Product Design > Technical Design - for B2x products? - IMO Absolutely. Let me explain via an experience that I had a few years ago. Back in 2013, I got to work with these two absolutely incredible Aussie guys. They had a killer idea for a social game, and I stepped in to build it out. While we built a great product, the guys killed it even more at marketing.  When we launched, we were anticipating ~5000 downloads in a week. We actually began to get 5000 downloads every hour, taking our app...

Hot Take: While the number of tech startups is going to increase substantially thanks to GenAI tools, the number of those that fail is also going to be predictably higher. GenAI is going to help build tech faster (and better over time) but that is a small part of the whole equation.  Having built tech for multiple startups since 2011, I can tell execution is everything. We may build the most amazing tool, but the basics are never going to change.  Product Market Fit, Founder Market Fit, Go to...

An often overlooked superpower a manager can have is the ability to code. Being a code-first manager has given me leverage in ways that are hard to overstate, regardless of whether I am talking to devs, sr devs, other leaders or stakeholders.  It’s not about writing features alongside the team or micromanaging pull requests. It’s more about walking into estimation sessions or design discussions and actually speaking the same language. It's about asking "Why?" when it really matters.  When you...