Welcome to A Smart Bear: Longform
Long-form articles, meant to be savored and referenced on any device or in print.
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The Elephant in the room: The myth of exponential hypergrowthEven Facebook and Slack did not grow "exponentially," as frequently described. Here is the correct model that you can use to understand and affect growth. —March 2022 | 5,500 words.
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Extreme brainstorming questions to trigger new, better ideasWe know, "no idea is a bad idea," but brainstorming is often unsuccessful. These prompts actually work. They could even lead to a unique business model. —March 2022 | 3,700 words.
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Rocks, Pebbles, Sand: How to implement in practiceThis complete work-prioritization framework builds on the simplistic "Rocks, Pebbles, Sand" analogy, adding the details you need in the real world. —July 2022 | 4,100 words.
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Finding FulfillmentWhat creates a fulfilling existence? Exploration leads to a framework I’ve used for years for myself and the people around me. I hope it helps you too. —December 2022 | 3,500 words.
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Navigating the unpredictability of everythingWe dramatically, repeatedly fail to predict the future. Does that mean "strategy" is senseless? No, it means you need these techniques to navigate a volatile world. —March 2023 | 4,800 words.
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Fermi ROI: Fixing the ROI rubricTraditional rubrics fail to reveal the best answers, or how explain those answers to others. After explaining why, the following system solves both failures. —June 2022 | 4,900 words.
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Binstack: Making a maximal multi-dimensional decisionBinstack is a technique for selecting the "single most impactful" solution when there are multiple, incomparable dimensions to evaluate. —July 2022 | 3,500 words.
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The Iterative-Hypothesis customer development methodA simple but effective system, used to vet what is now a Unicorn, for generating insights about how your potential customers think, what they need, and what they'll buy. —September 2022 | 3,400 words.
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Moats: Durable competitive advantageIndustries commoditize over time, delivering similar products at similar prices resulting in low profit. Moats are the antedote; your strategy must create some. —May 2022 | 1,800 words.
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Failure to face the truthThis admonition recurs in myriad books, frameworks, and topics, across decades of time. When something is so consistent, it must be wisdom. —April 2022 | 2,000 words.
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The Impossible Product Manager, a.k.a. the "Great" Product ManagerAccording to the Internet, being a Product Manager is impossible. Can you ever measure up? No. But don't worry, there's a better answer. —April 2022 | 2,200 words.
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JIT selection from independent streams: An alternative to the “big backlog” of workThe vaunted "single-threaded, ordered list” confuses "prioritization" with "work-planning," and forces comparisons of the un-comparable. Here's the solution. —August 2022 | 2,400 words.
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The "Talk vs Walk" frameworkWe invented this strategic exercise at WP Engine -- engaging both Marketing and Product, generating actions for both sides that make products more desirable and competitive. —June 2022 | 3,200 words.
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Jason Cohen: About the authorI built a few companies, two of which are now unicorns, both bootstrapped and VC-funded, bought and sold a few, invested in dozens, and wrote about everything I know.
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Productive meeting activities: Leverage the team, empower the individualMeetings are most productive when we create something that none of us could have created alone. Here are several ways to use meeting time wisely. —May 2022 | 1,200 words.
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Who's lying?A lesson all pilots know: How you must use multiple dials, employing different sources of energy, to report identical data, because some of it is always lying. —February 2022 | 800 words.
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Distributed Logical TimeA simple, decentralized, scalable, constant-memory mechanism for independent replicas to record events in time, preserving the "happened-before" relation in almost all cases. —February 2019 | 3,100 words.
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Building in public forces true competitive advantage"Building in public" is popular: How fun when strangers cheer you on! But isn’t competitive advantage ruined when competitors know your growth rate and steal your source code? —December 2016 | 700 words.
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Pricing determines your business modelPricing is inextricably linked to brand, product, and purchasing decisions. It cannot be "figured out later," because determines your business model today. —November 2014 | 1,200 words.
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When being “first” is not a competitive advantageIs it good to be "first?" It seems so -- what's the point of being a copycat? While "first" sounds impressive, in reality it doesn't predict who will win. —December 2011 | 1,000 words.