I used to hate product management.

A year into the role, I wanted out.

7 years later, I couldn't imagine myself doing anything else.

The flip all happened in a few fateful sprints 👇

1/21 My career started at a small "Uber for Doctors" startup — on-demand urgent care booked through an app.

When I joined the company as an intern, there were only 6 employees.

Over my three years there, we raised our $100M Series B round and grew to >100 employees.

2/21

Every product needs a solid activation experience.

Done well, they can mean hugely successful conversion from discovery to sign-up for your app.

Here's a breakdown of Duolingo's legendarily strong activation experience.

Complete activation experience breakdown in 🧵👇 First and foremost, like usual, you need to have a strong understanding of your user.

I know that's cliché, but you'll see why it's so important in a moment.

Consider your users':
1. Demographics
2. Goals and desired benefits
3. Experience levels

Most people think notification = sending a message

But this barely scratches the surface.

Every notification is part of a whole experience.

Here's a breakdown of the 5 main types of notifications with the 4 stages every notification entails

More tips in 🧵👇 Notification Types

In general, almost every notification falls into one of these categories.

⏰ Time-Based
📍 Location-Based
🔀 Change-Based
🙋‍♂️ Peer-Based
🤖 Rule-based

Always consider all types! You might be surprised at what you come up with.

When my manager used to say I needed to 'think more strategically' - I had no clue what that actually meant.

I'd consume tons of strategy content but couldn't apply it.

Nothing helped until I learned to ask myself these ultra-specific questions: Overall company vision

Can I clearly explain our company's North Star and business model? Have I connected my team's work directly to company OKRs and customer outcomes? Do I understand our key strategic bets?

Interaction design separates good from great products.

The best way to learn is by seeing it in action.

So I made this MASSIVE post with 54 original examples!

1) Remove friction with suggested options ⚠️ BEWARE ⚠️

The proceeding knowledge cannot be unlearned! The examples cannot be unseen.

Continue down this path and you will soon find yourself frustrated by bad interaction design in many, many products.

You’ve been warned.

How often should PMs communicate with stakeholders? 🤔

↳ It depends on the project.

Matching communication to project complexity is key.

Here's a 5-step process to get it right 🧵👇 1️⃣ Document Stakeholders and Their Concerns

Identify all the stakeholders involved and pinpoint their specific needs and concerns within the project.

Ex: Marketing needs weekly updates on feature development for promotional planning; Sales requires monthly revenue forecasts.

.@nikitabier drops an INSANE amount of product wisdom on X.

But it's all disorganized.

So I did a 40+ hour deep dive to distill his best lessons.

Today: A no bullsh*t approach to discovering viral growth hacks 🧵 @nikitabier For context, Nikita is most famous for:

1. Building TBH app from 0 → 5M users in 2 months.
2. Building gas app from 0 → 10M users in 3 months.

With $0 marketing spend.

They're legendary for their ingenious viral growth optimization.

Here's what gas app looked like:

https://twitter.com/3163739973/status/1811018742190485586

1-pagers are critical for getting buy-in for your ideas.

But they're very hard to write well.

Here's:
🔹 a step-by-step guide to the 1-pager
🔹 examples of mistakes and how to fix them

(+a FREE template for rock-solid 1-pagers)

Step 1: Writing the 1-pager! Step 2) Understand the purpose of the 1-pager

The goals of writing down your idea:
1. Help you make sure it's good
2. Persuade others that it's good

That second point is critical.

1-pagers aren't research projects, they're persuasive essays aimed at getting buy-in.

Every PM wants to get better at strategy.

I used to love studying strategy but got lost when I tried to make my own.

Then I learned how to make product flywheels. Now I always know where to start, and how to drive alignment.

Here's a step-by-step guide to making your own 🧵 Quickly, here are a few examples of excellent flywheels.

They are:
• Simple
• Customer-centric
• Adaptable

Take a moment to carefully review them before moving on.

3 non-obvious requirement tips:

1. If your requirement has "and" in it, break it into two requirements. 2. Prioritize every requirement
• P0: You'd be embarrassed not to have this
• P1: People will buy your product because it does this
• P2: People will complain about missing P2s after they buy the product
• P3: Can be descoped and added to future iteration

You don't need to read every product book.

In 2024, spend more time with fewer books.

