Top all-time · #2293
Product Habits
Personal blog · producthabits.comstartupsbusinessproductivity
Product Habits is a personal blog at producthabits.com about startups, business and productivity. Since 2017, 33 different Hacker News readers have linked it 68 times, most often “My Billion Dollar Mistake”. The last post was in 2019, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Product Habits for product management and startup advice, including technical research, the shift from one-off payments to SaaS, and reality-driven software project management.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
I’ve built five multimillion dollar products over the last twelve years, and I’ve done it by developing the right product habits.
Most-linked posts?
- My Billion Dollar Mistake7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2019-04-21
- Adobe Became a Successful $95B SaaS Company4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-03-14
- Duolingo Built a $700M Company Without Charging Users4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2018-02-20
- What will Amazon build next?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-03-29
- How GitHub Democratized Coding, Built a $2B Business, and Got with Microsoft2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-07-09
- Lessons on product and marketing from the growth of Domino’s Pizza2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-04-17
- How Box Conquered the Enterprise and Became a $1.7B Company in a Decade2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-08-13
- Exploring the Most Effective Product Workflows in Tech2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-04-03
- How Grammarly Grew to 6.9M Daily Users in 9 Years2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-08-28
- How Two Designers Created Airbnb–and Turned It into a $30B Company2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-09-04
What Hacker News says?
Taking the right amount of time on the right decisions is key - gathering experience in turn ultimately provides it if you have it, or in hindsight. As much as making quick decisions is valuable, its painful/permanent impacts to the group are high if they aren't flexible decisions, or aren't revisited. Technical Research is critical. https://producthabits.com/everyone-forgets-technical-researc...
Comment linking /everyone-forgets-technical-research/
on “Things learned while running your own self-funded startup”Submitted How Sketch Took on Adobe as a story · 226 points
HN discussionAdobe made a very successful switch from one off payments to SaaS for their creative suite, there's a pretty clear before and after to look at. https://producthabits.com/adobe-95-billion-saas-company/
Comment linking /adobe-95-billion-saas-company/
on “Show HN: Mail Studio – IDE for designing responsive emails”Submitted How Atlassian Built a $10B Growth Engine as a story · 226 points
HN discussionFantastic summary. What do you think about Hiten Shah's solution which is to use hourly estimates and in depth upfront technical research? https://producthabits.com/overcome-the-guess-work-of-product...
Comment linking /overcome-the-guess-work-of-product-development-with-hourly-engineering-estimates/
on “Reality Driven Development: Fixing Project Management in Software”Submitted My Billion Dollar Mistake as a story · 211 points
HN discussionIt does, as OP mentioned, they’re making money doing it and it’s a better business model for number of reasons. For example, Adobe is the largest SaaS by revenue: https://www.mikesonders.com/largest-saas-companies/ — Model clearly works if you look at Abobe’s revenue per year since 2004: https://www.statista.com/statistics/266399/revenue-of-adobe-... — Here’s a detailed history of Abobe, if you’re interested in the…
Comment linking /adobe-95-billion-saas-company/
on “Dear startups: I hate subscription services (2021)”Submitted Why Trello Failed to Build a $1B Business as a story · 193 points
HN discussionI think this article is an example of attribution error. To conclude that it is a free model that has caused Canva, Figma, or Notion to take the lead is missing on multiple fronts. To me, the more likely conclusion about these products is that they were better products, and that they created fundamentally different user interactions. I can't remember where I read it, but I read a great article that argued that Googl…
Comment linking /adobe-95-billion-saas-company/
on “How to Kill a Unicorn”Submitted Lessons on product and marketing from the growth of Domino’s Pizza as a story · 149 points
HN discussionGreat something I can comment on; Here's the links I think you might found useful - They're not books, but videos, newsletters and articles. - - https://producthabits.com/ - https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/ - https://www.ycombinator.com/library/?categories=Product - https://twitter.com/shreyas (Read this guys tweets) - https://www.sachinrekhi.com/ - https://coda.io/@yuhki/figmas-approach-to-product-requiremen... (A…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Product management tips and book recommendations for startups”Submitted Domino’s Pizza drove increase in stock value by acting like a startup as a story · 122 points
HN discussionSubmitted How Grammarly Grew to 6.9M Daily Users in 9 Years as a story · 74 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Unexpected Rebirth of Google Glass as a story · 31 points
HN discussionSubmitted Asana’s Rise to a $900M Valuation as a story · 24 points
HN discussionSubmitted How tech companies do engineering estimates (survey results) as a story · 18 points
HN discussionSubmitted Duolingo Built a $700M Company Without Charging Users as a story · 12 points
HN discussionSubmitted How Duolingo Built a $700M Company Without Charging Users as a story · 9 points
HN discussionSubmitted My Billion Dollar Mistake as a story · 8 points
HN discussionSubmitted My Billion Dollar Mistake as a story · 8 points
HN discussionSubmitted Is Snapchat Going to Die? as a story · 8 points
HN discussionSubmitted How Pinterest Became an $11B Company by Organizing the World’s Hobbies as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted How TurboTax Used Design and Emotion to Solve a Boring Problem and Dominate as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted What will Amazon build next? as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted How an Anti-Growth Mentality Helped Basecamp Grow to Over 2M Customers as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Grammarly Quietly Grew Its Way to 6.9M Daily Users in 9 Years as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why Every Business Should Start with a Spreadsheet (by Hiten Shah) as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted How Duolingo built a $700M dollar company without charging its users as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted My Billion Dollar Mistake as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted My Billion Dollar Mistake – Product Habits as a story · 4 points
HN discussion
