Updates, job opportunities & one link
This newsletter has been taking a break but will start again soon + a few other updates.
Hey everyone,
This newsletter has been taking a break since November but I’ll start sending new editions very soon. Possibly even next week 🤞
In the meantime here are a few updates, since some of the readers asked me privately:
1️⃣ I’m closing my startup (uku.wtf) after 3 years of hard work, 4 pivots, and a ton of learnings. I’ll take a bit of time to process it but I can already share that it’s been the most creative, intense and enlightening time of my career. Among other things, it helped me optimize my tactics for Pre-PMF contexts. If you want to learn more about it, here are 2 podcasts in which I talk about this topic (only available in French, sorry):
- Comment faire du Produit en pré-Product/Market Fit (vs post-Product/Market Fit)
- Les coulisses du pivot d'une startup early-stage de la creator economy
2️⃣ I’ve been lucky to collaborate with The Mobile First Company for a few weeks, and they’re looking for new hires. I love their vision: to create B2B mobile apps with a B2C mindset. Their thesis is that the real economy is full of smart entrepreneurs (they even created a media to promote them), that will pilot their activity from a smartphone (= growing trend). So they want to create a suite of apps that is modern, powerful, affordable, and distributed through the AppStores. Their flagship app is Allo, a virtual phone line powered by AI, that works for you… and they already bought a second app. Would you like to work with them?
- The team is small, talented, hard working and distributed between France and Argentina. Remote accepted. Everyone is data-informed, customer obsessed and they ship once a week.
- The company is growing but still very early. They raised money from top-tier VCs and amazing business angels (who give regularly masterclasses)
- They’re looking for a Founding Senior Product Designer and a Founding Junior Product Manager anywhere in Europe or LATAM. Ideally, with an entrepreneurial spirit and obsessed with creating mobile apps. ✉️ Hit reply if you’re interested. ✉️
- Disclaimer: I usually never share job opportunities in this newsletter. I made an exception because these offers are off-market and super interesting in my opinion.
3️⃣ The Lindy Standard of Performance • Jan 2024 • 12 min read • #execution
It would not be a productverse edition without at least one interesting link. Here’s the clearest articulation I’ve read on the mindsets, and tactics that drive outstanding execution. For example, 2 questions to be sure that you’re working on the right thing:
1/ What must urgently be fixed in order to bridge our “performance gap?”
2/ What must importantly be built in order to bridge our “opportunity gap?”
These two terms were coined by HBS professor Linda Hill. In a nutshell, bridging your performance gap means taking care of your existing business; if you’re Apple in 2000, your performance gap is the Mac. How do you keep taking market share in the PC industry?Bridging your opportunity gap means pursuing the things your business could become. For Apple in 2000, this was the iPod. You never run out of performance gap to bridge, but you must still find a way to bridge the opportunity gap — because if you don’t do it, someone else will, and it will become your performance gap.
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Thank you for reading this far.
Until next time!
Olivier
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About → Productverse is curated by Olivier Courtois (10y+ in product, startup co-founder, coach & advisor). Each issue features handpicked links to help you become a better product maker.