Articles
- A Quantitative Approach to Product Market Fit
Specific stats that demonstrate PMF - A/B testing without a backend using only JavaScript and your analytics
A simple way of conducting A/B tests without building your own backend - An A/B Testing Story
Quick look at which pages are worth A/B testing - Choose boring technology
The importance of choosing mature tech - Collecting user feedback using only your analytics
A simple way of collecting feedback without building your own backend - Customer you cannot afford to lose
The dangers of getting tied to one particular client. - Disrespectful Design—Users aren't stupid or lazy
"It's a common narrative in tech to design products with the assumption that users are stupid and lazy. I think that is both disrespectful and wrong." - Do Things That Don't Scale
An overview of how to develop processes and at which point tech should step in - Don't scar on the first cut - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals)
37 signals explaining not making institutional changes from one-off instances - Examples of polite software
A list of examples of the different principles of polite software - Four Questions Every Marketplace Startup Should Be Able to Answer
Four key factors that shape every marketplace: network effects, type of supply, incentives, and size and frequency of interaction. - Growing a marketplace? How to balance sellers and buyers using customer lifetime value
Onboarding sellers early on is critical because of the frequency of transactions - How the 100 largest marketplaces solved the chicken and egg problem
Three different strategies for cold-start problem with examples - How to Fund a Startup
The five sources of startup funding and the life of a hypothetical startup through the rounds - How we achieve “simple design” for Basecamp and HEY
A few principles for achieving simple design - Jack Altman on Twitter saying nearly the same thing.
"My experience is this is almost never worth it." - Liquidity hacking: How to build a two-sided marketplace
A look into how to overcome the cold-start problem - Marketplace liquidity
Density, appropriately balanced demand and supply and category concentration as a measure of marketplace liquidity - Options, Not Roadmaps
A very good explanation of this that I wish had existed - Quantitative approach to product-market fit
Overview of data required for quantifying the product-market fit - Rainy Day Ideas For Things You Can Build To Grow Your Business
Examples of things that can improve your business that can be done periodically - Running productive design critiques
To stay on the right track you need to really understand the problem you’re trying to fix and constantly get feedback from the people you’re designing for. - Six Week Cycle
The description of the Basecamp product development lifecycle - The Anatomy of the Perfect Technical Interview from a Former Amazon VP
A very good overview on the interviewing process and the value of being prepared in advance - The Majestic Monolith
You can have a single well preforming application - The Prune Date
Features come and go frequently during the lifetime of a product. Except that they often don't actually go but just stop being used. - Using CSS to more efficiently cache user-specific content
A quick and easy solution to improving cache efficiency - Veteran CTO (with Multiple Successful Exits) Answers Your Top Startup-Building Questions
An overview of how to measure performance for engineering - We don't tend to take things away
Research that says that we tend towards adding things - What makes a successful startup team (HBR)
Dedication is a key part of a team - Write Readable Code
Code is read more than it’s written" - You and your career
What people often value in their job - Your customers dictate your competitors
A couple of misconceptions about who your customers are - Your product is a joke
Lessons from improv about honing in on specific benefits
Books
- Code Complete by Steve McConnell
The cornerstone of writing good code - Competing Against Luck by Clayton M. Christensen
The origin of the idea that customers hire products for a job to be done - Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug
- High Output Management by Andrew Grove
Very good look at management including lessons how to optimize production that are very relevant - Leadership and Self-Deception by Arbinger Institute
About becoming better at cooperating with others - Measure What Matters by John Doerr
How to do OKRs properly - Only The Paranoid Survive by Andrew Grove
A good look at planning product development - Peopleware: Productive Projects and Team by Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister
About improving tech productivity - ReWork: Change the Way You Work Forever by David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried
A more balanced approach towards work - Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days by Jake Knapp
A way to solve problems through prototyping often well suited to working within your team since you'd have unlimited access to their feedback - Statistics for Engineers by Jim Morrison
- The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman
A design principle that applies across disciplines - The Effective Executive by ByPeter F Drucker
Lessons in management - The Halo Effect by Phil Rosenzweig
A look into unreliable indicators of performance - The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
In particular, the chapter "CEOs don't play the odds" - The Inmates Are Running the Asylum by Alan Cooper
How to make tech work with business more effectively - The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen
How companies should effectively disrupt themselves with valuable lessons for startups - The Manager`s Path by Camille Fournier
The career progression of a technical founder from programmer to CTO - The Mythical Man-Month by Frederick P. Brooks Jr.
How to organize tech work - The inmates are running the asylum by Alan Cooper
- What Got You Here Won't Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith
How to switch from being an effective individual contributor to being effective in a managerial position - Zero to One by Peter Thiel
Lessons about growing a business