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HOW TO IMPROVE RETENTION

This in-depth guide on retention covers how to measure it correctly and includes several case studies and an encyclopedia of tactics.

LESSONS FROM TOMS BUY-ONE-GIVE-ONE STRATEGY

After donating over 95 million shoes, TOMS transitioned to a new giving model, redirecting 1/3 of its profits to grassroots organizations.

MOTION: CREATIVE STRATEGY SUMMIT (EVENT)

A summit taking place virtually on September 19-20, covering tactics and future trends in DTC advertising.

HUMANITY IN THE AGE OF AI

Ethical AI design is needed to prevent reinforcing biases and echo chambers, as seen with past digital platforms. Social media promotes materialism and division, while AI has the potential to broaden perspectives and provide a more accurate reflection of human experiences. Early research shows promise in AI's ability to reduce belief in conspiracy theories, with participants showing a lasting decrease in such views after interacting with AI, highlighting AI's capacity to foster more balanced worldviews.

BOOMER APPLE

Apple has shifted from being a primarily hardware-driven company to one increasingly focused on services, as evidenced by its pricing strategies and growing reliance on software differentiation. Despite holding iPhone prices steady in the face of inflation, Apple's profit from services is nearing that of hardware, signaling a major shift in its business model. Apple is evolving with age, moving toward maximizing long-term growth through services rather than relying solely on hardware innovation.

GROWTH: THINKING IN SYSTEMS

Growth in business is fundamentally driven by systems thinking, and it's important to understand interconnected parts rather than isolated features. There is a difference between growth loops and habitual loops and a need for features that align with business growth while complementing existing user behaviors.

UNLOCKING MOMENTUM WITH PRODUCT STRATEGY

Every strategy challenge, whether for a feature or an entire portfolio, requires a product manager to turn ideas into action. To tackle this, follow three steps: assess the current business situation by reviewing market trends and competitors, evaluate the product's performance and customer segmentation, and identify potential opportunities. Engaging stakeholders throughout helps build momentum for a clear direction.

WHEN TO KICK MANAGERS OUT AND CALL THEM BACK LATER

This author writes about helping a client with a product refresh by working directly with the team, excluding management, and focusing on rapid experimentation and feedback. This unconventional approach allowed them to tackle tight deadlines, foster innovation, and empower the team to find their own solutions without the usual complexities of traditional change management.

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CREATING EFFECTIVE RETENTION STRATEGIES

Retention drives growth. Use data to prevent churn, improve onboarding, and personalize experiences. Make retention a priority across teams. Continuous focus leads to loyal customers and lasting success.

A LIFE BEYOND FEATURES FOR B2B PMS

Being a B2B PM can be more challenging than B2C, but adopting key strategies can accelerate success. Build to learn before scaling, use what you know to uncover gaps in knowledge, balance customer desires with user needs, and clearly define what success looks like before designing solutions.

THOUGHT PARTNER

There is growing skepticism around AI's hype. While enterprise adoption has been slow, AI's real value lies in its potential as a thought partner, enhancing human decision-making and creativity. Despite initial disappointment, leveraging AI for brainstorming, feedback, and complex problem-solving can significantly improve productivity and should not be overlooked by professionals.

SCARCITY...3 PILLARS TO USING IT ETHICALLY

Scarcity enhances value and drives action. To use it ethically, clearly state when scarcity exists, avoid applying undue pressure, and always be truthful to maintain customer trust.

COACHING FOUNDER MODE

"Founder Mode” is a leadership style where founders remain deeply engaged with their company as it scales. Strong product companies thrive when founders or leaders maintain close involvement with product vision, strategy, and team development, coaching others to adopt a similar leadership approach.

NARRATIVE BUILDING FOR STARTUPS

Great narratives share three key traits: an unrecognized truth, narrative-product fit, and excitement.

HOW TO AVOID PRODUCT BURNOUT

Product management can lead to burnout from high stress and public failures.

WHAT'S NEW IN REACT 19

React 19 introduces major updates like Server Components, improving performance by rendering on the server and reducing client-side JavaScript. New features include Actions for handling events and enhanced hooks like useActionState for managing form states, streamlining both server and client workflows.

