Blog archive

• Bundles & lock-in have lost their teeth
• feedback isn't about abdication
• Vanity engagement in Outcome-Oriented Communities
• Helping with the Hard Part
• How many spaces for a new OOC? // Organic discovery vs. top-down design // Hall of doors, cluster of ghost towns
• Ideas for a "quote tweet" or "bump" style behavior on OOC forums? (to feature/amplify/curate hidden discussions)
• Scribbling and thinking // Writing against AI
• Obligation debt // Switching costs + downside risk
• Community touchpoints touch every channel // Bad automations // Complicated customer journeys
• When churn is good // Throughput & graduation // KPIs for outcome-oriented products
• Design tiers & building blocks: Static / Dynamic / Emergent...?
• Feels good to be working on something tangible again
• Debugging an existing community by scanning for higher-than-necessary time costs // OOCs
• Segmentation and product design
• IP, intermediaries, and making it work as an indie // Doctorow's "Information Doesn't Want to Be Free"
• Reframing "moderation" as "signal vs. noise"
• How to negotiate with people who are better at it than you
• Uncommon simplicity and focus // Nils Göran on how he trained for his speed skating world records
• Customer convos are the carpenter's hammer // Pick the right tool for the job // Validation Quads v0.9
• Casting a wider net to catch member success stories from multiple sources?
• Tony Fadell's BUILD is the handbook for dealing with visionary product risk
• Reframing inbound email as Hamming's Open Door
• Member context worksheet v0.1 (walkthrough & example)
• Don't waste cycles optimizing activities that were never meant to scale
• Two quick thoughts OOC pricing
• Journaling might deserve a bigger spot in the founder's toolkit
• Brennan's 4-step welcome email sequence (adjusted for OOCs)
• Holistic healthcare for products, docs, support
• On ideas that people can remember and use // Craft and words
• Lifecycle of an Outcome-Oriented Community // Three growth stages // OOCs
• Engagement, growth, & local maximum for community-building // Resisting the common KPIs // Why OOCs are rare
• Multiple tools and "single source of truth"
• My favorite parable // The spoon and the paintings
• Workflows and worldviews // Deciding where your product ends // Idea traps
• Portfolio of products vs. focus focus focus? // When audience-first is silly // Worldviews for growth
• On participating in small communities // Community as writing prompt // When to leave
• On growing community without becoming the bottleneck // How hands-off, how soon?
• On the early days of community-building // Quiet af // The content & concierge stage
• Teaching good online workshops? (hint: I couldn't figure out how to do it well)
• How I got started writing
• 16 months' data from the Useful Authors' OOC
• Implementation intentions for encouraging early actions and behavior change
• Bias is never 0%, validation is never 100% // Context and pragmatism in custdev
• Counterwill // Consistency, community, calendars, and content // ADHD
• Flywheels and virtuous cycles (community activity → curation & commentary → content marketing)
• A very simple OOC (three people, no tools)
• Strategic reactiveness // Atomic networks and anti-network effects // Bootstrapping community
• What would have to be true for this to be a winning choice? // Make more options
• Four milestones for creating an OOC from scratch
• Seven modes of struggling // debugging with the time dimension
• Thinking in systems // Respecting complexity // Humility and tinkering
• Six steps to growing your OOC
• A community of two // Positioning and peace of mind // False fears and getting started
• As many spaces as needed, as few as possible
• Special Projects // On finding the true fans and ignoring everything else // Craft and satisfaction
• Over-the-shoulder of how I use beta reader feedback to iterate my books
• An enticing menu of possibilities // On time // Some of it today
• When continuous deployment backfires // Intentional churn & re-engagement // In which I finally talk about videogames // Part 1 of many
• On showing up // Early days // The promise of consistency
• Asset sharing & upside swapping // Five-year experiment in business marriage // Results & numbers, profit & IP
• Tricky incentives // vanity engagement // Kathy Sierra (again)
• The shape of an idea
• Better users // less content // Badass by Kathy Sierra
• Beyond retention, toward outcomes
• Reframing email // Purpose vs. pointlessness // Tangible progress // Big ones, frogs, and systems
• First 6 months of the new book ($48,921.15) // Notes and numbers // Is this your year to write one?
• No obligation to be optimal // Goals, unconditionals, constraints // Personalized idea selection and strategy
• If you aren't taking notes, stop reading // Slower process, faster progress // Healthy externalities
• Explicit downsides to aspirational virtues // Seeing the trade-off // Clearer culture design
• I did a Mixergy interview so bad they didn't even release it // On making sense of our stories
• Idea selection dominates lifestyle design // Business models & freedom // A sad HN story
• On slogging through a learning vacuum // Balls of steel // Sloppy strategy
• "Signal stacking" for more comprehensive customer insights
• When covid pulls the Andon Cord // Prioritization // Building better systems
• My dad taught me cashflow with a soda machine