April Update

🦉Ideas

1️⃣ In the past 2 years I’ve been traveling a lot for work. Here’s a few thoughts on nomading 🎒

1. What’s your balance between security/adventure and familiarity/novelty? I’m a novelty junky so nomading works for me.

2. It’s good to be near strangers daily. Opportunities (all kinds) come from other people. So meet as many you can.

3. I’m an avid collector of people and people-fragments. Event the shortest friendships bring me inspiration and a feeling of human connection, that we so often lack. Some people don’t see the point in making new friends that you’ll never see again, but I’m the opposite.

4. Traveling is great for learning, perspective and inspiration. But terrible for consistency, productivity and keeping routines.

5. Nomading teaches you to value the essentials, and how to live with less. Every time you get something new, you have to decide what to keep and what to leave.

6. Being a nomad will probably destroy your style. It reduces your wardrobe to the minimum.

7. Slow traveling (spending more time in each place) can be a more sustainable option. Also going to smaller, less touristic cities.

2️⃣ A great product is much more than just design and tech 💯

Sounds obvious, but it didn’t stop me from falling into that trap. At Talent Protocol we’ve been making less and less progress on product. We’re slow to ship new features and are not really making big product leaps. The reason? We’re good at design and development, but we currently suck at the rest.

Our .tal username idea is a great example of lack of product strategy and user research. Great tech and design, but bad product in the end.

We need a more holistic process that includes: a clear product strategy, proper user research, prioritisation/roadmapping, and also much better testing, documentation, and comms. A product never remains the same, it’s always either improving or getting worse. Are we moving ahead or falling behind?

This is why I recently moved positions, from CMO to CPO. My focus will be to clarify the product vision, build better product processes and point the team in the right direction. My job is unblocking the product team and give them the conditions to excel.

3️⃣ Believe in something bigger than yourself ⭐️

⭐️ Recommendations

1. 📹 Spotify’s AI-driven recommendation algorithm: the reason why I became a “playlist person”. I barely listen to full albums anymore and I have no favorite artists, just favorite playlists. I listen to a lot of music I love, but often can’t remember the name of who sings it.

2. 📹 Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology: Gunpei Yokoi (designer of the Game Boy) believed that toys and games do not necessarily require expensive cutting-edge technology; novel and fun gameplay are more important. Trendy technology can sometimes get in the way of what truly matters in a great product.

3. 🖥️ Make Something Wonderful: Steve Jobs in his own words.

4. 🎵 Ver o mar, a song that immediately brings me back to Rio de Janeiro.

🏆️ Progress

1. My rest ethic (almost as important as my work ethic) is getting a tiny bit better. Early this month I had the perfect afternoon in Ipanema and the beautiful morning at Portinho da Arrábida. 🏖️ 

2. I got less distracted by the easy stuff. I used to start the day by responding to emails because it feels more immediately rewarding than working on challenging problems. While I may be getting things done, the issue lies in the depletion of my focus and energy, which can leave me struggling when it’s time to face real obstacles. Impactful work require all of me and then some. That’s why I try to leave my phone by my bed, and I don’t touch it before I finish one cognitive hard task. I don’t do it every day (yet), but I’m making progress. ☀️ 

3. Feeling pumped about my move to Product! I’m already having ~4 discovery calls a week, that come from our automated user feedback system. These calls are a hybrid of career mentoring and user research. You can also take a look at some of my initial work on product principles and processes here.

🌨️ Problems

1. User growth at Talent Protocol has slowed down a lot. And that’s the main thing a startup should be designed to do: growing fast. With my recent move to product, I’m looking for someone that can help us reboot growth.

2. I was able to get a lot of work done this month and not feel tired. But even if I feel productive and healthy, I know I’m working too many hours. It’s okay for a few weeks, but not sustainable long-term.

3. I’ve stopped drinking alcohol ~6 months ago, with just a handful of exceptions. In April I drank wine in two occasions, which is fine. The problem is I could’ve easily just had 1 or 2 glasses but couldn’t help drinking too much. And I could clearly see the impact on my sleep and energy afterwards.