Productivize - Issue #8
Featuring 3 product champions, resources and interesting products.
Hey there 👋 Happy Monday. Each week Productivize is something I look forward to as it gives me an opportunity to sharpen my product mind and provide value to you all at the same time. Thank you for reading and learning with me 🙏
A small update before we dive in: We crossed the 250 subscribers mark with Issue #7. So thank you for showing your support and assuring me this newsletter is providing value to you 🙏🏽
Let’s get started 👇
Building Fintech Products
Anish Acharya, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, shares how his product background has helped guide his investment choices and shaped his belief that fintech products must put customer empathy at the center of development. In this interview, you’ll learn a lot about customer empathy, entrepreneurship, and building and scaling fintech products. Full episode below:
Eigenquestions
The Only Metric That Matters
In this post, Josh Elman talks about metrics and knowing whether or not a product is growing and working. He strongly suggests the only thing founders need to think about is: Are people using your product? Are they using it how you expect (i.e performing the core action)? And, are they performing the core action at the frequency you expect? This article comes with slides with examples that helps you focus on right questions. Read on here.
Melissa Perri
Melissa is an educator, author and speaker. She believes the key to creating great products is growing great product leaders. She created an online learning hub for product people called Product Institute and runs Produx Labs, a Product Management consultancy. She is also a faculty at Harvard Business School and teaches Product Management in the MBA program. Melissa often tweets about product strategies, her scientific approach to Product Management and product operations. Give her a follow - @lissijean
Dan Olsen
Dan is a product coach, author and speaker. He has been helping executives build great products and strong product teams for over 15yrs. Dan hosts a meetup which has over 8,000 members where he invites product leaders to discuss all things about product management. He wrote The Lean Product Playbook, a practical guide to building products that customers love. He tweets about product growth strategies, best practices and more. Give him a follow - @danolsen
Ravi Mehta
Ravi is currently working as an EIR with Reforge. Previously, Ravi has stints as Chief Product Officer of Tinder and Product Director of Facebook. His novel concepts of Product Decision Making are popular in Product space. He oftens shares the tools and techniques that have helped him build products that impact millions of people's lives. Give him a follow - @ravi_mehta
Bannerbear
A simple API that auto-generates social media visuals, ecommerce banners and more.
Waitlist API
An easy, lightweight, and free tool to quickly set up a waitlist on your next project.
Wisepops
Create beautiful and contextual popups, banners and bars for your mobile and desktop visitors.
A book you should read: Zero to Sold
Zero to Sold is a comprehensive and actionable guide through the four stages of a bootstrapped business: Preparation, Survival, Stability, and Growth. Arvid Kahl shares the(his) story of a sustainable, bootstrapped software business that grew to thousands of customers before it was acquired. This book is an output of Arvid’s experiences, learnings, and insights from building a Software-as-a-Service business from start to finish. Get it here.
That’s all for today. I’ll be back with new learnings and findings next week. My goal is to give you the best experience and value through Productivize and I hope you enjoyed reading this issue.
Lastly, I’m trying to gather feedback from you and recently found this new way (emoji way I guess). I would love to know what you think. Tap on the below button and let me know. Thanks for reading!
Until next week,
Sharath