Romulo Braga

Product Leader, Mentor & Advisor | 15+ Years Driving Growth, Innovation, and Building High-Performing Teams in Startups & Enterprises 🚀

[Wolf of X @WolfofX]

I'm not crying, you're crying 🧵

1. literally watered up

[Tyler Todt @tyromper]

My dad's a genius.

•Read a book a week for 30 years.
•Socially strong & networks well.
•Can fix anything.
•Great leader.

He NEVER moved up in his company.

I asked him WHY & his answer brought me to tears.

Here’s THE BEST LESSON my dad taught me that you need to hear.

[Emmett Shear @eshear]

Surprising result from my first year at YC: The most illuminating question about a startup idea in the beginning is not “what are you building?” but rather “who is it for?”

[Gokul Rajaram @gokulr]

TIMEBOXING FOR PRODUCT LAUNCHES

In March 2003, we presented the launch plan for Google AdSense to Sergey Brin. I was proud of our well fleshed out plan, with a well designed product featuring self-serve sign-up, ad management, and reporting, supported by metrics and testimonials from beta partners who were already seeing success from it. We proposed a launch date of mid September.

Sergey’s succinct feedback: “No”.

“Sergey, what do you mean? We’re pretty confident we can launch an awesome, differentiated product.”

“The product looks great but it’s taking far too long. Launch it in June.”

“June?! That’s less than three months away!”

Sergey reiterated: “Team, I need this launched by June. I will support you and help you cut through any bottlenecks. I know you can do this.”

Fast forward to 3am on June 18, 2003. Our tech lead pushed code to production and formally launched Google AdSense. The launch was incredibly successful, resulting in one of the fastest growing Internet products to date.

To get the product launched within three months, Sergey employed a technique called timeboxing, imposing a hard deadline (3 months) as a constraint on product launch. At Amazon, Jeff Bezos employed the same technique, telling a SWAT team in late 2004 that he wanted them to launch Amazon Prime before Amazon’s earnings in February.

Why did two of the most consequential advertising / commerce products - ever - both launch through timeboxing? Because it works.

Timeboxing works for three primary reasons. First, it leads to improved prioritization. By limiting the time for a project, it forced us to decide what was most important to work on. I remember cutting large swathes of features and flows in one fell swoop to make the deadline. Ironically, many of those flows later proved redundant and were never built out. And this brings up the second reason - product editing. Cutting features leads to launching a simpler, leaner, better product. This process made me a staunch believer in the power of editing to build great products. Finally, timeboxing creates a sense of urgency, increasing efficiency. Since the launch date was fixed in stone, we couldn’t procrastinate; all timelines were clearly laid out working backwards from the launch date.

In order for timeboxing to work, you need four conditions to hold true.

1. Committed Leader: Sergey backed his talk and adopted our project (as did Bezos at Amazon, I’m sure). He (and Susan Wojcicki, my boss) attended our team meetings, unblocked decisions and helped funnel resources to our team. They came to our war room the night of the launch and stayed with us till the launch at 3am. Timeboxing needs these kind of leaders, who are willing to be in the trenches with the team, invaluable in high pressure situations.
2. Empowered team: Our team had the right skill sets to launch the product. We had the full spectrum of necessary skills, were able to unblock ourselves and were not gated by other teams. If a timeboxed team has to spend a chunk of time waiting for other teams, it’s not going to work.
3. Seemingly unrealistic but not irrational timeline: The timeline that Sergey pulled out of thin air - 3 months to launch - seemed unrealistic, but on closer examination, it wasn’t crazy. A lot of the complex back-end ad targeting and serving work was close to complete, and most of the remaining work was productizing the flows. It did force us to focus on the essential features, the ones that REALLY mattered, which ultimately proved to be a good thing.
4. Sparingly used: The 3-month sprint to launch was exhilarating but also exhausting. The technique needs to be used judiciously and carefully, in high stakes situations.

tl;dr CEOs and leaders: Timeboxing can be an incredibly powerful tool in your arsenal to drive motivation, energy, clarity and to get things done. However, you need a committed leader, an empowered team, a rational (if unrealistic) timeline for it to be effective, and you need to use it thoughtfully.

Go out there and timebox!

[George from 🕹prodmgmt.world @nurijanian]

Grab this Plan on a Page checklist by @johncutlefish 💽

[Peter Yang @petergyang]

Airbnb has a blueprint of their entire customer journey on their office walls.

They then map all product, policy, and service updates to it.

More companies should do this to avoid shipping the org chart.

[Justin Welsh @thejustinwelsh]

Tomorrow is my 103rd consecutive weekly newsletter.

I’ve spent the last 2 years creating a formula that has helped me write it in 75 minutes or less each week.

Here's my simple approach (8 steps) to make newsletter creation a bit more simple and predictable.

Let's Go →

Step 1: Build An Idea Bank

The hardest part of writing a weekly newsletter is coming up with topic ideas.

