Alden Huschle

These guiding questions will help you locate pockets of urgency:

For whom is this critical to their strategy, especially if it’s directly tied to revenue?

Examples: Regulatory compliance, industry certifications, public declarations of strategy, entering a new market, buying another company, dealing with a competitive shift in their market,... See more

Playdate excels within constraints. Its one-bit screen and tiny processor mean it can’t run graphics-heavy games, but that limitation encourages developers to think about what they can build. The tiny black-and-white screen. The bright yellow color. The ‘season’ of games. The crank. The crank! Playdate proves that craft isn’t about doing more: It’s... See more

But also, social media has gone from connecting friends to stealing people’s time. Between all the ads, it’s hard to know what’s actually a good productin online shopping.

Most travel apps immediately ask, “ Where do you want to go? ” Airbnb takes a different approach. When users open the app, they see a curated set of inspiring destinations and stays. Instead of pressuring users to decide, it invites them to explore possibilities.

This clever use of the Foot-in-the-Door principle lowers the friction to engage. It... See more

Here's the counterintuitive truth: users tend to embrace features they discover on their own.

When Airtable forced a "New Automation" pop-up, adoption crawled to 9%. When repositioned as a subtle "+" menu for natural discovery, adoption jumped to 41%.

Why? Self-discovered features trigger dopamine releases that create ownership. I experienced this... See more

Obsessive people who are in love with the problem they are solving can make up for a litany of management sins. (Perhaps that is also the lesson of Apple and Ive.)

When we focus excessively on scaling, on profit margins, on hiring, we miss the point of founding—and life, really. Which is to find meaning in our daily tasks.

If someone were great at making prompts to understand health or other personal data, she would love to “follow them” to use their prompts. A product that supports this dynamic could get a lot of traction.

Midjourney’s launch on Discord was brilliant. As a new user, I knew enough to ask for an image of a rabbit on a firetruck. But by watching others, I discovered I could create vector images, recast photos into Ghibli-style art, change aspect ratios, or convert photos to pencil-shaded drawings.