RAFFIAPALM

Resources for product teams from industry experts.

The fundamental thing that I wish I’d known, is I underestimated the importance of simplicity and design. The first couple of years I really didn’t feel that, I didn’t have a good enough appreciation that the most important thing for consumer-facing software was that it was beautiful and simple, and people immediately and intuitively understood how to use it.

It really wasn’t about making it more powerful, it was about making it more natural. I think I’ve only internalized that in the past couple of years and it’ll take another lifetime to really master it.

— Startup Growth Engines: Case Studies of How Today’s Most Successful Startups Unlock Extraordinary Growth by Sean Ellis, Morgan Brown

Source: Amazon Kindle

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  2. A question that’s hard enough to be interesting, but realistic enough that you have some hope of answering it. (Not that you have to find an answer to all beautiful questions; the string theorist Witten, for instance, has never fully answered his biggest questions about the nature of the universe, but he told me that the pursuit of those questions has led him to many other interesting discoveries along the way.) — A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas by Warren Berger Source: Amazon Kindle […]
  3. Being curious means asking questions about why things work the way they do, and embracing unfamiliar situations or topics with a sense of wonder. Being observant means training yourself to see the details that most others often miss. Being fickle means capturing ideas without feeling the need to fully understand or analyze them in that moment. Being thoughtful means taking the time to reflect on a point of view and share it in a considered way. Being elegant means developing your ability to describe a concept in a beautiful and simple way for easy understanding. — Non-Obvious: How to […]
  4. Articulating a personal challenge in the form of a question has other benefits. It allows you to be bold and adventurous because anyone can question anything. You don’t have to be a recognized expert; you just have to be willing to say, I’m going to venture forth into the world with my question and see what I find. As you do this, you’re in a strong position to build ideas and attract support. Because, whereas people are more likely to ignore or challenge you when you come at them with answers, they almost can’t resist advising or helping you […]
  5. It may seem odd to talk about something as soft and fuzzy as “passion” as an integral part of a strategic framework. But throughout the good-to-great companies, passion became a key part of the Hedgehog Concept. You can’t manufacture passion or “motivate” people to feel passionate. You can only discover what ignites your passion and the passions of those around you. The good-to-great companies did not say, “Okay, folks, let’s get passionate about what we do.” Sensibly, they went the other way entirely: We should only do those things that we can get passionate about. — Good to Great: […]

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