☕ PM Caffeine #12
Connecting the dots between Product Management, tech, and life. My thoughts and ideas to get you energized!
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🖋 Quote
"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." — Douglas Adams
It’s futile trying to optimize everything from the start.
Start.
Fail.
Get better.
Do it again.
💡Framework // Mental Model // Insight
Beginner’s mentality (or the midwit meme)
The idiot’s approach is to not overthink things because he lives in the unknown unknowns, oblivious of all the complexities surrounding them. This is highly similar to the genius approach, who also sees things more straightforwardly because he knows “everything” and how not to assimilate the complexities surrounding something.
The problem lies in all of us mere mortals who stand in the middle. The meme shows the bell curve of the population’s IQ distribution, and the characters are plotted on the curve, representing their thinking.
Despite the meme, Beginner’s Mentality is a fantastic way to approach situations and problems.
The beginner doesn’t know how unbelievably hard making a successful product is. So, therefore, just goes after it. The beginner is not afraid of failing or being mocked or anything else. It’s a shameless way to try things. And it’s fantastic.
Exceptional product people have this mentality. They understand that we tend to overengineer or overcomplicate things, overthinking everything. So what and how do they deal with this? First, having a beginner’s mentality and doing it anyway. Then, ask yourself: “What is the simplest way to test this?”
Clearly, this doesn’t mean you do things without thinking about the consequences, and as a product person, it’s your responsibility to assess and lower the risks of creating something new.
There is still a bonus to having a Beginner’s Mentality, which is humility. Acting and thinking like a beginner brings the inherent need to approach problems, thoughts, and ideas with humility and eagerness to learn. You may already know a lot, but being humble and curious doesn’t hurt you.
🐦 Tweet
Today more than ever, it’s unbelievably easy to get distracted. We have everything at our disposal, on-demand, just how we like it.
But that’s terrible. Maybe not terrible, but bittersweet. If we get too comfortable, we don’t make the changes we want and need to achieve our goals.
Focus is hard. Thinking, “Is this helping me in my long-term goal?” goes a long way.
Know your goal. Don’t try to parallelize everything. Instead, focus on what brings results to your long-term objectives.
The same goes for PMs. Focus on your key metric, your North Star Metric. Find a way to improve that metric and generate value for customers. Be obsessed over it. It pays off and keeps you focused.
📚 Article // Book
The Speedy Downfall of Rapid Delivery Startups
This article from Wired Magazine is fantastic. The author Arielle Pardes covers how the unit economics of the rapid delivery business can be complicated, and startups are not able to survive.
It’s ok to develop and improve your business model along the way. One thing is having a net positive income and choosing to have negative cash flow. Another thing is to grow scaling negative margins.
I’m not saying the grocery rapid delivery business is completely broken. I’m saying we need to be more responsible for how we grow our startups and deploy our money. It’s ok to blitzscale your way to product-market fit, but if you do that, your business model must stand on two feet, at least looking into the future. Scaling negative margins is not ok. Probably never was, but the market was turning a blind eye and pouring money into those businesses. Breakeven is a moving target.
Innovation is complex, and it’s hard work. It is risky and uncertain. But it can be responsible and smart.
As a product person, you must think through your product’s unit economics and figure out how to deliver value to customers and the company. Rapid delivery startups are great! But they’re not helping themselves and dying because of it.
Great article to help us rethink how we do business and stop looking at vanity metrics to grow at any cost.
🎧 Podcast
Masters of Scale - How to harness risk
A great episode from Reid Hoffman’s Masters of Scale with Stacey Abrams.
Stacey Abrams is a political leader, activist, and entrepreneur. An amazing episode about founding opportunities and taking risks as a necessary evil of the entrepreneurial path.
Lara Hodgson is a co-founder of Stacey and brings fantastic comments to the conversation.
We’re continually assessing risk in some way, shape, or form. We do it in our careers and personal life. Stacey shows how she transitioned between both and how she managed to create real value for customers.
The critical takeaway is to train how to take the right amount of risk
Listen on Apple Podcast or Spotify
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