Monthly newsletter: technology, startups, business growth and marketing

Monthly Newsletter: Issue 2

This is an issue of my monthly newsletter. Main topics: technology, startups, business growth, and marketing. See other issues on my blog or subscribe. ~Max


Now, get a cup of coffee and enjoy!

Technology and Startups

Growth and Marketing

  • Intercom on Marketing (ebook). A good intro to marketing and, in particular, product marketing that will be interesting to those who are relatively inexperienced.
  • How to Design Marketing Campaigns. Basics of marketing segmentation, messaging hierarchy, and campaign management – this article will be useful to those who’re new to marketing or looking for a refresher.
  • HubSpot’s Pricing Page Redesign → MQL Conversions 165%↑ & Free Sign-Ups 89%↑. How: research first – usability testing, internal feedback, and customer intelligence; then design based on insights and A/B test.
  • What’s next in growth?” (video) talk by Andrew Chen who leads the rider growth at Uber. Andrew recommends you ignore “growth hacks” and focus on fundamentals that worked for decades. E.g. user referrals, shareable content, and using discounts to jumpstart demand for new products.

Product Management and Design

  • Facebook tried flagging fake news. Looks like the main challenge here is human psychology and confirmation bias: people who want something to be true aren’t usually very open to counterevidence.

Leadership and Management

  • The surprising thing Google learned about its employees (WaPo). “Among the eight most important qualities of Google’s top employees, STEM expertise comes in dead last. The seven top characteristics of success at Google are all soft skills.”
  • Science-based interviewing by Don Moore, a professor at BerkeleyHaas (video). Be humble about your abilities and use structured interviews. Surprisingly, intelligence– and integrity tests might be relatively predictive too. Cultural fit, if not defined, leads to “hire people who are like me” bias.

Books

Podcasts and Documentaries

Cognition and Psychology

Products

  • TaoTronics Earbuds – my favorite $26 Bluetooth earphones that are perfect for listening to podcasts and audiobooks when running and commuting.

Numbers

  • $16K is the price of a laundry-folding robot.
  • 8.3M subscribers were added by Netflix in Q4.
  • $380B is the iOS economy revenue in 2017, including hardware.
  • 39M Americans own a smart speaker, 6M of them sold by Google in 2017.
  • 1.4K electronics products were ordered per second on Amazon via mobile this holiday season.
  • Polls show no decline in American people’s impressions of tech companies despite all the talk about the “tech backlash”.

Smarter Living

Science and Research

  • Longevity FAQ by Laura Deming. Scientific ideas that have been linked to longevity in mice or human: caloric restriction, insulin/IGF, parabiosis, senescence, autophagy, sirtuins, etc.
  • Studying Studies: Part I by Peter Attia. The first article in series that explain how to read scientific studies. This one explains the difference between relative risk reduction often reported by the media and absolute risk reduction that sometimes might be more relevant.

My Essays

Contemplation Break

“Results are obtained by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems.” – Peter F. Drucker

Previous Issues

Issue 1.

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