Kill the HiPPO

Hello! Kill the HiPPO news In last week’s email I mentioned that a German-language product management blog published a post about Kill the HiPPO; in the following days, I sold a few copies on Amazon’s German site. It’s satisfying to see an immediate result from a promotion effort, especially in comparison to the marketing efforts for my company’s software product, which typically take months to show any results. Also last week I was interviewed on the Rogue Startups podcast about Kill the...

Hello! Kill the HiPPO news The German-language site produktbezogen.de has a post about Kill the HiPPO - in German! I’m still looking for podcast guest opportunities - particularly lower profile ones at this stage where I can hone my message without the stress of a big audience. If you have a personal connection to someone who runs a suitable podcast, I’d love an introduction. Thanks to the two people who suggested applying to be on the biggest and mightiest product management podcasts of them...

“Dogfooding” is a delightful term we use in the software industry for the important practice of actually using your own product in your company’s day-to-day operations. It comes from the equally delightful expression, to eat your own dogfood. Dogfooding is, I believe, in a league above any other process for making sure your software is actually good. If you are not already dogfooding, start doing it now. You’ll immediately discover that your features are unfinished, your product’s UI lacks...

My friend and fellow bootstrapper Michael Koper wrote on social media: My biggest customer requests a feature. It is useful only for 5% of our users. I quickly spin up a Claude session to get the feel of it. It adds 900 lines of code, decent quality. It makes the code more complicated, because it is in the core and it touches a lot of things. They already are on a massive commitment, customer for 10 years. Biggest LTV we have.Dilemma!!! For context, Michael’s company Nusii is currently a...

A Kill the HiPPO reader jokingly asked: No AI?? What's your refund policy? Well, I think he was joking... 😰 Why there’s no AI in Kill the HiPPO When we conducted our interviews with the founders who feature in the book, we chose not to ask any questions about AI usage. If the topic had come up during an interview, we would have happily discussed it and included it in the book. But the topic simply didn’t come up. Isn’t that interesting? Doesn’t it tell you something about AI usage in stable,...

Hello! Forgive me in advance for a self-congratulatory email today. It's one week since launching Kill the HiPPO, and it has been a great ride so far. The first week has been about reviews and photos. The first reviews have started appearing on Amazon: People have been sharing photos on social media when their copy arrived in the mail. It's such a thrill each time I see one of these photos! Here's Rand Fishkin (founder of Spark Toro and author of Lost and Founder) and Yohay Elam (founder of...

Good news, everyone! Kill the HiPPO is now available to purchase in either Kindle or print format on: amazon.com amazon.co.uk amazon.com.au amazon.es and all the other regional amazon sites - just search for "Kill the HiPPO" A request for reviews: Writing a review is the #1 way you can help me right now. If you do buy and read Kill the HiPPO, please leave a review! The book's Amazon page is currently lacking any reviews—as you'd expect—and reviews are so important on Amazon. Getting to...