Most tech companies break out product management and product marketing into two separate roles: Product management defines the product and gets it built. Product marketing wires the messaging- the facts you want to communicate to customers- and gets the product sold. But from my experience that's a grievous mistake. Those are, and should aways be, one job. There should be no separation between what the product will be and how it will be explained- the story has to be utterly cohesive from the beginning. Your messaging is your product. The story you're telling shapes the thing you're making. I learned story telling from Steve Jobs. I learned product management from Greg Joswiak. Joz, a fellow Wolverine, Michigander, and overall great person, has been at Apple since he left Ann Arbor in 1986 and has run product marketing for decades. And his superpower- the superpower of every truly great product manager- is empathy. He doesn't just understand the customer. He becomes the customer. So when Joz stepped into the world with his next-gen iPod to test it out, he fiddled with it like a beginner. He set aside all the tech specs- except one: battery life. The numbers were empty without customers, the facts meaningless without context. And, that's why product management has to own the messaging. The spec shows the features, the details of how a product will work, but the messaging predicts people's concerns and finds way to mitigate them. - #BUILD Chapter 5.5 The Point of PMs

Most startup CEOs either fear their board or try to impress them. After being a CEO for nearly two decades, I have 3 rules: 1. Never surprise your board with bad news. Ever. If something breaks, do not wait for the board meeting. Call each board member individually. Explain what happened and your plan to solve it. Own it. You can surprise your board with good news. You should never surprise them with bad news. Trust grows when there are no surprises. It evaporates when there are. 2. Never be defensive. Good board members are trying to help. Their feedback comes from a good place. When people try to help and the response is defensiveness a pernicious cycle starts. Don’t. Be. Defensive. Be open to ideas and to criticism. Really think about them. Open your mind to their suggestions. 3. You do not have to take implement their suggestions or do what they say. But you must think very carefully about them. Your obligation is to listen carefully and think thoroughly. Then do what you think best. If their idea is better than yours, do it. If it is not, explain why. And, show them how you thought about it and how you used their ideas to sharpen your thinking. It is unusual for a board member to know your business better than you do. You and your team live it every day. The board brings context, pattern matching, wisdom and governance… Your job is to lead.

We can’t wait for #KubeCon #CloudNativeCon in just a few days! We’ll be joining the #Kubernetes #OpenSource community to dive into the latest in #AI, #ML, and more, and to show off what’s new from Heroku. If you’re attending, we hope you stop by booth 305 to check out our #AIPaaS and #HerokuVibes. All about our presence here: sforce.co/4oIG5o6

UATX will never charge tuition. And we will never take government money. Here's why. Graduates spend decades shouldering debt for hollow credentials. This debt influences every decision they make: What job to take. Where to live. When to marry. When to have children. Some will never start that company. Never take that risk. Never build what they were meant to build. Meanwhile, universities take billions of subsidies from Washington while hoarding billions in endowments. And every year, they raise tuition. Universities get richer. Students get poorer. America gets weaker. Every breakthrough — every invention, every industry, every new frontier — began with a handful of extraordinary individuals free to take extraordinary risks. Washington led men into battle at 22. Carnegie was building his steel empire by 30. Meriwether Lewis charted the American West in his twenties. Sam Colt patented the revolver at 22. Palmer Luckey sold Oculus at 21. Patrick Collison founded Stripe at 22. Michael Dell began his computer business at 19. Fred Smith launched FedEx at 29. None of them spent his twenties paying off student loans. Thanks to a $100 million gift from Jeff Yass — the largest donation since UATX was founded in 2021 — we're breaking the chains. His gift marks the launch of a $300 million campaign to build a university that sets students free. Our bet: Create graduates so exceptional they'll pay it forward when they succeed, financing the tuition of the next generation. When our students build important companies, defend our nation, advance scientific frontiers, build families, and create works that elicit awe, they'll remember who made their excellence possible. And they’ll give back. Other Americans will take notice. Those who believe in unleashing American talent will invest in creating more of it. Every other college gets paid whether students succeed or fail. At UATX, if our graduates don't become essential to American excellence — and if their work doesn't inspire others to fund this mission — we're done. Every dollar raised, every professor hired, every course taught must produce extraordinary graduates — or we fail. We've designed our own constraints: no room for bloated bureaucracies, no frivolous departments, no administrative empire-building. Our survival depends on one thing only: graduating leaders free to pursue American greatness. The University of Austin rejects the credentialing cartel. We admit purely on test scores, rank every student, and fail those who can't cut it. The nation's brightest are coming to Austin — transferring from Carnegie Mellon, turning down UChicago, leaving Columbia — to wrestle with great books, master AI and data science, and start real companies on campus. They're choosing a university dedicated to excellence instead of collecting hollow credentials elsewhere. Jeff Yass has shown us what betting on America’s future looks like. Now we invite you to join him.