Chris Handy 🎉’s Post

Always be shipping.

You can’t stop marketers from staying agile. The great rebrand of “intent data” to “signals” is afoot.

Product Marketing is FUN. Here's a quick story on how we are quietly launching a new product. Law Insider (# 1 Legal Clause Library) used to only have one SKU: Premium. This gave members access to the most robust, complete, and wide-ranging library of contracts and clauses so they can draft better contracts faster. We've been hard at work on creating a new tier based on User Collaboration, Intelligent Search, and the ability for legal teams to create their own secure clause libraries with all the same smarts. All this available on the web, and in the Microsoft Word Add-in (where attorneys spend the majority for their time). But the release was unusual. We didn't tell anyone about it publicly. We just added features that people are discovering on their own. We took a gamble that we'd built up enough trust with a great product over the years that people would be willing to give it a shot when they discovered it by accident. Here's how it has played out. We created a new experience when people go to access one of these new features that tells a little about the benefits of upgrading from Premium to Pro. People are going for it. Over the last couple of weeks we've released the ability to discover It to more and more existing members (again, with no notifications). This graph shows the growth in accounts from zero in early June to now. Slow, but steady. I can't wait to unveil it to more people. First, I'm looking for testimonials from these folks to share with the world. Product Marketing is FUN. #productmarketing #plg #product #productlaunch

There are companies out there with CEOs who are blatantly supporting wannabe dictators. (One of those companies is Intercom.) You don’t have to support them. You can choose who to do business with. There are a lot of alternatives.

Brilliant stuff from Molly Graham on ownership in this linked piece. We’ve made things too complicated in many cases with RACI and other management tools. Sometimes you just need ownership. https://lnkd.in/gBu8QnJ2 #leadership #management

I've been studying a lot of marketing outside of tech lately, and there's so much to learn. Not everything has to be a world-changing movement. In fact, sometimes, people know exactly what they want and are just looking for a fair, honest deal. No qualification call necessary. #productmarketing

Most AI addons stink figuratively and add no tangible value above what on-device models and platform functionality will deliver. Some stink literally but provide new tangible value to customers that make sense to be used together across product distribution, and customer use cases. They should seek to deliver extra value based on actual jobs to be done, and recognize that tech for tech’s sake isn’t going to be compelling enough in the long run. #productmarketing

We’re in the run-up of the hype cycle now, but the cliff is in sight. Inserting an “AI add-on” in your SaaS isn’t a strategy that’s likely to work for very long. It needs to enable a feature that drives consumer value. Basic generative functions like these are going to be at the operating system level. (e.g. This is what Apple will have for free this fall across all devices) As product leaders, we need to fight the temptation and pressure to just slap “AI” on a sku and to figure out how to use the tech (if at all) to fulfill the jobs to be done out there in people’s everyday lives. #product #productmarketing #hypecycle

Today is the biggest day of the year for Apple software. It’s called #WWDC and they are about to lay out all the updates. I have some thoughts on how they handle the AI story. Apple had a great brand for “Intelligence” that they’ve let flounder a bit. GENIUS. Remember “Genius Playlists”? They were an early version of machine learning and was described this way: “You can use Genius to have iTunes play songs from your library that sound great together. “ I wouldn’t be surprise if they just use Siri for the brand, but I could also see them using “Genius” to inject into different areas of the products. I have a lot of thoughts on exactly HOW they’ll integrate LLMs practically for helping a user navigate their day faster. But I wonder that you think? What are we going to hear? #WWDC24