Ian Livingstone

Convoy v24.4.1 is out 🎉 Lots of features I'm excited about - You can now stream, transform, and send webhooks directly from our Message Broker sources (Kafka, etc.). Previously, you needed to transform the event first before publishing it on the topic Convoy reads from. Now, you can plug Convoy directly into your CDC pipeline! h/t to Matt Ober for being beta testers! - A community member ( Nitzan Goldfeder) contributed a RabbitMQ source! This is exactly why we like open-source! - We re-implemented our rate limiter to work on PostgreSQL (this is part of our continuous effort to phase out Redis, Long-Live PostgreSQL) And a lot more bug fixes. :) Link to the full post in the comments!

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Great take from Orel Zilberman - Slack is killing your productivity. Derrick Schommer and I heard this message while doing ICP interviews. DevHuddle has features available (and some on the roadmap) to fix the interruption-tax of async communication tools that are treated as sync communication tools. It helps to have a culture of truly async collaboration to increase everyone's velocity. https://lnkd.in/eypeaVXV

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Last week, I sat down with Matt Bernier, a product leader at Temporal Technologies, focused on developer experience to talk about what he's learned about building trust between product & engineering and how to operate on pricing & packaging. Here's ~2 minutes on the challenges product managers have to be aware of when leading pricing & packaging initiatives. I loved this conversation, and we’ll release the entire interview soon on youtube. 3 ideas have stayed with me from this interview. 1. The power of analogy to foster trust and collaboration between teams, especially between product & engineering teams.🤝 2. The criticality of considering the developer experience when architecting SaaS for discoverability.🖥️ 3. The product manager's responsibility to deeply understand how their business grows — from how sales reps are incentivized, to margin objectives, to land & expand opportunities.📈 Matt has had an incredibly textured career as an operator, impacting product at companies across a wide range of industries: Communications (SendGrid, Twilio), Recruiting (Technical Integrity), Martech (mParticle), and application development (SpottedKoi, Delta Systems), and mobile device management (Cloudsync Technology, Good Technology). What always stands out to me about Matt is his ability to methodically improve processes via a commitment to being a great collaborator in technical environments. #pricing #packaging #b2bsaas #monetization

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Not many people know the story of "why" Zenhub exists...so here it goes👇 Back in 2014, the team that would come to be "Zenhub" was a scrappy group of devs and PMs working at a product studio up in Vancouver. When clients are paying you to do work, they (rightfully so) want to understand where that work is at and “when is this going to be done?” The problem was that we could never answer that question… No matter what project management solution we tried (and believe me, we tried them all), we kept coming back to the same core problem. Context switching... Ie. our devs always felt like they were being forced away from where they were working from (ie. GitHub) in order to update our PM tools. So they didn't update them. Needless to say, this wasn't leading to a productive relationship with our clients. So our devs got together on a weekend to try and fix the problem. What they hacked together was a simple Chrome extension to bring a Trello-esque "task board" into GitHub. And as they say, the rest was history. Well, not really, but we’ll save that story for another set of posts… Reducing context switching has been core to our mission from day one. But while GitHub was the home for teams back in 2014, that's changed. Today that home is Slack. While I know people have a lot of mixed feelings about Slack, it has (for better or worse) become where “work” happens in most modern organizations. That’s why today, we’re announcing early access for an entirely new Slack integration that’s going to be a game-changer for how teams use Zenhub. While platforms evolve, that idea of “reducing context switching” has remained a constant, and we’re excited to double down on that mission with Slack. With this new integration teams will be able to create, plan, and track work in Zenhub all without having to leave a Slack channel. If you want to get hands on with what we’re building and join our early access program, check out the link in the comments below. #slack #github #developers #agile #scrum #projectmanagement #devex

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Are you ready to unlock the full potential of Product Operations? 🔍 Only 2 weeks left until Product Ops: 101 - Getting Started with Product Operations on October 30, 2024, led by Denise Tilles! With only 2 spots left, this hands-on workshop will give you practical tools to implement and scale Product Ops strategies. By the end, you'll have a clear roadmap to drive better outcomes within your organization. Secure your spot now: https://lnkd.in/exBcs2V5 🎟️ #productops101 #productoperations #productmanagement #workshop

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𝗔𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗜𝗻𝗱𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘆-𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰 𝘀𝗼𝗳𝘁𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀! We're conducting a benchmarking study to define success metrics specifically for vertical software companies. 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀: Existing SaaS benchmarks just don't cut it for your unique industry needs. This research will provide the data-driven insights to measure and optimize your vertical software business. 𝗖𝗮𝗻 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗛𝗲𝗹𝗽? A few minutes of your time can make a big difference.

