🐤 Product Nuggets #13 — Products that didn't exist 20yr ago & how to reduce product friction

Jacob's top 5 product tweets from the past week

Jan 6

For the last few years, I've been collecting a list of the hard problems that would have an outsized impact on humanity. If you didn’t catch the article on Tuesday, I published that list for everyone to glean a little inspiration for the new year. As best as I could, I also included sub-categories, commentary and links to companies building in these spaces.

Making Product Sense

The Ultimate Guidebook to Hard Problems

Hard problems. I can't stop thinking about them. In fact, I wrote about 80% of an article that I had planned to publish today but I scrapped it in order to write this one because I wanted to kick of 2023 with something… bigger. Something that inspired…

a month ago · 7 likes · Jacob Jolibois

🐤 Nug #1 — Here’s to the builders 🍻

Jon Erlichman @JonErlichman

Things that didn’t exist on Christmas 20 years ago: iPhone Facebook YouTube Instagram Twitter TikTok Android Bitcoin Tesla iPad Gmail Netflix streaming Amazon Prime Slack Reddit Etsy WhatsApp Messenger Google Maps Snapchat LinkedIn Pinterest Chrome Zoom Skype Spotify Airbnb Uber

🐤 Nug #2 — Reduce Friction

Also, if you can swap your email/password login flow for an SMS verification code flow, it’ll change the game. We effectively eliminated 80% of our support tickets (most of which were people forgetting their password or misspelling their email) overnight with that change.

Nikita Bier @nikitabier

When designing a consumer product, you should consider every tap by a user to be a miracle. The motivation to stop using a new app will always be stronger than to use it To signup & complete a profile on Gas, we got it down to 15 taps total—with no keyboard required at any stage

🐤 Nug #3 — As you tackle 2023, remember…

Polina M. Pompliano @polina_marinova

Charlie Munger's 3 rules for a career: 1) Don't sell anything you wouldn't buy yourself; 2) Don't work for anyone you don't respect and admire; and 3) Work only with people you enjoy.

🐤 Nug #4 — When a product guy designs a house, the house is now the product

This is absolutely stunning. Wow.

Johnny Rodgers @johnnyrodgersis

Our contractor made a video of our house. I like it, even if it's a bit "real estate softcore". Nice mix of drone and interior photography 📷🏔️

🐤 Nug #5 — SpaceX Alumni go hard

This is what happens when really smart people work at a product-focused company tackling really hard problems. They learn and get inspired to tackle other really hard problems, equipped with a fearlessness that is really beautiful to watch.