Product and Growth leader. PLG, monetization, and experimentation across consumer and B2B SaaS.
It’s Tuesday afternoon. An experiment you’ve been running for three weeks just hit statistical significance. The numbers are messier than you hoped. You have a growth review in two hours where you’ll need to make a call. You also have a PRD to update, six tickets to create for the next iteration, and a release announcement to draft before end of day. Oh, and you just remembered you have to present…
I first read Inspired by Marty Cagan a while back, and I keep coming back to it. Not because it’s a page-turner (it reads more like a definitive guide than a story), but because it’s one of those books where every time I revisit a section, something new clicks based on whatever I’m dealing with at work.
It’s been a couple months since I wrote about the last leg of our long-term travel, so after having some more time to process and celebrating another trip around the sun, here’s a more holistic reflection.
Traveling for months on end was new for us, so there were a few things we learned that helped us avoid major issues along the way.
In preparation for a new product management role, I recently read Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters by Ryan Singer of Basecamp. After being recommended to me by multiple PM friends, I was excited to dive in and found the philosophy both practical and intuitive.
The last leg of the Travis Traverse was focused on the Southern Cone of South America. It’s a beautiful area with lovely people, and we can’t wait to go back. While we were exhausted at the end of our trip, it’s a place we’re excited to return to!
Our travel schedule around Christmas and New Year’s was all over the place. From Porto, we took a flight directly to Switzerland to visit one of my cousins. Then we planned to train to my family again in the Black Forest, fly to Mexico on Christmas Day, and spend New Year’s in Brazil.
We ended up finding a housesitting/dogsitting gig about an hour outside Barcelona, so we planned to spend a few days in the city before meeting the new pups. From Rome, we took another cheap flight directly to Barcelona, trading our pasta for paella.
Visiting Italy was always a priority for me on this trip, especially since that’s where one side of my family came from. I’d spent basically a year trying to learn Italian on Duolingo in preparation, and I was relieved that we were going to Italy after the weather in Ireland started turning cold.
After our first work exchange experience, we were excited to do more. However, we had to leave the Schengen Zone for a while since my wife’s tourist visa wouldn’t last through December. Ireland was the natural choice, especially since vaccinations were high and covid cases were low. We ended up finding an interesting opportunity right outside of Cork and planned to explore more of the island once…