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How does a Senior Product Manager go from layoff to landing a Staff Product Manager role with a significant compensation increase? Join us as we chat with Nora Hughes, a seasoned product manager with a decade of experience in the tech industry. Nora shares her journey from being laid off in October to navigating the challenging job market. She talks about her initial struggles, including the overwhelm of job searching during the holidays, dealing with COVID-19, and the loneliness that came with it. Nora discusses how she discovered the Intentional Job Search (IJS) program and her thought process before joining. She highlights the program's structure and quality and how it helped her regain focus, prioritize effectively, and build confidence in her job search strategy. In this candid conversation, Nora also reveals her aha moments, including the value of peer interviews and the comprehensive support from the IJS community. She explains how the program's personalized coaching and strategic guidance were pivotal in helping her land a dream role as a Staff Product Manager in AI and ML at a large public company, achieving a significant pay raise and working alongside best-in-class professionals. If you're curious about how the IJS program can transform your job search and career trajectory, this video is a must-watch. Nora's story is a testament to the power of structured support and intentional effort in achieving career success. Key Moments in this Episode ======================== 00:00 - About Nora 01:00 - Challenges before IJS 02:45 - How Nora decided to join the program 07:30 - Nora's experience in IJS 17:30 - Negotiations 20:00 - Her message for you https://lnkd.in/eHEBAxpQ

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As Entrepreneurs'​ Organization Toronto's 2024/2025 Membership Chair, we’re hosting an exclusive event on October 9th with the renowned “Rapid Growth Guy,” Matthew Pollard, and I wanted to invite fellow entrepreneurs to experience what EO Canada is all about. This is a rare chance to "test-drive" Entrepreneurs'​ Organization, witness the caliber of the speakers we bring in, and get a sense of the powerful network behind it. Being a part of EOTO has been a game-changer for me, both personally and professionally. It’s not just about scaling my business—it’s about the incredible community of like-minded entrepreneurs who continuously challenge me to think bigger and do better. The support, the resources, and the opportunities for growth have been invaluable. If you're running a business with $1M+ in revenue and aiming to scale to new heights, this event is for you. Matthew will share game-changing strategies that can help you unlock rapid growth. I can’t recommend EO highly enough—it’s been transformative for me, and I’d love to see more entrepreneurs benefit from it. If you’re ready to grow, now’s the time to apply! Apply now to join us at this exclusive event! https://try.eotoronto.ca #Entrepreneurs #Entrepreneurship #GrowthMindset #RapidGrowth #BusinessTransformation #BusinessSuccess #MatthewPollard #EOTO #EOExperience #EOEvents #TestDriveEO

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Checkout is just a form. How hard could it be, right? 🤷🏻‍♂️ That's not wrong, but it turns out that the answer is "very". Once you account for all the business requirements (how things are sold, bundled, paid for, ..., delivered, etc.), the byzantine landscape of regulatory and compliance requirements around the world, and the operational scale of serving spiky traffic, ..., it's a challenging service to deliver and operate at scale. Checkout is complex. Shopify makes it simple. Fun conversation with Benjamin Popper and Cassidy Williams: https://lnkd.in/e-3aDwJu

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Today, I’m thrilled to announce our ‘24 Fall Release at Brex 🍂 With this release, we’re putting our money where our mouth is, by introducing a new Impact Dashboard that shows you real-time data on the value you’re getting from Brex — directly within the product. Across spend controls, time savings, rewards and yield, you’ll also find personalized recommendations on how to automate more manual work, and help every dollar of spend go further. Every feature we build at Brex (including this release) is designed to do one thing — make every dollar count toward your mission. We felt this was a critically important north star, because it means founders and finance leaders can spend confidently on Brex, knowing every dollar is making a clear, discernible difference in growing their business. There is so much incredible work to talk about — but here are a few key highlights: 📈 A new Impact Dashboard with detailed, real-time metrics on expense policy compliance, time saved through automation, and total rewards and yield earned. And more importantly, suggestions on how to further optimize spend to earn more. 🌎 Local-currency bill payments in 50+ countries by ACH, check, or wire from a Brex business account, with zero FX markups. 🔎 A smarter search experience that helps you find exactly what you’re looking for in fewer clicks, so you can spend less time in Brex. 🔥 50+ new features that make it easier to spend smarter, including vendor migration, a new Sage Intacct integration, improved bookkeeping access, simplified accounting, card integrations, and so much more. Link in the comments to learn more.

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🚀 Why Shopify Hydrogen is the Future of E-commerce 🚀 In the fast-paced world of e-commerce, the need for speed, flexibility, and unique customer experiences has never been higher. That's where Shopify Hydrogen comes in. If you’re running an online store or thinking about building one, here’s why Hydrogen should be your next move: 🔗 Headless Commerce Flexibility: Hydrogen empowers developers to create custom storefronts that are no longer tied to Shopify's default themes. Whether you want to provide a completely unique shopping experience or integrate with other systems, the freedom is unparalleled. ⚡️ Speed & Performance: Speed is crucial for conversions, and Hydrogen's server-side rendering and React-based framework deliver lightning-fast performance—giving your users a seamless experience, reducing cart abandonment, and increasing sales. 🎨 Custom Experiences: Shopify Hydrogen allows for the creation of bespoke, interactive shopping experiences. Personalization can lead to increased customer loyalty, higher engagement, and, ultimately, higher revenue. 🌎 Global Scalability: Hydrogen is built with modern technologies, ensuring that your e-commerce store can scale globally without performance drops, offering a world-class shopping experience regardless of where your customers are. 🛠️ Developer-Friendly: With React, Vite, and Shopify's GraphQL APIs, Hydrogen provides a framework that's both powerful and easy to work with. It reduces development time while giving you total creative control over the design and functionality of your store. 💡 Why Now?: The future of e-commerce is about adaptability and customer-centric experiences. Hydrogen provides the tools to create exactly what your customers need—without the limits of traditional platforms. Thinking of building or rebuilding your online store? Now’s the time to level up with Shopify Hydrogen. Let’s discuss how this cutting-edge technology can revolutionize your e-commerce business! #ShopifyHydrogen #Ecommerce #HeadlessCommerce #WebDevelopment #CustomerExperience #DigitalTransformation #ReactJS #FutureOfEcommerce #Shopify #ShopifyAPP #Hydrogen

