Akash Bhadange

In recent years, I am noticing a significant change in how products are conceived, designed, and marketed. This shift is mostly because consumers today prioritize not just the functionality of a product but its aesthetics and user experience as well. Design can be a biggest differentiator for your product from the rest. Consumer products has taken a leap of design in recent time. They are well crafted from day zero. But what brought this change?

I have been noticing a growing trend in designers spending a lot of time working on fictional case studies. Where they come up with an imaginary solution, for some imaginary problem. It's useless, mostly! If you want to be a UI designer, go ahead and do that. No issues. But if you're training yourself to be a product designer—continue reading. We all know how difficult the job market is right now. Layoff news coming in from all sides. Early stage companies are hiring, but very conservatively.

The day we started Peerlist, Yogini and I had promised each other that we will never hire prematurely. To this date, we’re extremely cautious and conscious while adding a new team member to the team, even if it’s a consultant role. We believe that a small, tightly-knit team can work wonders for an early-stage startup.

By Akash Bhadange in Product — Apr 23, 2024 Yesterday we organized tech talks at our Peerlist HQ. During the conversation, I was asked, being a small team how we prioritize what to build next. Over the period of last 2 years, we developed a very simple prioritization framework which we use internally. First thing first — I don't claim that this is the best feature/product prioritization framework. It's not fancy. But it works. At least for us.

We are builders. We always wants to build something. We have unlimited ideas. Which creates confusion. Confusion to the level that we end up building nothing! Happens to every one of us where we can't decide on what to build. Maybe as a startup idea or even a simple side project. I see a lot of posts on Peerlist as well, where people ask for ideas. My simple answer is always — build something you would use every day. This statement is not mine by the way. I read it, and it stuck with me.

We applied to YC once with the idea of Peerlist. Obviously did not get in. But that didn’t stop us from applying PG’s principles while building and growing Peerlist. I don’t need to explain how great PG’s writing is—it’s like the startup world’s bible. But do you know why it feels so relatable? Because it’s simple. And it’s actionable.