Below is a list of observations and annecdotes that I developed (and/or plagirised) while working at Birdie for just over 3 years - for context, Birdie is a well-funded SaaS start-up, which I joined when there were less than 10 employees and left with the team close to 100.
I've purposefully left each item in list-form, without any additional context or explanation - leaving you, the reader, to interpret them however you see fit.
For me, they serve as cues that enocurage me to reflect, whenever something similar is discussed in my future endeavours. For you, I hope there is something here that can encourage you to interrogate your current thinking and perhaps the ways of working at your company for the better.
- Buyers and users have different, often competing priorities
- User pain will supersede buyer pain over time
- Care is complex
- Users cannot always be personified
- Language should adapt to your audience as your business scales
- Innovating and iterating are two distinct phases of product development
- Small teams can have big impact
- Find the right people for the right job
- Improvement starts small and starts today
- Perfection is a journey, not a destination
- Execution without a strategy = waste, strategy without execution = hot air - you have to work hard on both
- Pessimism can be valuable
- Be ruthless with your time
- In order for design to have a seat at the table it needs to provide for the table
- The future is murky, the present is clear - both are equally important to explore
- Agile is still a mystery
- OKRs are just ok
- Recognise your privilege
- Find what energises you
- Burnout is real
- Testing should not supersede thinking
- Rules are made to be challenged
- Specificity for the win
- In the absence of data, respect the discipline
- Share, share and share again
- Document as you go…
- …And don't stop working on it!
- Come with ideas, not just problems
- “How fascinating?”
- Actually disagree and commit
- Be honest with priority
- Speed and quality will always be enemies, but they can see eye to eye if given enough resource
- Constantly seek out your blindspots
- Always act with intention
- Work to prove yourself wrong
- Pick your battles
- Don’t take things too seriously
- Make friends