Product Thoughts

(originally posted on Medium) This past weekend I ran my best half marathon ever by ~3 minutes and I owe most of it to the Garmin running watch above that I borrowed from my wife. Over the years, I’ve been a heavy user of the Nike Running and Runkeeper apps and while the audio updates they provide on pace and distance are certainly better than nothing, they’re too infrequent to really have a material impact on my runs. I’m also not someone who’s interested in pulling out my phone every few min

(originally posted on Medium) My overwhelming use case (>80 %) for Pinterest is to save something, usually an image/screenshot from my desktop or camera roll or via an extension (both iOS and Chrome). The other 20% is to find something I know I’ve previously saved to one of my boards. Every time I open the Pinterest app, I’m reminded of how small a segment of the Pinterest audience my behavior must represent because I’m surprised at how many steps it is to do either — this is particularly true

(originally posted on Medium) I’ve been longing for something “between Twitter and Medium” and in some respects today’s Medium changes look to be just that. That said, I’m honestly still a little mindfreaked by them and am struggling to get my thoughts in order. Here’s a quick stab: * A few months ago I switched my Twitter bio url to my Medium posts in the hopes that, over time, the product would evolve to replace the blogs many of us used to call home in the late 90s- 2000s. Today’s changes

(originally posted on Medium) Over the past year, I’ve found myself discovering more and more new, great music thanks to The Hype Machine. You can do a whole lot more on the service but I tend to stick to a pretty simple workflow that yields a lot of value with minimal effort (always a big product win) that hopefully others can benefit from. That workflow is as follows: 1. I go to the Popular tab, hit Play 2. When I hear something I like, I give it a heart/fave 3. Over time, my Favorites li

(originally posted on Medium) Good post outlining some of the hurdles Twitter faces and touches on something I’ve felt for a long time. While there are certainly services that benefit from pure network effects (where more connections directly translate to a better experience), I’d argue that many of the most popular feed-based products (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram) walk a thin line between “enough varied content to be interesting and something you want to check regularly” and “so much con

(originally posted on Medium) People who are negative tend to want to demean people’s ideas. They say what they don’t like, but they don’t really say what they want to do. And it’s very hard to have ideas. It’s very hard to put yourself out there. It’s very hard to be vulnerable. But those people are the dreamers and the thinkers and the creators. They’re the magic people of the world. So strive to be one of those. Today I learned that Amy Poehler has a YouTube series called Smart Girls(descri

(originally posted on Medium) The importance of defining your company’s values early on “If there’s one piece of advice I can give early stage founders, it is to take the time to write down who you are, and who you want to be.” This quote is from a good post from Reece Pacheco (Shelby.tv) on “Surviving the [startup] climb.” One part that resonated with me is the importance of defining your company’s culture and values early on. Shelby’s can be found here. Some good examples from some other

(originally posted on Medium) How I’ve learned to rely on (and love) Waze During the month of December my wife and I made our regular trips to and from family members’ houses to celebrate the various holidays. Over the past year (especially since we moved outside of the city) Waze has become a part of all our trips, even when we know exactly where we’re going because you never know when there might be an even better way to get there, but Waze does. Thanks to all the Waze users out there, Waz