Matt Crystal

I watched Elena Verna (Head of Growth at Lovable) speak at #ProductCon AI yesterday, and one idea stuck with me: “Your brand can be your moat.” 👀 Not just a layer of polish or a marketing wrapper, but a true product differentiator. One that makes your experience easier, more delightful, more trustworthy. One that users actively choose, even if alternatives exist. We often talk about brand like it’s a billboard or a campaign, but increasingly, brand is shaped through product. It’s the little moments: ✅ how fast the product loads ✅ how support speaks to you ✅ how copy is written ✅ how you feel when you finish a task In that sense, building brand isn’t something the marketing team “does”. It’s a product and growth lever, and a compounding one at that. The takeaway for me: If you’re not actively building your brand into your product, you’re probably leaving defensibility on the table. #brand #moat #lovable

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With all the crazy acquisitions last week, we didn’t want to be left out of the party. Excited that Prefab has joined Reforge! AI has created the opportunity to “collapse the stack,” as Scott Belsky has said and enable “full-stack builders” as Tomer Cohen has written about. The result will be not only increased speed from Insight to Launch but, more importantly, better products. Since early this year, Reforge has been on a mission to build this platform: First, with the launch of Reforge Insights, which aggregates, analyzes, and acts on your customer data. Next, with the creation of Reforge Research, which helps you capture new insights with AI-powered user interviews and surveys. Most recently, with the closed beta of Reforge Build , which helps you explore and prototype ideas for your existing product. Prefab will help us fill in the final step: Launch. Launches are the last mile between your team’s best ideas and your customer’s experience. The entire Prefab team has joined us. I’m extra excited to reunite with Jeff Dwyer from our HubSpot days. In the coming months, Prefab’s feature flag and config system will be rebranded and integrated into the Reforge product suite, but you can start using it today.  More info 👇 https://lnkd.in/eqkryPdi

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Years ago, I flubbed an interview with Stripe's cofounder John Collison. I was fresh off a tough job. The things I was still processing in that conversation killed any chance I had: At the time, Stripe wasn’t even sure they wanted product management. I made it easy for them to pass. Looking back, I wouldn’t have hired that version of me either. After interviewing thousands of people across functions, I often see the same patterns. They make me cringe at the obvious ways I was shooting myself in the foot. 1. Showing up wounded. We're all human and have been through things. Sure you can use that to be real and show you’ve learned. But more often it looks like you’re still processing. Why draft a player who’s still injured over one at full health? 2. Lack of (grounded) confidence. If you don't know you're good, why will someone else? Don’t mistake this for hubris. That loses too. Instead, be clear about what you bring, based on real results. 3. Energy is contagious. People mirror what they see. If you’re curious and excited, you’re more likely to get the same back and they’ll like you more. 4. The biggest mistake: not letting them know you want the job. Candidates think playing hard to get is strategic. Of course you’re evaluating them too. Good people have options. But everyone wants to be chosen. Literally saying "I want this job" increases your odds of getting it. Share what excites you about the role. Be enthusiastic about the parts you love. Nobody wants to work with someone who doesn't want to work with them. You already know all of this. You've probably given the same advice to someone else. But if you’re not landing your dream job, you’re still making these mistakes yourself. Getting out of your own way is harder than it sounds. Trust me, I’ve been there.

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When I joined Amazon in 1999, it was a high-growth startup with little structure. In particular, our early attempts at annual planning were clumsy. Here are the top 8 pitfalls we have observed along the way: 1) Setting goals but not tracking them Setting goals is easy, but tracking progress with real data requires diligence. Too many companies set ambitious targets but don’t have a systematic way to inspect whether they’re on track. At Amazon, we built Weekly and Monthly Business Reviews to track inputs and detect variance early. 2) No processes for when things change They say that no plan survives contact with reality. New data emerges, unexpected challenges arise, etc. If you don’t have a mechanism for course correction, your plan will quickly become unhelpful. 3) Setting goals without understanding dependencies and resources Great planning surfaces resource constraints and interdependencies. If a team can’t tell you precisely what resources they need from other departments or third parties, then the odds of achieving the plan plummet. 4) The goals are too top-down When goals are imposed from above without ground-level context, they are often unrealistic or misaligned with the reality of the work. At Amazon, we expected each team to build a bottom-up plan that reflected its realities, and then to reconcile that with top-down guidance. 5) The goals are too bottom-up Conversely, when every team creates a plan in isolation without executive guidance, you lose the benefit of central direction and coordinated prioritization. This often leads to wasted effort where teams invest weeks building plans that are rejected upon executive review. 6) There’s a lack of executive review and engagement A good plan is a contract. It should be developed by the teams and then carefully inspected and adjusted by the Executive team. 7) There’s a lack of alignment between teams Misaligned plans create friction. Dependencies get missed, timelines don’t sync up, and teams work against one another. 8) Teams and Execs don’t make the tough prioritization decisions Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do. But most teams and Execs fall into the bad habit of creating long lists of initiatives that can't be achieved with their limited resources. Without good prioritization, everything and nothing are priorities. When Amazon was scaling from a few to dozens of business units, we faced all these challenges. It took a deliberate effort to build mechanisms that forced clarity, tradeoffs, and alignment. If your company’s Operating Plan feels like an annual exercise in bureaucracy and wishful thinking rather than a useful blueprint, it’s likely because you’re falling into one or more of these traps. Fixing them is possible, but it requires a willingness to adopt new mechanisms and stick to them. You can learn more about how to do this in our brand new course, Operating Plan Mastery: https://lnkd.in/gVQB3Qj9

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