Tools and articles for entrepreneurial thinking and living, by Rob Fitzpatrick
I just cancelled a bunch of services with enough data lock-in that I never thought I’d get away. Leaving them was always possible, just never worth it. But yesterday, I spent four hours on DIY data exodus to cut my monthly subscriptions in ~half (“hey claude, can you figure out how to do a lossless export of everything I’m using...
you don’t gather feedback (beta reading, customer development, etc.) to abdicate creative decisions. you do it because a useful product is for someone, and you need to know whether the thing you’ve built is working. product feedback isn’t supposed to tell you what to do next. (although it sometimes can.) it’s supposed to help you see the truth of what...
A definition: Vanity engagement is anything that shows up in your metrics dashboard without correlating to member success. A simple example is shallow-but-active forum posts about tools and tactics. In the Nonfiction Authors’ OOC, despite actively muffling (or at least 🔒not incentivizing) these types of conversations, the three highest “engagement” posts right now (purple highlight in the image…
One way to think about OOC-design is that you’re trying to figure out How to Help With the Hard Part. Different members will experience different aspects of the journey to be most “hard.” But your OOC isn’t supposed to help with every step of the journey for all possible people. By planting a flag, picking a fight, and positioning yourself...
My current beliefs about best practice space setup for a new-ish OOC: start with the fewest possible spaces When setting up a new community home (i.e., forum), the common mistake is to start with far too many discussion spaces divided into far too many little topics. At launch, an OOC really doesn’t need (or want) too many forum spaces: One...
A lot of really interesting ideas get buried in the comments thread, or are hidden as a small aside within a larger post on some other topic. E.g., last week in the authors’ group, while giving their new member intro, someone said something really killer about their launch plan, which really ought to be a high-value discussion on its own!...
First, a quick riff on creativity. Then some thoughts on writing and content in the age of ChatGPT. Ralph Ammer’s notes on how to draw ideas align nicely with my own approach to writing/thinking: lots of messy, throwaway scribbles, doodles, and improvisations. May your waste paper basket overfloweth: Now, let’s talk AI. ChatGPT is really, really good. Try it and...
Simon Willison has 185 side projects. 185!!!! And given that he appears to be holding it more or less together, I was extremely interested in his recent talk: Coping strategies for the serial project hoarder. The talk’s opening is largely technical and tactical. But the last three slides just bowled me over, an absolute masterclass in side-project philosophy (images below...
An example was shared by , where he had responded to an automated community email of “please tell us what you think,” only to receive another automated reply of “we’re currently very busy and can’t respond.” That’s a bad vibe. It’s also a stark reminder that the customer journey of community has a ton of touchpoints, ranging from social media and email...
Cancellations all look equal in your metrics, but they aren’t all the same to the member. For example, when a high school student “churns,” that could represent: Graduation (good churn) Dropout (bad churn), or; The student’s family has moved (neutral churn). Just as churn doesn’t always signifify something bad, retention doesn’t always signify something good. when someone “retains” for another...