Clippings

Something very useful in a disorder is: it’s only a disorder if you can’t manage it. — Kindle Customer in comment to Backfired: Attention Deficit Audiobook

What is this? | Xmrit Xmrit (pronounced ‘xam-mer-it’) is a free tool by Commoncog to help business operators quickly create and share XmR charts. An XmR chart helps you analyse your data. In a sentence: it helps you separate signal from noise. It is particularly useful to business operators. … XmR charts are so named because they consist of an ‘X’ chart (the ‘X’ variable, or the metric you care about), and a ‘Moving Range’ chart, which shows differences from point to point. ...

Atomic Design by Brad Frost Atomic Design details all that goes into creating and maintaining robust design systems, allowing you to roll out higher quality, more consistent UIs faster than ever before. This book introduces a methodology for thinking of our UIs as thoughtful hierarchies, discusses the qualities of effective pattern libraries, and showcases techniques to transform your team’s design and development workflow. Designing Systems Create design systems, not pages Atomic Design Methodology Atoms, molecules, organisms, templates, and pages Tools of the Trade Pattern Lab and the qualities of effective style guides The Atomic Workflow People, process, and making design systems happen Maintaining Design Systems Making design systems stand the test of time

Do Things that Don’t Scale Recruit The most common unscalable thing founders have to do at the start is to recruit users manually. Nearly all startups have to. You can’t wait for users to come to you. You have to go out and get them. Fragile Airbnb now seems like an unstoppable juggernaut, but early on it was so fragile that about 30 days of going out and engaging in person with users made the difference between success and failure. ...

Default Alive or Default Dead? Assuming their expenses remain constant and their revenue growth is what it has been over the last several months, do they make it to profitability on the money they have left? Or to put it more dramatically, by default do they live or die? Trevor Blackwell has made a handy calculator you can use to find out. The reason I want to know first whether a startup is default alive or default dead is that the rest of the conversation depends on the answer. If the company is default alive, we can talk about ambitious new things they could do. If it’s default dead, we probably need to talk about how to save it. We know the current trajectory ends badly. How can they get off that trajectory? ...

The deadline doom loop - by James Hawkins Here’s how the loop plays out: Phase 1: “We’re gonna make it!” 👍 Phase 2: “Are we gonna make it?” 🤷 Phase 3: “We’re not gonna make it!” 🥵 Phase 4: “We (sort of) made it.” 😵‍💫 Phase 5: “We’re gonna make it this time!” 🙏 Principles for escaping the doom loop The alternative, an approach that helps us ship faster, relies on a few key principles: ...

Karpman drama triangle - Wikipedia The Karpman drama triangle is a social model of human interaction proposed by San Francisco psychiatrist, Stephen B. Karpman in 1968. The triangle maps a type of destructive interaction that can occur among people in conflict. … The triangle of actors in the drama are persecutors, victims, and rescuers. Drama triangle proposed by the psychiatrist Stephen B. Karpman ...

Explore vs Execute | A Smart Bear The two main business modalities are more different than you expect. When you hit PMF, it’s a culture-shift to switch from one to the other. … So, what needs to be done? A radical shift in working style, from “Explore” to “Execute”: Explore Figuring out what works, as quickly and flexibly as possible. Execute Becoming excellent at doing what works, while scaling. Explore vs Execute # ...

