The Art of Product

76: The Scotch Budget

February 28th, 2019  |  28 mins 55 secs

Derrick’s been on a startup roller coaster. It’s been one of those weeks for him. So, he’s grateful for Scotch! He just factors it into Level’s budget.

Along the same lines, Tuple bought lunch today for its staff. It feels free, but Ben doesn’t think you can write off such expenses, even if you talk about business between bites.

75: Lots to Be Grateful For

February 21st, 2019  |  35 mins 35 secs

Ben is thankful for Tuple’s success so far. It is helping companies improve efficiency and countries improve the quality of their residents’ lives.
Derrick also expresses gratitude for companies being interested in his product, Level. He is setting up a specific team in Level and addressing concerns to convert them.

74: The Only Way To Learn

February 7th, 2019  |  35 mins 19 secs

Do you lack energy or motivation at work? Ben tried a new service called, Work Gym from Ultraworking. He found it worthwhile and got a lot of work done on Tuple that he had been putting off for quite awhile. Tuple is about to reach a major milestone - recent PR deployments mean no more global list of online users.

Derrick has also been addressing how to set up companies, teams, and individual users interested in trying Level. So, he hasn’t intentionally built any billing model into the backend of Level, yet.

73: Helping Early Access Customers Get Value Quickly

January 31st, 2019  |  40 mins 22 secs

Ben has been experiencing a mix of emotions. Thanks to Tuple, his calendar is packed, and he’s getting more emails, people, and trials. It feels nuts, but it feels like things are working with the new product. It’s a crazy spot to be in, but it feels good. Every day, Tuple gains a little steam.

Derrick feels the same way. He has started doing onboarding calls for Level. Now that he has done the Level demo a few times, his anxiety has subsided. Overall, people seem impressed with the product and interested in trying it.

72: How to Know If a Product Is Ready

January 24th, 2019  |  45 mins 56 secs

Derrick set Jan. 21 as the date to start onboarding some pre-order people for Level. He is trying to keep things in perspective when it comes to both positive and negative feedback. So, he is preparing answers to address questions and concerns about the product’s features and functions, or lack of.

Ben’s thirsty for more feedback, customers, and interaction. Fortunately, overall feedback for Tuple has been strongly positively. However, any negativity can be brutal. It’s a mental game. So, he tries to not fear feedback or let it derail progress. Instead, he focuses on celebrating successes.

71: Beyond Alpha

January 17th, 2019  |  42 mins 55 secs

Ben has been busy. The alpha launch date for Tuple was Jan. 7. He was nervous about it, but so far, it’s going well. One participant said, “I’m sort of surprised you’re calling this an ‘alpha,’ because everything seems to work!” Ben was glad to hear it, but admits that’s not totally true. He’s still far from where he wants to be with Tuple, but is definitely on the right track.

Derrick has been hard at work, too. He continues to develop Level and knows that there will be ups and downs with customers, functionality, etc. But, he continues to move forward and strives to help others solve problems associated with team communication.

70: Refactoring UI: Concept to Launch

January 10th, 2019  |  1 hr 15 mins

If you listen regularly to the Art of Product podcast, then you’re probably familiar with the ongoing joke: How long does it take before we mention Steve Schoger and Adam Wathan? Well, today is your lucky day because not only do Derrick and Ben mention them, but Adam is once again their special guest.

Adam is a software developer, writer, speaker, and entrepreneur. Also, he is the creator of Nitpick CI, host of the Full Stack Radio podcast, and author of Refactoring UI and Refactoring to Collections. He describes the process of successfully making, promoting, and selling courses on the Internet. Plus, Steve makes a special appearance to share his side of the story!

69: Sound, Actionable Advice with Jason Cohen

December 27th, 2018  |  1 hr 10 mins

Derrick is away, so Ben welcomes Jason Cohen, CTO of WP Engine and four-time entrepreneur. Jason knows a thing or two about startups and mentoring them to achieve profitability and growth.

Jason is a straight talker and tells it like it is to get to solutions sooner. He encourages bootstrap founders to find an advisor who aligns with their goals. You need to know how to take advice and use advice that is right for you and your business. Even if you get great advice, think for yourself!

