛠️
We’re not all in the retail game, so abstracting this shift in demand out a bit, the takeaway is making sustainability and social/environmental consciousness a value pillar of your product.
Especially younger customers want to support brands and creators that they believe care. TOMS shoes gives away a pair of shoes to a child in need for each pair purchased…a strong social cause.
How can you tap into something similar? And not just for more customers and brand loyalty, but because it’s a great thing to do.
Read the full post by Rex.
(#2) Attention Vs. Anxiety
Who doesn’t have at least some form of anxiety? And fair enough, there’s a lot to be stressed about at work, home, and just life.
To help with mine, I’ve had some form of meditation practice since 2018, and every single one I’ve dabbled with hits on the same core theory: the art of paying attention. AKA, mindfulness.
What we pay attention to drives how we feel in any given moment, and the more in the present we are, the more calm we almost always are.
shares a helpful technique on how to ground ourself in any moment.Key quote
This is the 5-4-3-2-1 Technique for re-grounding in the moment. Focus on identifying:
5 things you can see. “Look for small details such as a pattern on the ceiling, the way light reflects off a surface, or an object you never noticed.”
4 things you can feel. “Notice the sensation of clothing on your body, the sun on your skin, or the feeling of the chair you are sitting in. Pick up an object and examine its weight, texture, and other physical qualities.”
3 things you can hear. “Pay special attention to the sounds your mind has tuned out, such as a ticking clock, distant traffic, or trees blowing in the wind.”
2 things you can smell. “Try to notice smells in the air around you, like an air freshener or freshly mowed grass. You may also look around for something that has a scent, such as a flower or an unlit candle.”
1 thing you can taste. The summary suggests you could chew gum or eat a snack and “focus your attention closely on the flavors,” but for this one I might substitute thinking back to a recently enjoyed taste, or looking for something in your environment that reminds you of a taste, etc.
— Rob Walker, via
One thing you can do with this 🛠️
The 5-4-3-2-1 exercise works as a simple, do-anywhere noticing prompt. Try it next time next time you are (or aren’t) feeling a bit of anxiety.
Read the full post by Rob.
(#3) Overfitting
In theory, we learn from our mistakes. But as Andrew Bosworth (Meta CTO) points out, sometimes we over learn…
Key quote
There is an old saying that if a cat jumps on a hot stove once, it will never jump on a cold stove again. The wisdom of this is that we have a tendency to overgeneralize about the world from relatively limited information. The thing that allows humans to navigate stoves safely is we have a more complete model of the world and we understand stoves at a more fundamental level.
Still, I suspect we are all people who have been burned once and rather than build a more complete model of the world to navigate it safely sometimes we just decide to write off an activity completely. I have seen people give up too quickly on learning new skills, giving people feedback, building new habits, and more.
— Boz, via his blog, Boz
Insight
We can all agree that basing a belief off just one data points isn’t very scientific.
But as Boz notes, even more pernicious than overgeneralizing from a single data point is overgeneralizing from multiple data points, because it gives us much more confidence that our model is accurate even if it may not be.
Imagine you have a problem. So, you speak with a few friends and learn that they’ve also experienced something similar.
Boom. There you have it, more data. So you then extrapolate and generalize. Suddenly, your local problem is a global one. Suddenly, your problem feels too big to fix.
This is a very disempowering turn of events.
There are orders of magnitude more local problems, even if many of them are very similar. Indeed it is much more productive to assume every problem is local and can be solved locally, even if other localities have the same problem, until unequivocally proven otherwise.
One thing you can do with this 🛠️
It can feel empowering to dismiss a problem as unaddressable, and point to something larger as the cause. Simply, because when we think problems are our of our locus of control, we don’t have to do anything about it.
As an example, let’s say some north star metric has seen negative YoY growth for the past few months. You pull a squad together to brainstorm. Someone shares an anecdote from one customer who mentioned the economy as a reason they used the product less this quarter. Someone else on the call agrees. Suddenly, there’s some consensus it’s a macro problem, not a local product problem.
Maybe. But maybe not?
But by quickly overfitting your mental model of what’s going on based on such limited data, you risk not doing the work needed to find out if there’s something wrong with your product.
The quick fix is simple, but not easy to alway do: ask more questions, and seek out confirming and disconfirming evidence. The more consequential the impact of a decision, the more you should invest in creating a strong mental model of the problem.
(#4) How Figma engineers feedback with eng crits
Most engineering teams have some sort of approval process, often called a technical review, which is usually reserved for the later stages in a project. The problem with late-stage technical reviews is that when they happen too late, like when a direction or design has already been built out, they can lead to launch-blocking feedback.
