Tom So

Investors advising early-stage teams should avoid pushing for growth ahead of product/market fit. As an industry, we all know that this ends in disaster, yet the pressure for premature growth is still all too common. Startups need time and space to find their fit and launch the right way.

I’m talking about using in-product levers to grow, in place of or in conjunction with external marketing and sales channels. When people can try your product for free, they experience the value of your product before making the decision to pay. This turns more people into happy users, creating more opportunity for them to tell their friends, who in... See more

No one can see past a few months in the future for any software development project. That was the major failure of the waterfall approach. Roadmaps are at best North Star visions of where a company should head towards.

Transitioning a career to think more about purpose is a typical evolution many people find mid-career (or at least it was for me). You could define mid-life as the transition to deeper purpose – society is clear that you should establish your mastery of something in your 20’s and 30s; it’s less clear what to do with it in your 40’s and 50’s (hence... See more