Hey 👋
Here’s your fortnightly roundup of interesting and important happenings in the tech spheres of Build, Grow, and Lead.
As usual, we’ve also thrown in two little extras for you; an experienced SRE and sysadmin gives their take on the dumpster fire at Twitter, and what you can take from lessons learned in Asia by a charismatic Irishman.
📚 [BUILD] 100 million Alexa-enabled devices later, is Amazon’s trailblazing voice assistant a failed product?
When respected product leader (and Turing Fest alumnus) Martin Eriksson created his famous Venn diagram of product management, he also noted that “Product Management is above all else a business function, focused on maximising business value from a product”. Viewed through that lens, it seems like Amazon’s Alexa has been a very expensive failure. Allegedly losing $10bn per year, the pioneering voice assistant’s future looks bleak.
[Ron Amadeo, ars Technica]
📚 [GROW] Finding growth outside of marketing: a case study.
Growth opportunities can be found across all functions in your business, the trick is knowing how to identify the ones that will make the difference.
Matt Lerner shares his process to identify the “rate-limiting step” that’s stalling your business growth, and how shifting the focus to solving this can radically transform business performance.
[Matt Lerner, Startup Core Strengths]
📚 [LEAD] Prepare for impact: why startups need to start considering the world around them.
“When it comes to your impact, you can’t borrow from the future” says Kat Borlongan in her new role as Chief Impact Officer at Contentsquare.
There’s been no shortage of chatter in recent years around building tech for good and creating sustainable business models that make a positive impact. With pressure mounting more than ever as the world focuses on some of the downsides of reckless tech actors, how can founders ensure that impact is championed from the top?
[Kat Borlongan, Medium]
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📚 [BONUS] 29 scenarios that the skeleton crew at Twitter may face in the coming weeks.
As the reports of life at Twitter continue to pour in, it’s clear that radical change is afoot. Reading between the headlines, what impact could we expect to see as headcount plummets and those who remain at Twitter HQ face challenges that could threaten the technical and legal integrity of the very platform that this thread is on.
[@MosquitoCapital, Twitter]
🎥 [ARCHIVE – TF22] Eamonn Carey – Late Night Cocktail Lounge Cover Band Limbo – On Inspiration and Imitation.
From Live Shopping to Super Apps – inspiration for new products and platforms is increasingly moving from east to west. Where once products from the Asian markets were derided as copycats, now they’re trendsetters.
In his much-loved talk at TF22, Tera Ventures GP, Eamonn Carey regaled the audience with tales from his 2004 trip to Korea, where he found inspiration for his first company. 18 years on, we’re now seeing more and more innovation from that part of the world making its mark closer to home.
[Eamonn Carey, Tera Ventures]
Eamonn Carey – Late Night Cocktail Lounge Cover Band Limbo – On Inspiration and Imitation
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