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.