THE UNDENIABLE UTILITY OF CSS :HAS

The CSS :has pseudo-class provides a new way to style elements based on their relationships to other elements in the DOM. It is a powerful tool for creating more complex and dynamic CSS styles. However, it is important to consider browser support and the complexity of your use case before using :has.

NOTES ON OPENAI'S NEW O1 CHAIN-OF-THOUGHT MODELS

OpenAI has released two new "chain-of-thought" models, o1-preview and o1-mini, which prioritize reasoning over speed and cost. These models are trained to think step-by-step, enabling them to handle more complex prompts requiring backtracking and deeper analysis. While the reasoning process is hidden from users due to safety and competitive advantage concerns, it allows for improved results in tasks like generating Bash scripts, solving crossword puzzles, and validating data.

HOW TO COMMUNICATE TRADEOFFS SO LEADERS WILL LISTEN

It's important to consistently communicate team priorities and frame tradeoffs clearly when handling high-priority requests from leadership. The "steelmanning" technique, which involves thoroughly understanding and presenting the strongest case for new requests to make more informed decisions, can also be useful.

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REDIRECT CHECKER

URL redirects are a way to send users and search engines from one URL to another. This website provides tools to analyze your redirects like detailed path analysis, bulk redirect checking, and more.

LEGEND MOTION

Legend Motion is a declarative animations library for React Native that makes it easy to transition between styles without needing to manage animations.

LEARNING TO REASON WITH LLMS

OpenAI o1 is a new large language model trained to reason by generating a chain of thought before responding. This model demonstrates significant advancements in reasoning capabilities, achieving impressive performance in various tasks, including competitive programming, math Olympiads, and scientific problem-solving. OpenAI o1-preview is now available for use in ChatGPT and through the API, allowing users to explore its reasoning abilities.

AN UNPOPULAR PERSPECTIVE ON THE SSO TAX

The so-called "SSO Tax" in SaaS pricing is not an unfair practice but rather a form of price discrimination that is both logical and beneficial for both vendors and customers. Price discrimination is inherent in any market, as buyers have different preferences and willingness to pay. Vendors need to segment their customers to maximize their revenue. For example, airlines have different pricing tiers that allow vendors to offer more affordable basic tiers while still catering to the needs of high-paying customers.

DOES YOUR STARTUP REALLY NEED COMPLEX CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE?

Startups often overcomplicate their cloud infrastructure, neglecting product-market fit in favor of complex deployments

WE SPENT $20 TO ACHIEVE RCE AND ACCIDENTALLY BECAME THE ADMINS OF .MOBI

These researchers inadvertently became the admins of the .MOBI TLD after registering an expired domain, which allowed them to undermine the CA process for the entire .mobi TLD.

UNDERSTANDING CONCURRENCY, PARALLELISM, AND JS

This article explains the difference between concurrency and parallelism, how they are implemented in JavaScript, and the potential pitfalls of using them in Node.js.

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OPENAI FUNDRAISING SET TO VAULT STARTUP'S VALUATION TO $150 BILLION

OpenAI is in talks to raise $6.5 billion from investors at a valuation of $150 billion. It is also in talks to raise $5 billion in debt from banks in the form of a revolving credit facility. The discussions are still ongoing and the terms could change. The financing will support the need for computing power and other operating expenses. OpenAI is aiming to allow employees to sell some of their shares in a tender offer later this year.

GOOGLE WILL NOW LINK TO THE INTERNET ARCHIVE TO ADD MORE CONTEXT TO SEARCH RESULTS

Google Search results now directly link to The Internet Archive to add historical contexts for the links in results. It had removed its cached pages feature from Search earlier this year. The feature can be accessed by tapping on 'More about this page' through the three-dots menu that appears alongside all search results. It is still rolling out - a screenshot is available in the article.

ORACLE IS DESIGNING A DATA CENTER THAT WOULD BE POWERED BY THREE SMALL NUCLEAR REACTORS

Oracle is designing a data center that will require more than a gigawatt of power. It will be powered by three small modular nuclear reactors. Oracle has already received building permits for the reactors but hasn't publicly disclosed the location of the data center or future reactors. There are currently three operational small modular reactors in the world, with experts in the industry generally agreeing that the technology won't be commercialized in the US until the 2030s.

