Build the product

What founders use for build the product, ranked by how many answers lean on it.

1. Gilad's work is about ranking ideas by the strength of the evidence behind them, not by who shouted loudest. His Confidence... itamargilad.com Book Evidence-Guided: Creating High Impact Products in the Face of Uncertainty Itamar Gilad
2. Kano gives you a vocabulary for why exciting features can mislead you: delighters add satisfaction, but missing basics... Interaction Design Foundation Article The Kano Model Interaction Design Foundation
3. Google's error budget is the most rigorous version of the one third rule: define how much unreliability you can tolerate, and... Google SRE Book Article Embracing Risk (Error Budgets) Google SRE Team
4. Cagan draws the line between teams measured by output (features shipped) and teams measured by outcomes (problems solved). If... Silicon Valley Product Group (SVPG) Article Product vs Feature Teams Marty Cagan
5. This is the canonical source for the claim that the customers you already have are far cheaper to keep than the ones a shiny... Harvard Business Review Article The Value of Keeping the Right Customers Amy Gallo
6. Cagan draws the line between discovery (figuring out what is worth building) and delivery (building it), and argues most waste... Silicon Valley Product Group Article · ~12 min read Product Discovery Marty Cagan
7. A raw, honest founder account of using building as a way to avoid the scarier work of selling and talking to strangers. It puts... Indie Hackers Thread · ~8 min read I've been building for months and made $0. The honest psychological reason. Indie Hackers
8. A practical checklist drawn from many product leaders on the exact question of when a feature has earned its removal. It gives... Lenny's Newsletter Article · 10 min read When to sunset a feature Lenny Rachitsky
9. A product team's honest account of the ongoing cost every shipped feature adds to engineering, design, support, and the next... HubSpot Product Blog Article · 7 min read On Killing It by Killing Features Daria Marmer
10. This treats unshipping as a craft with real upside, not just cleanup, and shows how to use usage data to decide what goes. It... Mixpanel Article · 9 min read The art of removing features and products Neil Rahilly
11. Written for solo and small-team founders, this makes the case that saying no and removing features is a survival advantage when... The Bootstrapped Founder Essay · 10 min read The Power of Omission: Killing Features for Fun and Profit Arvid Kahl
12. The step-by-step operational side of your question: once you have decided to kill a feature, how do you actually retire it... Product Teacher Article · 9 min read How to Deprecate a Feature Clement Kao
13. This gives you the simple two-axis map (how many people use a feature, and how often) that turns a gut feeling into a picture... Intercom Article · 6 min read Prioritising Features: Who'll Use It and How Often (the Feature Audit) Des Traynor
14. A short, practical answer on how to actually decline feature requests and keep the product lean, including their line that you... Signal v. Noise Article · 5 min read Ask 37signals: How do you say no? Jason Fried
15. A practical playbook for the part founders fear most: removing a feature while keeping the few users who relied on it on your... airfocus Article · 9 min read How to kill product features without losing customers Andrei Tiburca
16. A practical piece on the exact failure mode where each big customer gets their own custom feature and the product fragments... The Startup (Kit Merker) Essay · 8 min read How to Avoid the Per-Customer Feature Trap Kit Merker
17. A grounded take on the real risk sitting under your question: when one customer is half your revenue, losing them can halve the... SaaStr (Jason Lemkin) Article · 7 min read Customer Concentration is Definitely a Risk. But It's Probably OK. Jason Lemkin
18. The practical companion piece: what to actually show and say when your largest account asks where their features sit on the... Aha! Article · 6 min read A Big Customer Wants to See Your Roadmap. Now What? Brian de Haaff
19. Shows the healthy version of working closely with big customers: a deliberate design partner program where a handful of... First Round Review Article · 15 min read The Hard Way Pays Off: Inside Sierra's Design Partner Strategy First Round Review
20. Practical scripts for turning down or deferring a request without blowing up the relationship, which is the skill you need when... Lenny's Newsletter (Lenny Rachitsky) Article · 10 min read On Saying No Lenny Rachitsky
21. Deals with the specific pressure of a request that arrives wrapped in a deal, where sales and a big customer both want a yes... Saeed Khan (On Product Management) Article · 9 min read How to Deal with B2B Sales-Driven Feature Requests Saeed Khan
22. Goldfein ran engineering at Facebook and VMware and lays out how release process should change as a team grows from one person... First Round Review Article · 20 min read The Right Way to Ship Software Jocelyn Goldfein
23. Holman was an early GitHub engineer and this is the single most complete plain English essay on what a healthy deploy looks... zachholman.com Essay · 30 min read How to Deploy Software Zach Holman
24. Orosz maps the full spectrum from YOLO shipping (change it in prod and watch) to heavy multi stage verification, and explains... The Pragmatic Engineer Article · 25 min read Shipping to Production Gergely Orosz

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