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The FishmanAF Newsletter

A weekly column on Growth & Product Strategy, company building, parenting and occasional hot takes. Click to read The FishmanAF Newsletter, by Adam Fishman, a Substack publication with thousands of...

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WTF is Strategy?

What it takes to build a great company and product strategy - with lessons from Hubspot, Reforge, Facebook, Nextdoor, Patreon and Imperfect Foods

I end the post with a detailed breakdown of Patreon's company strategy, Imperfect Foods product strategy, and how we arrived at both (the inputs, not just the output).

"...but we call it intuition because it's hard to describe all the little conversations, experiences, data points, etc. that are adding up in our head.”

had an interesting take on intuition: “I think most intuition is developed by having lots of reps at the problem either directly or indirectly (through customer conversations and data)..."

Strategy lives at the intersection of understanding our customers, our markets, and developing intuition.

Strategy matters because otherwise we're all running a race in different directions. It focuses our execution and helps us make millions of tiny decisions every day.

GIF

I also shared my own strategy "omissions." Here's what strategy isn't: - Detailed tactics - Rigid - Hiring plan - OKRs - Timeline or roadmap - Vision - Complex

At Patreon our omissions were based on what part of the creator "stack" we wouldn't pursue: the 'zero-to-fan' step. We were there to help you monetize more effectively, not help you build an audience. This omission was critical to our focus.

And one of the most important parts of strategy is laying out what you won't do.

@BradfordCoffey

articulated this to me: "We called these ‘Omissions’ at HubSpot. Here are good ideas that we are NOT doing. In many iterations of the strategy, it was actually the most important."

Build and iterating on strategy is like Wheel of Fortune as

@beh_zod

says: "The most helpful metaphor for me lately is making decisions as a company or as an organization is sort of like trying to solve the puzzle in Wheel of Fortune."

GIF

At the company level, a great strategy contains: - Your ambition - Your product offering - Your audience - Competitive advantages - Defensibility - Reasons to believe (initiatives)

Strategy is your plan to win. It's how a company can— consistently and over a long period of time—create value for customers and monetize that value.

I talked

, and

and covered insights from

, and

In the post I cover: 1. What strategy is (and isn’t) and why it matters 2. How to craft a great strategy 3. Case studies from Patreon and Imperfect Foods on both Company and Product strategy 4. Additional resources to explore

When teams and priorities seem at odds with each other and everything is the number one priority then you have a strategy problem.

It started with a question: “How do you handle the situation where there are multiple, “number 1” priorities in the company; especially when they are often at odds with each other?"

A new, long-overdue FishmanAF Newsletter dropped this week: WTF is Strategy? I break down the messy process of strategy creation and move beyond templates and strategy output to show what it takes to craft great strategy.

fishmanafnewsletter.com

WTF is Strategy?

What it takes to build a great company and product strategy - with lessons from Hubspot, Reforge, Facebook, Nextdoor, Patreon and Imperfect Foods

In 99.9% of the cases the answer is NO. Read more and get all the 🔥 Hot Take Alerts🔥 here:

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The FishmanAF Newsletter

5. Will this move our acquisition, retention or monetization goals more than what we currently have planned?

1. Will our users care about this? 2. Do we have the data necessary to make them feel special? 3. Will *they* get social validation from broadcasting this? 4. What product initiatives should we stop doing in order to support this?

Finally, 5 questions to ask next time someone suggests this...

5. Companies approach this from a marketing perspective when the energy and effort required sits just as much with product development. Don't want to devote those kinds of resources? Don't do the program.

4. It's probably not aligned with your growth model. If this doesn't have a bearing on acquisition, retention or monetization for you... you're better off focusing on what is already on your roadmap.

3. Too often companies approach this as a victory lap for their brand. It's not. It's about your users. If you don't have the data you'll generate mostly embarrassing or incomplete factoids.

2. It is uniquely well-suited to their content. No one case about how many workouts you completed in 2022 or how many Vuori sweatpants you bought (spoiler: a lot). There's no bragging rights or social capital there.

1. You're not Spotify. They have the data, the design chops, and the investment thesis necessary to make this a success. You don't.

So why won't this work for you?!? 5 MORE reasons.

5. They invest *significant* time, energy, and resources--specifically product, engineering and data. It's not a marketing campaign; it's a product.

4. It's deeply integrated into the app experience and fully designed for mobile sharing across networks which are themselves heavily mobile.

3. They use their enormous trove of data to tug on the user's desire for social capital--key to a social viral loop--with scaled content generation from a company generated + user distributed content loop. It's user psychology for the win!

2. They (Spotify) are able to tie the value proposition(s) of the product--personalized recommendations, playlists, being a destination for music discovery--to something unique, fun and special for you.

1. It's a celebration of the user, not the company.

Why does this work for Spotify? 5 main reasons.

In today's newsletter I break down *why* this works for Spotify and why it (probably) won’t work for you. I talked to

@libero08

(fmr Head of Global Growth Marketing for Spotify) and

@JoannaLord

(a fantastic CMO from Reforge, Skyscanner, and ClassPass) to get their thoughts.

I’ve been seeing a lot of posts about how to do your own version of Spotify Wrapped and I think they completely miss the mark.

I'm back with a 🔥 Hot Take Alert 🔥 on the FishmanAFNewsletter after a month hiatus. The topic: NO, you shouldn't do a Spotify Wrapped campaign. fishmanafnewsletter.com/p/dont-do-a-sp

CPO

talking about collab between Marketing and Product. I wrote about this for

@reforge

with

@natatouille

: reforge.com/blog/cross-dep

Adam Fishman

@fishmanaf

Nov 11, 2022

It seems like the “reduce ad load” on Twitter Blue subscribers might actually just be “increase ad load for everyone right away so it seems like we’ve reduced it but it’s really just back to the previous level.” So many ads in my feed right now.