How the Davids of the digital whiteboarding space toppled their Goliath — Hey! Thanks for grabbing coffee with me. I wanted to tell you about an idea that I had. I’m going to build a piece of software. Oh, by the way, Google offers the same functionality. Oh, also we’re going to beat them with a team of 10. Oh, and we’re…

How to fill in the gaps of a problem where the numbers don’t tell you everything — Welcome to ProdCo, the creators of fine imaginary solutions. Today you’re taking the seat of the head product strategist at ProdCo, at the helm of a product wherein hungry pedestrians can use a mobile application to summon one of an army of be-scootered ProdCo contract sandwich delivery people to their…

Lessons About Building AI/ML and Data Science Products — Saying that AI is hot right now would be a gross understatement. Everyone seems to have realized the potential that AI has to automate & uplevel parts of their products & services. With that potential comes the need to bring on people who can bridge the gap between the talented…

How to make the practice of discourse fun. No, seriously — In December 1914, Allied and German troops crossed no-man’s land and embraced each other in a now-famous show of humanity in the face of abject division. Today, it’s easy to feel like our political discourse has placed us in a similar set of trenches. A 2019 Pew Research Study…

Why it’s ok for engineering and product to fight — Let me know if this has happened to you before: Engineer: I’m not sure we’re going to be able to get done features A, B, and C by the deadline you gave us. Product Manager: What if we [built it differently, pushed through the weekend, deprioritized that other thing you’re…

What if I told you that breakfast cereal saved AirBnb? — Story 1 — Scrappiness in the face of annihilation What if I told you that Airbnb was saved by breakfast cereal? In 2008, Brian Chesky and the early team behind Airbnb, which at the time was AirBed & Breakfast, found themselves with $20k debt and no way to pay it off.

Discovery It started innocently enough. I was going to work out, and I needed a funny gif to mark the occasion. But nothing is ever simple I’d found something wonderful. My mind raced with potential origin stories for this work of art… Perhaps it was an obscure Eastern European workout video…

Bad Air. Before Germ Theory was popularized, the spread of disease was often attributed to “Bad Air emanating from rotting organic matter”. Germ Theory replaced this notion of how diseases spread, but it didn’t happen all at once. Louis Pasteur’s seminal work demonstrating how bacteria spread disease took place in…

When you’re thinking of others, you can’t help but make great stuff — I was traveling home to see my family for Christmas when I came up with my latest product idea. I had heard someone somewhere talking about a bingo game they played on a road trip with their family. …