Why Substack?
Substack might be a new path to more impact for Product, Briefly; recent feature releases help it get the right content to the right people, and that's where this material will make a difference.
What is Product, Briefly?
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.
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.