PROPOSED UNDERWATER DATA CENTER SURPRISES REGULATORS WHO HADN'T HEARD ABOUT IT

NetworkOcean launched out of Y Combinator on August 15 by announcing plans to dunk a small capsule filled with GPU servers into the San Francisco Bay. The founders say that moving data centers off land would slow ocean temperature rise by drawing less power and letting seawater cool the capsules' shells. Scientists say that the slightest heat or disturbance from the submersibles could trigger toxic algae blooms and harm wildlife. The startup has been pursuing its initial test without seeking any permits from key regulators. It intends to test its submersible for about an hour in an area it says is privately owned and not subject to regulatory oversight.

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THE MODERN CLI RENAISSANCE

The rate at which new CLI tools are being written has picked up over the past few years after seeing relatively little activity between 1995 and 2015. This article discusses the trend where people are rewriting and rethinking staples of the command line interface, why the trend may be happening, and why the trend is a good thing. New tools have the opportunity to learn from their predecessors and build upon them. While the new tools may not be perfect, they are a result of software becoming more polished and adapted to new use cases.

FELAFAX

Felafax is a framework for continued-training and fine-tuning of open source large language models using the XLA runtime. It takes care of the runtime setup while providing a Jupyter notebook to get started. The project aims to build the infrastructure to make it easier to run AI workloads on non-Nvidia hardware. Felafax is easy-to-use, easy-to-configure, and easy-to-scale.

LIVE FROM SAN FRANCISCO: MARK ZUCKERBERG TAPES A PODCAST WITH 6,000 FRIENDS

Mark Zuckerberg recorded a podcast about artificial intelligence, the metaverse, and how he outmaneuvered the rest of Silicon Valley to keep his company winning at a live event with more than 6,000 attendees who paid $50 or more for a ticket. The event included appearances from Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase; Daniel Ek, the founder of Spotify; and Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia. Tech billions and top executives have been increasingly opting to tell their stories in the friendly spaces of podcasts and YouTube streams rather than in traditional media interviews as they allow guests more leeway to expound on their pursuits and passions. The democratization of media has allowed anyone to have a personal talk show, and those in powerful positions now have a wide array of options to choose from when they want to reach the public.

THE PALACE COUP AT THE MAGIC KINGDOM

This article tells the inside story of how Bob Iger undermined and outmaneuvered Bob Chapek to return to power at Disney. Chapek was Iger's chosen successor after Iger stepped down in late February 2020. Iger stayed in the company as a creative director and executive chairman of the board after stepping down as chief executive. Chapek was still required to report to Iger, resulting in conflict. The board ultimately fired Chapek just before Thanksgiving in 2022 and replaced him with Iger.

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GOOGLE CO-FOUNDER SERGEY BRIN IS BACK AT THE COMPANY 'PRETTY MUCH EVERY DAY.' HERE'S WHAT HE'S WORKING ON

Google co-founder Sergei Brin is back at Google and working on AI.

STARTUP MORTALITY RATES

1/3 of startups are good investments, 1/3 turn into something but you wish you hadn't made the investment, and 1/3 are zeros.

NVIDIA AND ORACLE TEAM UP FOR ZETTASCALE CLUSTER: AVAILABLE WITH UP TO 131,072 BLACKWELL GPUS

Oracle recently introduced new types of clusters to be available for AI training through Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, the most powerful of which offers up to 2.4 ZettaFLOPS of AI performance.

KLARNA CUTS 50% OF WORKFORCE, ENDS PARTNERSHIPS WITH SALESFORCE AND WORKDAY AMID GENERATIVE AI OVERHAUL

Klarna's aggressive cost-cutting measures and focus on AI are part of a broader trend where companies across various sectors are implementing AI-driven solutions to enhance efficiency and reduce costs.

ANDROID APPS ARE BLOCKING SIDELOADING AND FORCING GOOGLE PLAY VERSIONS INSTEAD

A new feature in Google's Play Integrity API allows apps to push 'remediation' dialogs during sideloading that can't be worked around.

I WISH I DIDN'T MISS THE '90S-00S INTERNET

The Internet was deeply personal and creative back when people had blogs and MySpace - content was driven by the need and want of people to share knowledge.