Notes from the work
An archive of product, engineering, startups, and the decisions behind building software. Older posts stay dated; they are here as a record, not a publishing schedule.
If you’ve ever felt like you needed to be a designer, developer, marketer, and UX expert all at once -you’re not alone. But with the right tools and feedback loops, you can make huge strides fast. Here’s how I quickly leveled up the landing page for Naminique, my AI-powered business name generator, in just about […]
Sometime in late 2024 — before Moody’s acquired Numerated — one of my team members asked if I could give them a mid-year review. Totally fair request. I care a lot about feedback, personal growth, and making sure my team feels seen and supported. The problem? We didn’t have an HR system. Not even close. […]
It was almost 15 years ago when I started iBuildMVPs. I built the basic website in a weekend and soon started building minimum viable products for aspiring startup founders. After doing this for a few years, I started a career as a software engineer. I worked for large publicly traded companies, three-person startups, and everything […]
This happened to me today. I tried to change my link image for a link I posted on Twitter, and Twitter did not recognize the change in the image. 1.) You post a link to twitter. You notice the image doesn’t look quite right. 2.) You go and fix the image on your blog. Then […]
I want to write more in 2020. One month into the year, I am still writing every day. As you probably know, I am Creating 12 products this year. Writing helps me gather my thoughts. It helps me organize what I did yesterday and what I plan on doing tomorrow. Coming into this year, I […]
This is really painful to admit this. For years, I considered myself an expert marketer. I got a mobile detailing company off the ground by sheer force of will when I was in college using adwords campaigns. I have a degree in marketing and I graduated with a 3.75. But yet – 10 years after […]
Print design was a new experience for me. Here are some of the key takeaways from my recent experiences. Tools The tool of choice for print design is Adobe Illustrator. I tried numerous other options including source tools and online tools. No other tool gave me the ability to make changes quickly and reliably that […]
When I started on the bookmark project, I didn’t understand how difficult every step in the process would be. Designing a bookmark is hard. Tweaking your design for printers is hard. Determining the type of finish, thickness, and size of a product is hard. Taking product photos is excruciatingly hard. Selling a product online is […]
I launched my first physical product about a week ago. It’s a set of bookmarks with quotes from startup leaders. Here’s the story of how it all came together…
Most of the products I’ve created in my lifetime have been software related products. Software products are inherently iterative. You find bugs. You fix bugs. Customers request features. You build those features. Strategy dictates different features for different markets. You build those different features. I never thought physical products would also be iterative. But they […]