I love how Figma approach product development, seeing everything as work in progress.
Key quote
Inspired by the Figma design team’s principles and methods for running design crits, a core group of Figma engineers, led by Ojan Vafai, set out to introduce a process somewhere in between a design crit and a technical review. This was the genesis of Figma’s engineering critiques, dedicated time for the engineering team to brainstorm novel approaches to technical problems, get feedback on existing work, and unblock each other. Today, engineering crits are a core part of our workflow
— Laura Pang, via Shortcut
Insight
The engineering crit plays a very specific role at Figma. It’s a place to solicit feedback early and often. It is a forum to get expert support on technical designs. It is not an approval process.
When things are positioned as a work in progress, the stakes are a lot lower and people feel more comfortable sharing and receiving feedback.
That’s why Figma do these types of early-on crits across all product functions now.
By running engineering crits in FigJam, we could solicit a lot of feedback in a short amount of time, making it easier for more collaborators to jump in. Rather than having one person talk at a time or respond to a long thread of comments, everyone on the team could contribute. And FigJam’s open canvas would allow engineers to share early thinking, inspiration, and even screenshots of in-progress work, alongside helpful context or prompts for the broader team.
One thing you can do with this 🛠️
I found this surprising: for every engineering crit, the invite list (optional of course) is the entire organization. Yup, everyone at Figma, not just devs.
They’ve found that folks only opt in if a topic is related to their expertise, and Laura notes that sometimes, “We all have insights to share on work that doesn’t directly involve us, and other times, many of us will simply be curious about what’s going on in the rest of the organization.”
Not my recommendation, but that’s what Figma have found to work for their culture.
But, as a next step, consider how you could facilitate non-decision making brainstorming sessions with engineers the next time you approach a project. The goals should be to:
Brainstorm and generate ideas
Identify difficult engineering challenges
Validate hypotheses
Share knowledge
Call out irreversible decisions
And remember, any process added should always leave people feeling like it accelerates their work, rather than feeling like it gets in the way.
Read the full post by Laura Pang
(#5) The soul of your work
As
points out, breathing life into what you make is so key.Key quote
An object cannot have a high bar of quality or soul if the creator did not put care into it. Whether it's a software designer, Willy Wonka experience organizer, or filmmaker, you can tell if people don't care about the quality of their work because it’s soul-less. The truth is the majority of people will not care about the quality or essence of the work, and that’s why it’s critical to hold a high standard.
— David Hoang, via
Insight
The soul of your work is measured by how it makes a person feel on the other end.
It’s the very subtle design and experience choices. The things people don’t include in PRDs. The tiny details sweated over before shipping something. The swoosh of the Apple packaging.
By bringing soul into the work you do, we can bring, as Josh Miller from Arc says, “humanity back into the software we use every day.”
One thing you can do with this 🛠️
Arc is the best recent example we’ve seen of a company trying to, in their words, optimize for feelings.
So, here’s two bits of advice from Arc on how to build with soul:
Index heavily on your own sense. “We optimize for feelings. Our own, and of those we serve. Because our most treasured, human creations are far from neutral… In fact, they are full of opinions, taste, and subjectivity! That is what gives them their spirit and vitality, so own what moves you and let it run wild in your software!”
Look beyond the screen. “David Adjaye drew from Yoruban sculpture, and Steve Jobs from Zen Buddhism and calligraphy. We could continue this list forever, but that’s not the point. The point is to look outside the confines of our industry toward what makes us feel in the world around us, and ask ourselves why. Borrow. Remix. Let it shape your work!”
Read the full post by David
And with our main 5 bits for the week done...
1. Quote of the week 💡
“All man’s troubles come from not knowing how to sit still in one room.”
— Blaise Pascal
2. Chart of the week 📈
Current high schoolers are the most pessimistic generation since the 90s…
3. My recommendation of the week ❤️
Here’s a compilation video of Jimmy Donaldson, AKA MrBeast, being a creative / YouTube genius for 10 minutes straight. This man must be protected at all costs. Well worth the watch, trust me.
4. Question for you of the week 🤔
5. And now, byte on one of these posts 🧠
The Most Important Skill in the 21st Century, by
I Think I'm Done Flying Boeing, by
150 Best Questions to Ask to Get to Know Someone Better, According to Experts, by Alesandra Dubin
Maybe you make things too hard, by
Product x Design collaboration in high performing growth teams, by
and
And that’s everything for this week, folks!
If you learned anything new, the best way to support me and this newsletter is to give this post a like and 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.
Until next time.
— Jaryd ✌️
Mr Beast video was a great shout. Guys a savage.
Great summary, as always 👍 Thanks for mentioning!