Introduction | The Guide to SaaS Metrics The Software as a Service (SaaS) model is different since the initial sale rarely covers the cost of acquiring the customer. Instead, SaaS companies recoup their upfront investment over time, often in monthly or annual subscription fees. The critical question is: How quickly can despair turn into profitability? And how big is the prize outside the triangle? CATEGORY DESCRIPTION METRICS Unit Economics How profitable is each customer relationship over its lifetime? Can we scale customer acquisition sustainably? Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA) Lifetime Revenue (LTR) Lifetime Value (LTV) Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) LTV:CAC Payback Period ARR How is our recurring revenue growing, and what are the key factors driving changes in this growth? ARR ARR Components (Gross New, Churn, Contraction, Expansion, and Restart ARR) Retention How effectively are we retaining our customer base, and what are the reasons for customer loss or reduction in spend? Gross Logo Churn Gross Dollar Churn Net Dollar Churn Gross Dollar Retention Net Dollar Retention Logo Retention Engagement How frequently and deeply are users interacting with our product, and what does this imply about its value? DAU, WAU, MAU DAU/WAU, DAU/MAU A3x7 Investor Benchmarks How efficiently is our company using its resources to generate growth, and how does it compare to market expectations? ARR Multiple Burn Multiple Magic Number SaaS business performance metrics covered in this guide. ...

The perfect pricing model doesn’t exist - by Matt Hodges You’ll never be done … At the end of the day, there’s no silver bullet when it comes to pricing. There are just many things you can and should probably test. Be ready to make trade-offs – whether that’s knowingly leaving money on the table or being OK with fewer customers who pay you more. Make peace with the fact that your pricing will never be perfect. ...

How to ship fast - by Ben McRedmond - Wrap Text by Equals Protect momentum Beware of prioritization Stay close to the design You should be wrong sometimes Only doers can plan what you work on Always plan the How There is no quality vs. speed tradeoff Capture inspiration

Introduction | Engineering Ladders This framework allows software engineering managers to have meaningful conversations with their direct reports around the expectations of each position and how to plan for the next level in their career ladder. The framework relies heavily on radar charts to visually represent the different perspectives and expectations of a given position: The chart shown above has the following 5 axes: Technology: knowledge of the tech stack and tools System: level of ownership of the system(s) People: relationship with the team(s) Process: level of engagement with the development process Influence: scope of influence of the position The influence axis can be seen as a different dimension since it is orthogonal and applies to all the other axes. ...

Radarz | Team Calibration Made Simple Build your team on this page and calibrate their level on their radar charts. See also Engineering Ladders: This site is inspired by jorgef’s Engineering Ladders.

Coding Font by Typogram Choose your favourite in a coding font shootout (don’t show the names to remove bias). My winner: 🏆 Fira Code A representative bracket for me: 🥇 Fira Code 🥈 JetBrains 🥉 Source Code Pro

Postel’s Law | Laws of UX Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send.

Home | Laws of UX Laws of UX is a collection of best practices that designers can consider when building user interfaces. Aesthetic-Usability Effect Chunking Cognitive Bias Cognitive Load Doherty Threshold Fitts’s Law Flow Goal-Gradient Effect Hick’s Law Jakob’s Law Law of Common Region Law of Proximity Law of Prägnanz Law of Similarity Law of Uniform Connectedness Mental Model Miller’s Law Occam’s Razor Paradox of the Active User Pareto Principle Parkinson’s Law Peak-End Rule Postel’s Law Selective Attention Serial Position Effect Tesler’s Law Von Restorff Effect Working Memory Zeigarnik Effect

Warm Handoffs :: Luckymike’s Tech Notes … generally the guidelines are: If someone asks a question in the wrong channel, and you know the right channel, link their question in the right channel, tagging them, and explain why you’re making the handoff, along with any additional context you have. If someone asks a question in the wrong channel, and you’re not sure where it should go, link their question in a shared channel asking who can help, along with any additional context you have. ...

German Naming Convention Using as many words as necessary to clearly name something. Everything. I called this “German” naming convention as a reference to the fact that the German language is known for its compound words, which can become comically long and specific at times.

FounderJar | Top Business Software (Comparisons & Reviews) FounderJar helps you choose the right software tools to start a business and grow more profitably

Fast git handover with mob | Tool for smooth git handover. mob is an open source command line tool written in go mob is the fastest way to hand over code via git mob keeps your branches clean and only creates WIP commits on temporary branches mob has a shared team timer timer.mob.sh mob is on ‘assess’ in the Thoughtworks Technology Radar mob has VSCode integration