68: Creating Differentiating Features

December 20th, 2018  |  30 mins 45 secs

Derrick continues to make progress and work toward his self-imposed deadline for Level. He was able to implement and ship batched notifications for the product, which replaces the instantaneous push notifications you would get from a chat tool. It’ll probably be one of the key features to sell as part of the “Level” way. But he’s wondering how to leverage interesting features in marketing.

Ben has been thinking about the same thing with Tuple. He wants to make some features of his product be a seperate, discrete entity that deserves its own spotlight. Capitalize on features!

67: Refining Level Notifications and Tuple Alpha Users

December 13th, 2018  |  36 mins 23 secs

Derrick had an interesting week with Level. He focused on important features that will be a part of the product, including notifications dependent on team members’ jobs. Some may want more asynchronous and unobtrusive notifications than others. Level distinguishes configurable notifications based on different roles on a team. Notification policies seem simple on the surface, but are actually very complicated.

Ben announced that November was Tuple’s best month ever for marketing! But now, he is approaching the alpha for Tuple and will focus his attention on product management. Ben wants to figure out what works and what doesn’t. After all, when you can see the wrong thing, the right thing becomes so much easier.

66: TinySeed Updates with Rob Walling

December 6th, 2018  |  45 mins 21 secs

Ben and Derrick are joined by Rob Walling to share updates - their favorite part of most podcasts!

It’s been a good week in Tuple marketing land. Thanks to Ben’s tweet announcing the release date for its alpha, his launch list goal was reached. He was surprised by how willing people were to help out when he asked them to do it.

Rob is working on TinySeed, a startup accelerator for bootstrappers.

Derrick provided a pre-order update on Level and plans to do direct outreach to those who ordered it to determine their level of interest for validation.

65: Effectively Managing Launch Day

November 29th, 2018  |  32 mins 6 secs

Ben launched Habits for Hackers, a workshop that cultivates habits that lead to an impressive and fulfilling dev career. He incorporates books written by others and makes that content applicable to participants. He’s going to figure out the rest of the details for the course while flying by the seat of his pants. For now, Ben’s just bathing in the dopamine of watching numbers happen!

Derrick has been doing some launching, too. He announced that the end of January will be the beginning of the Level launch and Level can now be pre-ordered (generated about $2,000 so far). Derrick admits that he’s always derailed pretty heavily on launch days. He doesn’t even think about trying to get much productive stuff done.

64: Habits for Hackers

November 21st, 2018  |  21 mins 51 secs

Derrick shipped Level’s Daily Digest feature, which includes a summary of unread/read posts, sampling of posts/replies, and call to action. Also, thanks to Derrick killing it on Twitter, Art of Product’s social media presence is now legit!

Branding and awareness of Ben’s Tuple pair programming tool has garnered interest from well-known companies. So, it’s time to set a deadline for Tuple’s alpha.

63: Running Successful Early Access Programs

November 15th, 2018  |  34 mins 26 secs

Ben and Derrick were hoping to share a great conversation they had with author, designer, and consultant Paul Jarvis. But, without warning, all was lost when Paul’s audio for the episode could not be saved. The plan is to have Paul back on the show in a few weeks.

Everything else is going pretty well for Derrick, who provides an update on Level. He met his goal and launched the Level Early Access Program two weeks ago. When it comes to testing Tuple, Ben plans to prioritize people early on who have good bandwidth and help guide them to be successful when using the tool.

62: Avoiding Negativity

November 8th, 2018  |  38 mins 5 secs

Derrick had a productive week with Level. His deadline of late October to have alpha users try it was looming. So, he has been a bit stressed out. But thanks to relaxation techniques that work for him, Derrick was able to talk himself off the edge!

Ben understands the needs for coping techniques. When little things in his personal life aren’t under control, it’s much harder for him to be productive at work. Every thing’s interconnected.

61: Unconventional Growth Tactics with Julian Shapiro

November 1st, 2018  |  1 hr 12 mins

Ben is working on marketing plans for Tuple and it’s associated Pair Programming Guide. So, what does someone he admires think of his growth and content marketing plans?
In this episode, Ben’s special guest is Julian Shapiro, who shares lesser known growth tactics he has used in his content marketing to be successful.