Welcome. Product, Briefly is a collection of one-page briefs about building products and the people who create them, drawn from two decades of work in new ventures spanning a breadth of industries. Each one can be read in five minutes and discussed for an hour. They cover cover different facets of Product work while also serving as examples of the form.

It’s built to be taken apart: use what fits straight away, draw inspiration from the collection, make the rest your own. Take a brief, or make a brief.

When I first came across Substack, I didn’t quite know what to make of it.
Paid newsletters? What even is that, like a blog but with subscription?

Later, as the concept for Product, Briefly solidified - a digital embodiment of what I envisioned as a physical book - Substack came up again as a possible way to build it. Now, though, it had competition from other “Creator toolkits” and still seemed like… a blog with a subscription feature. Because the vision really needed creative freedom to explore, a purely writing-focused toolkit wasn’t a match at the time, and I built things elsewhere.

Yet
Like Substack had some kind of gravity
I kept coming back.

Each time, Substack was a little different - podcasting, a twitter-like feed, more creative freedom in format and publishing, and most importantly - more people with deep rich ideas and constructive discussions started to appear.
Substack now had culture, and it was good.

Why make changes?

Fast forward, and in the last three months something has really shifted - well, the whole package has really shifted - and my work is going to shift with it.

The creative freedom the other technology platform underneath productbriefly.com was in fact very necessary to push the bits around and play a bit, and it allowed me to discover the form and shape this project demanded.
Now, that same technology presents other constraints holding me back in places where Substack now has built accelerants.

What’s changing?

A quick rundown of what to expect:

• Revisions to each brief are happening with the print version of Product, Briefly and as I go, briefs will migrate out of productbriefly.com and onto this Substack. Expect volume here to ramp up a bit, and the main website to go away.

• The content will shift slightly, with the personal backstories and examples behind the briefs shifting over to my personal Substack so I can tighten up the material here. Consider following @rcolinkennedy, the range will be wider and perhaps even more interesting for you.

• The website productbriefly.com will remain live, and paid Substack subscribers can find their gateway key in the Perks section. The library of samples, examples, and more on may come down for a while as I focus on getting the new briefs up for everyone here. It will get updated based upon progress with Substacking. The Journey will stay live for a while, but may come offline too.

So, welcome back.

Soon you’ll get more in your inbox from Product, Briefly.
As things progress there will be opportunities to pre-order as I make print runs of the booklet. One early reviewer called it “a coffee table book about Product” which might be high praise or a subtle neg. You’ll have to get one for yourself to find out.

As always,
Looking forward to it!

~ Colin

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Because you’re a Subscriber. Thank you.

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I tried to abandon it, and kind of did for a while, but kept coming back to it. Less like a puppy, and more like an old Nintendo game I never really liked, but once in a while would decide to boot back up again, but surprising me that I got a little further to the end each time even after walking away for ages.

For whatever reason, it feels like the universe won’t let me move on with my life until I deal with it. Maybe that’s actually just my own damage and I’m blaming it on the universe, but the universe hasn’t told me it minds and in fact has kind of acted complicit, so it’s guilty by association.
Funny timings, like when I was 80% done with a manuscript and had struck out with a printer, a buddy working on another project told me about who he was using to print, and badabing, it was gonna work.

Then, the first prototype arrived.

P.1

Two copies.
Like any appearance model, getting the thing in-hand is magical.

THIS VISION IS A REAL THING WE CAN TOUCH.

It has texture, kind of silky on the outside and just papery enough on the inside.
The pages make a swooshing sound I muted for you because I want you to eventually buy one to hear it properly.

The layout sucked, the graphics didn’t look good, there were whole-ass sections that I wrote just to have them in there to send it to the printer.
But the words were all painstakingly written by me, the illustrations are kind of mine iterated over hours and countless tweaks with generative and other digital tools, the layout and design (shitty as it might be) is my hackjob.
Hours later, I turned it around with edits for P.2, arriving next week, ten copies. Also not perfect, but better.

The beatings will continue until my morale improves, when I feel satisficed. That will be the end of P.x and into V.1.x, and the beginning of a new journey.

While building the booklet, I gave it all of my focus, letting things wither a bit here and on productbriefly.com. This was necessary, to give some space for that next phase, but now the work from the booklet is starting to map back to the digital domains.
Seems unlikely that it will be anything other than sporadic and messy, but if that’s your thing maybe you can keep me company and we can move through this together.

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With love,
Colin

One page briefs give product teams clarity and enable speed.

Product, Briefly started as a collection of one-page briefs built over a decade of running products, building teams, and mentoring Founders. One day, it felt like most of a book was written. A digital form-factor is easier for leaders to use immediately.

Now you can easily explore, download, and discuss these Briefs with your teammates.

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What’s different now?

The vision for Product, Briefly is a rich media experience surrounding evergreen ideas - the writing should shine, but the layout and interactive experience should be both more rich while also focused. There is an intentional aesthetic, and to craft this requires a toolset and tech stack with affordances to embody it. Technically, there are web, mobile, and email interface points necessary deliver the right content at the right time in the right way for the project intent. This has come to life as productbriefly.com, and it’s work that I am proud of.

When the Product, Briefly project began, Substack was in its infancy: a great tool for people who build newsletters. However, it did not allow for the creative expression intended. Distribution features such as Notes, Restacks, and Chat were not mature yet.

Now, I find myself spending time within the Substack ecosystem, and the people here today feel like the kind of people that would enjoy what has been written from Product, Briefly. Substack’s featureset is finally aligned with the content aspirations for Product, Briefly; now it’s possible to achieve the intent within the creative constraints. Additionally, the writing experience on mobile/tablet is superior to what I had before, enabling me to do more without a laptop. Perhaps most importantly for the future, the Substack platform has the right controls for content indexability / searchability while also allowing control of copyrights.

Substack is doing a lot of things right, and I can finally get behind it.

Product People aspiring to great work

Perhaps most importantly, the people are finally here, and Substack’s distribution systems will help get the material from Product, Briefly into the hands of people that can use it to elevate their work. The discussions happening in Substack are constructive and valuable, and the Chat for Subscribers is something I wouldn’t build on the original tech stack but looks like a chance to help more people by connecting more deeply and discussing what can help them get to the next level.

What’s cooking?

Bit by bit, I’ll be mapping over the content from Product, Briefly. If this proves to be a good experiment, this may replace the original digital writing project.

Paid Subscribers here will get access to the same material as subscribers on productbriefly.com and also get Chat, comments, and more features that I could support with what I can build and maintain on my previous infrastructure.

Free subscribers will get a subset of that content, and hopfeully find it compelling enough to upgrade.