5-Bit Fridays: The magic of small engineering teams, mastering the founder letter, The Traction Framework, how to evaluate a company, and saying sorry
5-Bit Fridays: The magic of small engineering teams, mastering the founder letter, The Traction Framework, how to evaluate a company, and saying sorry
Plus a simple marketing & positioning tactic used by Notion
Jaryd here! You’re reading 5-Bit Fridays—your weekly ~5-minute morning roundup of 5 actionable insights that can help you build and grow your product. You can read my main How They Grow deep dives here, or my short essays on one useful idea here.
Happy Friday, everyone! ☕
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5 actionable insights from this week
(I) The magic of small engineering teams
I recently stumbled on the blog and it’s an absolute goldmine of insights. One POV from the PostHog team is that to keep your startup’s speed and agility as you scale, you need to keep a team that owns an area of the product or company to 2-6 people. As James Temperton says, “This startup-made-of-startups structure minimizes the number of centralized processes and the need for lots of layers of management. It biases to the maker’s schedule – and makers get shit done.”
Each team covers its own roadmap, speaks to customers, owns its metrics, figures out marketing, and manages support. They also have their own mission. If you look at the PostHog site and navigate to products, you’ll see how each product has its own team. I really like this!
Your call to action: 🏃 I don’t want to tell you to go shake up you entire process here. That’s a big deal. But I’d say just read the full post (link below as usual) and see which parts resonate with you. Ultimately, is there a way to keep the magic of a startup as your company grows?
[Go deeper: The magic of small engineering teams, by ]
(II) Mastering The Founder Letter
These are becoming more and more prevalent. 👇
It’s the founder’s letter—the long form, well-written narrative from the leader of a company—and my mate Bill Kerr (CEO ar Athyna) has an excellent deep dive on how to nail these. I’m going to grab 3 of the main takeaways Bill shared:
Cutting through the noise with a founder letter. Founder letters can create emotional connections and stand out in a crowded market.
The sales-led landing page. Founders are using long-form letters to sell products, by highlighting powerful problem-solution narratives.
Annual letters to shareholders. Annual shareholder letters build trust and attract, or retain, investment.
Your call to action: 🏃 Find the strongest story you want to tell about your product, company, or vision. Then sell it passionately with the written word.
[Go deeper: Mastering The Founder Letter, by Bill Ker]
(III) Traction: How to build your business with a proven framework.
Most companies wait until the end of the quarter or year to realize that they’ve missed their goals. And only then do they try to work backwards to understand why. But by that point, it’s way too late to take action.
That’s where the philosophy behind the book “Traction” comes in, as it prevents that from ever happening. Tyler Denk (CEO at beehiiv) shared a stunning summary of this book in his newsletter. Here’s an excerpt that shows how one of the main components of the framework, “The Weekly” plays a key role in ongoing issue spotting and goal accountability:
If your 5 year target is $250M in revenue, that might equate to 50,000 paying users (the KPI).
That means in 3 years, you might need 30,000 paying users.
Which means by the end of this year you’ll need 8,500 paying users.
But if your Scorecard reveals you only added 11 paying users this week… well that’s a big fucking problem.
Your call to action: 🏃 Don’t wait to realize you missed your goal. If you know where you’re going and how you’re supposed to be pacing to get there, then it should be easy to spot problems every week, address it as an issue, determine the solution, and take a course-correcting action.
[Go deeper: Traction, by Tyler Denk]
(IV) How to Apologize
Apologies are more than just words; they are a way to show accountability, empathy, and a commitment to making things right.
It can be hard to apologize. People often struggle to get the words “I’m sorry” out even when they are actually sorry. Bottom line—we could all probably be better at apologizing. Myself very much included.
has a great post on this. TLDR, a good apology has these key components:Explicitly say the words: It’s important to actually state that you are apologizing: “I am sorry.” Avoid vague language that might dilute the sincerity of your apology.
Take full ownership: Be clear that you know what you did wrong. Don’t deflect blame or make excuses for your actions.
Emphasize empathy: Show that you understand and regret the impact of your actions on others.
Course correct: After stating that you’ve done wrong, the final part is giving genuine feedback on how you will do better next time to avoid the same mistake.
Your call to action: 🏃 Who do you owe an apology to? Now go to them and try say sorry armed with these 4 components.
[Go deeper: How To Apologize, by ]
(V) 10 Most Important Metrics For Evaluating a Company
For anyone in the job market right now, consider this…
The momentum of the company you work for is one of the greatest contributors to your career growth - as or more important than how hard you work or how bright you are.
Your call to action: 🏃 If you’re unfamilair with any of these metrics, start by reading her post. And the next time you’re in the market and evaluating a company, note these 10 metrics. But remember, you still need to make your own calculations to figure out if an opportunity is right for you or not.
[Go deeper: 10 Most Important Metrics For Evaluating a Company, by
]
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1 How They Grow lesson
Throwback to my first deep dive ever that marked Day 1 of my Substack journey… Notion!
🧩 Call out the competition. Use comparative positioning to the tools you know.
Notion calls out the competitors that it’s replacing with no shame. These are tools that are all familiar and well positioned in the minds of their audience of consumers or SMBs.
This is a simple and effective strategy to explain your product.
Your competitors have spent a ton of time and resources creating awareness for themselves and making sure end-users understand what they do — and now you’re piggy backing on that to quickly help people get what you do, and then explain your differentiator. It’s similar to the “We’re Uber for X” — but actually useful and not some fantastical statement to attract investors — because you’re instead saying “We’re replacing X”. This is a bolder statement, sure, but it’s far more useful because people don’t have to perform any mental gymnastics to figure out what you do.
An excerpt from the deep dive…👇
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)
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 this week’s edition.
If you enjoyed reading today’s email, feel free to forward it to someone! Or you can always hit the like button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack!
Have a fantastic weekend. I’ll see you next time.
—Jaryd