I've put together:
🔹 My 2 top recs across the product spectrum
🔹 Advice on how to choose

𝗝𝗮𝗻𝘂𝗮𝗿𝘆: 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝗙𝗲𝗯𝗿𝘂𝗮𝗿𝘆: 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆

1. Playing to Win: Engaging primer on business strategy packed with case studies.

2. Good Strategy Bad Strategy: Goes beyond surface-level strategy tips to examine the fundamentals of strategic thinking.

If your team always asks "why?", they don't get your strategy.

So what can you do?

(Hint: it's not showing them the roadmap.)

🧵👇 Let's agree:
1️⃣ Product development depends on 𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁

And:
2️⃣ 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 requires 𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴

So persistent "why are we building this?" questions reveal a lack of understanding.

It's time for a game of... Variant Victory! 🏆

Vote for which variant you think won in the therad.

Round 1/5 – Easy

Which variant had higher conversion to annual plans?

Variant A: Default to monthly
Varient B: Default to annual Which do you think had a higher conversation rate?

ChatGPT's computer vision is great for getting product feedback.

I'll show you how, with the most amazing feature ever.

(Yes, my team's feature) 🧵👇 Quickly, some context.

Last month, OpenAI added image analysis capabilities for Plus subscribers.

Unsurprisingly, they're crazy freaking good.

Just look at how accurate this meme analysis is:

There are already thousands of custom OpenAI GPTs!

But are any *actually* helpful for PMs?

I spent all weekend finding and testing as many as I could to find out.

Here are my top 7 finds: 1. ChatPRD by @clairevo

"Your on-demand Chief Product Officer"

Helps you:
🔹 Draft incredible PRDs from scratch
🔹 Improving your existing PRD
🔹 Get PM coaching

chat.openai.com/g/g-G5diVh12v-…

Most PMs suck at persuasion.

I did. My "rock-solid" arguments always fell on deaf ears.

Then I learned how to direct others' attention where I needed it *before* my arguments. Everything changed.

This is "pre-suasion" and it's immensely powerful.

🧵👇 Pre-suasion is all about directing attention and focus.

You can improve the odds of persuading someone if you are able to focus their attention where you want it.

What we focus on becomes our reality.

There are three aspects to this:
1. Anchoring
2. Framing
3. Priming

The key components of a compelling problem are:

1. Practical need
2. Emotional desire
3. Captivating narrative Focusing solely on the practical side of things leaves your product feeling soulless and unmemorable.

It's the emotional connection that truly resonates with consumers.

🔸 Features must map to benefits
🔸 Benefits must map to emotions

.@Amplitude_HQ just dropped an awesome new resource:

"Product Analytics For Dummies"

But don't be fooled: It's pretty advanced!

It all starts with good metrics.

This thread covers the key questions you must ask at every stage of the PLG journey 🧵👇 ACQUISITION 🔍🎯🤝

Users find your product through tons of different channels.

Metrics:
• CAC
• New sign-ups
• Qualified leads
• Payback period

Figuring out where they're coming from helps you:
1. Build a more tailored experience
2. Figure out how to get more of them

The reason products fail:

Users don't *think* they'll provide enough value.

PMs consistently misunderstand what value really means.

@AlexHormozi's equation gives us the perfect framework to get this right.

Detailed breakdown, examples, and a challenge in 🧵👇 💭 Dream Outcome

How does your product help users achieve their deepest desires?

🔷 Be extremely specific
🔷 Use vivid, emotional language
🔷 Nail the outcome they really want

Example: "More quality time with your family"

Product sense exercises:

🥉 Beginner: Passively reflect on product experiences

🥈 Intermediate: Actively seek out products to analyze

🥇 Expert: Actively seek out experiences to compare

Here are 5 examples of this 🥇 exercise.

Starting with... TikTok vs Instagram Reels Quickly – the idea of this exercise:

Analyzing single UXs is good. But it's hard to know where to look.

Comparing experiences is better. Product decisions jump off the page.

Think, how do:
1. Product differences change the UX?
2. These different UX reflect unique biz goals?

Collato is such an awesome AI tool.

It lets you:
1. Create a space with any docs you want
2. Query that space with any question
3. Generate any kind of doc in that space

Notion, G docs, Miro, Jira – all integrated.

And you can query it directly in Slack.

Here's how 🧵👇 Some ideas for different spaces you might want to create

1. Feature hub: All the resources about a feature. PRD, tech specs, Jira tickets, etc.

2. Learning hub: All your user research and experiment results.

3. Team hub: Centralize all of your team's main documents.