This is the blog of Adam Kalsey. Unusual depth and complexity. Rich, full body with a hint of nutty earthiness.

Recently Written

The Trap of The Sales-Led Product (Dec 10)

It’s not a winning way to build a product company.

The Hidden Cost of Custom Customer Features (Dec 7)

One-off features will cost you more than you think and make your customers unhappy.

Domain expertise in Product Management (Nov 16)

When you're hiring software product managers, hire for product management skills. Looking for domain experts will reduce the pool of people you can hire and might just be worse for your product.

Strategy Means Saying No (Oct 27)

An oft-overlooked aspect of strategy is to define what you are not doing. There are lots of adjacent problems you can attack. Strategy means defining which ones you will ignore.

Understanding vision, strategy, and execution (Oct 24)

Vision is what you're trying to do. Strategy is broad strokes on how you'll get there. Execution is the tasks you complete to complete the strategy.

How to advance your Product Market Fit KPI (Oct 21)

Finding the gaps in your product that will unlock the next round of growth.

Developer Relations as Developer Success (Oct 19)

Outreach, marketing, and developer evangelism are a part of Developer Relations. But the companies that are most successful with developers spend most of their time on something else.

Developer Experience Principle 6: Easy to Maintain (Oct 17)

Keeping your product Easy to Maintain will improve the lives of your team and your customers. It will help keep your docs up to date. Your SDKs and APIs will be released in sync. Your tooling and overall experience will shine.

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What I'm Reading

• Amp It Up: Leading for Hypergrowth by Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity by Frank Slootman
• Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life by Nir Eyal
• Monty Hall, Storytelling, and Planning
• Scaling Up is Hard to Do | Chasm Group
• Crazy, Unloved but Potentially Transformational – What’s in your Loonshot nursery? - Rita McGrath
• When terrible things happen to good innovation projects… - Rita McGrath
• The Hype Handbook: 12 Indispensable Success Secrets From the World’s Greatest Propagandists, Self-Promoters, Cult Leaders, Mischief Makers, and Boundary Breakers by Michael F. Schein
• Masters of Scale: Surprising Truths from the World's Most Successful Entrepreneurs by Reid Hoffman
• Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel
• Build Better Products: A Modern Approach to Building Successful User-Centered Products by Laura Klein
• Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics by Henry Hazlitt
• Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport
• Brag!: The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn without Blowing It by Peggy Klaus
• Strong Product People: A Complete Guide to Developing Great Product Managers by Petra Wille
• Fall; or, Dodge in Hell by Neal Stephenson
• Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products that Create Customer Value and Business Value by Teresa Torres
• Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon by Colin Bryar
• Empowered: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products (Silicon Valley Product Group) by Marty Cagan
• Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters by Richard P. Rumelt
• How to Make 100 Releases Per Day with Only 6 Quality Engineers