What's up everyone! Hope you all managed to get through Good to Great with the longer schedule. It really helped me label a lot of behaviours I'm seeing across the product space right now, which is impressive for a book that's over 20 years old! This time round we'll be reading - Good Strategy / Bad Strategy by Richard Rumlet. This is the first book I've done that's a re-read for me, but having read it before I can confidently say it's a must read for anyone who wants to level up their understanding of Strategy! _________________________ What’s Product Bookclub? _________________________ It's an online bookclub for the members of Product Synthesis - each round I’ll announce a new Product book that I’ll be reading, and anyone in the community is welcome to read (or listen) along with me! If you’re like me, and love reading, but don’t have enough people to discuss what you’re learning, then this’ll be perfect for you! We'll do a couple of check-ins before we do the summary, and you'll find all the calls in the calendar. _________________________ So, if you're looking for something to read this month, I hope you'll join us! 👊

Sorry, long and rambly post. Something I have encountered a few times is that somebody has an idea for social network and just assumes that just because it's around people will automatically flock to it. There's two problems I see: On a product-level, there's often either a lack of differentiation in an already crowded space, or a lack of product-market fit – for example, assuming that "privacy" is something that is important to people. I believe that many people say it's important to them, if you ask them. But I don't believe it's important enough to them to actually do anything about it. Very often the "idea" is just to do a marginally better version of an existing product ("What if we do Facebook, but with more privacy?", "What if we do Twitter, but with less Elon?", "What if we do Instagram, but with more *intent*?"). This is how nerds think. And that's fine, I am a nerd too. But most people aren't nerds, and don't really care about these things. Then, there's the marketing-level. I think it's often neglected or badly executed. Probably most people here don't remember "Ello". For a very brief time in 2014 it was hyped (a very minor hype) as an alternative to Facebook – because it promised that their users were "not the product". I think that's an incredibly naive notion at best, or misleading and deceptive at worst. Of course your users are the product. People aren't going to use your social product just because it's more "private", or has a nicer interface. The users make or break your social product, and being able to find the people you are interested on there is the single most important thing. I had completely forgotten about "Ello" until this week. They shut down this year, and never got more than 1 million users – and that's just total users, not daily active users. I am sure that number looked way, way worse. Their entire user growth seemed to come from Facebook getting bad PR, and collecting the crumbs that fell off the table. 1 million users. That's not nothing… but it's just not enough for something that positioned itself as a better alternative to Facebook. And a lot of these social products can only dream of even getting 1/10th of that user base.

The Elgato Prompter has shot up to the top of my wish list, it’s a seriously cool piece of tech. First, because who doesn’t love working on their desk setup? As someone who does most of their work remote, it’d be a welcome addition to my home office. But what I also find really awesome is how much they’ve nailed this reimagining of a teleprompter for streamers and content creators. I dunno if any of you have ever used a teleprompter, but they’re kinda lame. Either they’re cheap and require you to use your own phone or tablet, or they’re stupid expensive and not really designed for home use. This is plug and play into your computer, and comes with a bunch of mounts for different cameras. Nowadays I usually just stick whatever window I’m looking at right below my camera on my monitor, it kinda works, but being able to stick zoom directly onto this thing and have proper eye contact feels huge. So cool, if Christmas wasn’t right around the corner I’d already have ordered one! Go check it out, it’s so dope: https://www.elgato.com/us/en/p/prompter

Hey friends, Just recorded little summary of some of the stories I've been following, and some interesting product updates I've come across over the last week. What I talk about - OpenAI - What might have causes the ruckus, and lessons to be gleaned? - Binance - Another scandal in the crypto scene. - Sam Bank Fried the fish trader - An interesting update for Google's Bard - An awesome looking AI image generator I can't wait to play with. I'll keep refining this, but any feedback on the format would be appreciated!

Hi friends, This month’s Product Bookclub book is Continuous Discovery Habits by Teresa Torres. This book has been on my list for a while, so I’m excited to dive in. It’s a guide on how to establish effective & sustainable habits for continuous discovery in your teams, which of course is pretty important if you want to ensure you’re building valuable products for your customers. "If you haven't had the good fortune to be coached by a strong leader or product coach, this book can help fill that gap and set you on the path to success." - Marty Cagan _________________________ What’s Product Bookclub? _________________________ As you might have guessed, it's an online bookclub for the members of Product Synthesis - each month I’ll announce a new Product book that I’ll be reading throughout the month, and anyone in the community is welcome to read (or listen) along with me! If you’re like me, and love reading, but don’t have enough people to discuss what you’re learning, then this’ll be perfect for you! We’ll do a mid-way check-in call to discuss our findings, and then I’ll do a live summary where we’ll go deep on the entire book, discuss and reflect on what we’ve learned together. ______ You’ll find the calls scheduled in the Calendar, I’m looking forward to seeing some of you there soon! And, If you’ve got any questions - just drop ‘em below! Cheers, David P.S. Next Thursday (7th of December) I’ll be doing a test-run of the monthly book summary, where I’ll be summarising Empowered by Marty Cagan & Chris Jones. I have no idea how this’ll go, but if you’ve already read the book, or you’re just curious about it - why not pop in and see what’s up?