Finest-5 Product reads #50
Enshittification, psychology-led growth, product-led onboarding and other reads..
Hi Happy Sunday,
One of the most interesting things I came across this week is Lenny’s podcast with Ravi Mehta. This 1 hour of discussion is so powerfully packed with insights that I would recommend everyone to watch it at least once.
Every week, I summarise the best reads from 100+ articles with the sole purpose of helping you become better at product with minimal effort. Subscribe!!
The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok, Or how, exactly, platforms die.
First, they are good for their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then they die.
Key Takeaways:
This is enshittification: Surpluses are first directed to users; then, once they’re locked in, surpluses go to suppliers; then once they’re locked in, the surplus is handed to shareholders and the platform becomes a useless pile of shit.
Once you understand the enshittification pattern, a lot of the platform mysteries solve themselves.
Now that TikTok has the audience, it is consolidating its gains and seeking to lure away the media companies and creators who are still stubbornly attached to YouTube and Insta.
How Netflix, Airbnb design for psychology-led growth?
Some companies have worked deeply to understand the users and pain points. Analysing what goes into developing a design for growth is always interesting.
Key Takeaways:
Airbnb uses the reciprocity principle by educating hosts on how to treat their guests well, and guests to follow the house rules.
“Idleness Aversion” states that people are happier when they are busier, even if they’re forced to be busy.
Designing for visceral reactions is essentially designing to create a positive aesthetic impression. It takes just knowing what looks pleasing to people and what doesn’t.
Product Enablement Principles
John Cutler shares his list of principles for operations, enablement, and helping others. Principles, because any process will eventually break (especially if you are successful). Any tactic will change.
Key Takeaways:
Whenever possible, co-design change experiments with others. They may have better ideas and will be more vested in their ideas.
Remember the trust formula. Trust = (Credibility + Reliability + Empathy)/Apparent self-interest.
Working small without thinking big sends you on a wild goose chase. Thinking big without working small gets you nowhere, and you chase big plans forever. Find the right balance—a bias for action and systems thinking.
Your guide to product-led onboarding
Most SaaS pre-and post-sales onboarding occurs via human interaction. But this kind of onboarding adds friction and can be expensive to scale.
Key Takeaways:
The most important thing from an onboarding perspective is to ensure your marketing messaging aligns with what users will experience on your website
A great PLG website has the following four components: Clearly explains the problem being solved, shows the product, transparent pricing, free trial/freemium as primary call-to-action (CTA).
The goal of PLG and product-led onboarding is not to have zero support tickets
WTF is Strategy?
There are a lot of strategy definitions. One is, strategy is your plan to win. The two keywords here are “plan” and “win.”
Key Takeaways:
One of the most important aspects of strategy: explicitly laying out what you won’t do
Strategy is not: detailed list of tactics, not rigid; not a hiring plan, not your OKRs; not an exact timeline, not vision, not complicated
A good articulation of the strategy in my mind is Memorable, Specific, Measurable.
Product of the week: Ignition
The go-to-market platform. Launch without Chaos.
Interesting on the web:
Netflix lists rules and exemptions to prevent account sharing outside household
Meta is killing Move, another experimental social app from its in-house incubator NPE Team
Spotify founder Daniel Ek officially launches new startup — and this time, he’s taking on healthcare