Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

We are about to launch our second product (HookFeed), but it’s not our second launch. We’ve been doing countless mini-launches (alpha versions) for months now with both HookFeed and Minimalytics — and we keep making the same damn mistake:

Giving users too many choices…Below, I’ve illustrated our mental excursion from key iteration to key iteration across both products in search of simplicity.

TLDR: We’ve been reminded (brutally) that as product people we need to make the hard choices up front if we want any of our products to succeed. The vocal minority isn’t usually right and ultimate flexibility isn’t really what people want or need....

But Medium isn’t just taking a revolutionary approach to digital publishing — it’s changing the way companies operate too. As one of the fiercest and most faithful adopters of Holacracy – a radical new theory of corporate structure — Medium is experimenting with a completely management-free environment that’s laser focused on getting things done. Stirman couldn’t be more thrilled with the results: the freedom, the momentum, the productivity are all unparalleled, he says.

But companies don’t have to go all-in on Holacracy to reap the benefits. If his transition from Twitter to Medium taught him anything, there are always more tactics to try to make things work better. Below, he shares his lessons from taking the leap....