Sterling Proffer

Most product teams know their existing users pretty well. But your future audience is always evolving. The challenges that these potential users face in adopting the product increase over time. Without a team dedicated to understanding, advocating, and building for your next set of users, you end up never expanding your audience. This stalls... See more

This is the publishing paradox nowadays: opportunities come to you in direct proportion to your ability to operate without them.

To understand your adjacent users, it is helpful to understand the attributes of who is successful today and why they are successful. The reason this is helpful is that your adjacent user is different on one or more of these attributes (but not all). These attributes create vectors of expansion.

Upon reaching an equilibrium between free and paid content, creators and communities face another dilemma. Their revenue correlates directly with how much content they can produce. But reapplying that method forever would mean constantly increasing content output until every waking hour was devoted to production. Beyond sounding exhausting, studies... See more

Just at least consider that the place where you are wrong might be the most fertile ground for connecting with and receiving others. And in a beautiful twist, being soft in your rightness, as opposed to smashing people with your brilliance, can open others up to whatever wisdom you’ve accumulated.