It’s hugely helpful to capture all your ideas in one place, in real-time as they occur to you.

So my first tip is to always be building your idea bank.

I spend a few minutes every day looking for ideas:

• Scanning YouTube channels
• Reading aggregator newsletters
• Surfing relevant news stories or Reddit

If you aim to jot down 2-3 new ideas every day, you’ll have 15+ fresh ideas to work with every week.

Step 2: Research And Gather Information

After selecting a topic from your idea bank, it's time to do a little digging.

Google is your best friend here, and I wouldn’t overcomplicate it.

Look for a book, tweet, quote, or article that supports your topic idea or offers an interesting perspective.

Step 3: Use A Template

This step is my secret sauce for speed - a newsletter template.
A simple template serves as a roadmap to guide the flow of your newsletter, each and every week.

Keeping my audience in mind, my newsletter flow is simple:

1. What's a big problem?
2. How do most people solve it?
3. Why doesn't it work for them?
4. How might I solve it differently?
5. Recommended action step(s) for readers

This formula ensures I’m always helping my audience do something they’re struggling to do.

Step 4: Write Your Headers

Before you dive into the actual writing, draft your headers.

These headers will serve as your guideposts. You’re essentially building a mini-outline.

This basic outline will prevent you from getting off course and help you stick to your critical points.

I call this step “prepping the page” and it’s been another critical key to my speed.

Step 5: Fill Out The Body

Now it's time to flesh out your newsletter.

Each section should start with an opening line that lays out the intent of the header. What are you about to cover? Prep your reader.

Follow up with a paragraph about your insights, and then suggest some actionable steps your readers can take.

This framework ensures you deliver value and tactics your readers can actually use.

Step 6: Insert Visuals and Research

Next, incorporate the pieces of research you unearthed earlier.

If an image or video can support or underscore your points, add those in too.

Mix it up and keep things interesting for your readers.

Step 7: Write Your Title

With your first draft ready, it's time to craft your title.

A title should be catchy and bold. And it should clearly tell the reader what to expect inside.

An email subject line tester can help you gauge the strength of your title.

Tweak your title until it's enticing enough to generate good open rates.

Step 8: Edit Using a Process

Lastly, it’s important to put your newsletter through an editing process.

Here are the 4 simple questions I scan for when I edit a newsletter:

1. Are my sentences easy to understand?
2. Do I go on any tangents that could be eliminated?
3. Did I add links to relevant resources?
4. Do I deliver what I promised in my headline?

In Summary:

Writing a weekly newsletter can feel really difficult.

But breaking it down into manageable steps makes it not just possible, but actually efficient and enjoyable.

The best part about a newsletter is that you can transform it into 6-12 pieces of content using a simple system.

2 birds. 1 stone.

~~~

If you found this helpful, consider retweeting ♻️ to share with your audience.

[Dickie Bush @dickiebush]

The single most powerful habit for personal growth:

Journaling.

Over the past 5 years, I've journaled every single morning—and along the way, I've:

• Answered over 1,000 questions
• Tested every app, pen, & notebook

But I always return to a pen, paper, and these 5 prompts:

[Romulo Braga @romulobra]

@alexsnorman @AlexH_Johnson Botox Now Pay Later = BNPL…how convenient 😉

[Romulo Braga @romulobra]

20 minutes into #googleio, after a lot of talk on AI and how the world will be better "later this year," the crowd goes crazy when the speaker announces that "Bard now supports dark mode" - for real, dark mode?!!!

[Romulo Braga @romulobra]

@bandanjot Pls share! Thank you

[Romulo Braga @romulobra]

@bandanjot u rock!

[Romulo Braga @romulobra]

@bandanjot PSG

[Kent Beck 🌻 @KentBeck]

I’ve been reluctant to try ChatGPT. Today I got over that reluctance. Now I understand why I was reluctant.

The value of 90% of my skills just dropped to $0. The leverage for the remaining 10% went up 1000x. I need to recalibrate.

[Jon Uleis @MovingToTheSun]

My new favorite thing - Bing's new ChatGPT bot argues with a user, gaslights them about the current year being 2022, says their phone might have a virus, and says "You have not been a good user"

Why? Because the person asked where Avatar 2 is showing nearby

[Romulo Braga @romulobra]

@petergyang Resonates in so many levels 🤩

[Romulo Braga @romulobra]

@mikulaja @sophgoldb @ScarlettSieber @thepsironi @benjaminsiverly as few other options shared by the great @mikulaja ;)

[Romulo Braga @romulobra]

@danieljthomason @PawelHuryn ☝️This

[Romulo Braga @romulobra]

"Keep ignoring feedback and life will keep teaching you the same lesson."

–@JamesClear

[Romulo Braga @romulobra]

@SahilBloom This is really beautiful- and hello from your East Coast follower (VA). As an immigrant, who lives away from family, it’s something I think about many times. That’s why not even one day goes by without me talking with family. Not the same as moving, but we can always do more