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When you're not in the board room, you're always wondering, "What's going on in there?". I have now worked with seven companies where I'd regularly present to a board, a mixture of PE and VC-led, and it's almost always centered around a few key topics. If you're meeting your numbers: - what's your future forecast  - how are you going to continue to grow - how will you grow faster and more efficient  - update on money in the bank and spend If you're not meeting your numbers (along with the things I mentioned above): - what is your plan to turn things around and meet your numbers (this includes new logo, back-to-base sales, and churn reduction) - what resources can they offer to help - do you have the right players in the right seat This is an oversimplification because many nuances are at play, but this is generally it. While board meetings can be stressful, almost every board I've worked with wants to be helpful. Of course, their interest is, first and foremost, that the business is healthy and growing, so there's always that undertone, but overall, they want to help. After all, they are guardians of the investments they make on behalf of others and have to report back on their performance. Think of them like they are CSMs for their investors (the folks that give them money). They need to get a great return on the investment they made on their behalf.

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This is an interesting article from SaaStr sharing data from ICONIQ Capital about revenue per employee. “These are useful yardsticks for folks scaling: At less than $25m ARR, actually SaaS start-ups aren’t any more efficient than in 2017-2019, at $130,000 per employee / FTE. Although that’s still more efficient than the Boom Times. At $25m-$100m ARR, SaaS scale-ups are about 25% more efficient than they used to be, at $172,000 in revenue per employee / FTE. Time to get real at $25m ARR, apparently 😉 And at $100m+ ARR, they are 20% more efficient then they used to be, at $249,000 in revenue per employee. On the path to the $300k+ we see in public SaaS leaders.” At Worksmith in October, our annualized revenue per employee was $238K. https://lnkd.in/gqkkpjEW

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Two posts I shared with my team this week about LLM's impact on SaaS. SaaS has always been about solving a problem. Engineers I interview often ask me "Why spend so much time on the LLM stuff?". Aka, "Why are we working on all the hard stuff that is barely working, when there's plenty of problems to be solved the old way?". Brett Queener's tweet about the UI. He talks about a world where most of a software product's user interface will be a prompt or a recommendation. "..its far better user experience than forcing people to hunt and peck across your tabs, list views, form views and dashboard for them to get done what they want to. It also means that what you used to compete on / differentiate on traditionally (I have these capabilities / better easier to use screens / yada yada yada) are kinda irrelevant" Matt Turck's LinkedIn post, "Is SaaS dead?" SaaS vendors are currently perceived as “last generation” despite best efforts to add AI quickly. Customers trying to build themselves, since it's pretty easy to get started. He says what happens next: "* customers realize that “build” is a headache, not always good * OpenAI / Azure etc can’t / doesn’t want to build hundreds of problem specific/ vertical specific apps * Takes time, but legacy and new SaaS companies truly become AI-first (not just marketing), abstract away complexity of deploying LLMs * macro environment eventually rebounds * AIaaS becomes the new SaaS - what is old is new" Both are linked in the comments. #who-moved-my-cheese

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Who better to talk about Shopify's trajectory and future than Benjamin Lang • OLY.? In our 50th podcast episode, I had an extremely interesting conversation with Benjamin about a lot of awesome topics that are close to my heart, and I can't be more excited about what's happening in the Shopify ecosystem. For example: • B2B features • From only online commerce to commerce in the more broad sense of the word • The focus on TCO • Customer centricity I'm very grateful I had the chance to talk to Benjamin, and I hope we can do it again some time in the near future as things are moving so fast. Thanks a lot for your time and effort Benjamin! #deardigital #shopify #podcast

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Coaching. Get One. Enough said. The gap between a bright idea and successful execution can be daunting. Staying centered and on track is tough, especially when navigating the complexities of real-world challenges. At Shopify, I was fortunate to experience the power of coaching early on. Even the most skilled technical developers need support when tackling the human side of their work. This is where coaching steps in, helping bridge the gap to successful execution by revealing underlying problems, identifying ways to overcome them, and developing strategies to stay on course. While I hadn’t planned on it, I ended up pursuing my professional coaching certification with Integral Coaching Canada. Although I never aimed to make coaching a source of income, it paid off in countless ways. Leading teams, supporting coworkers, and my own personal growth have benefited tremendously from coaching’s ability to help break through challenges faster. If you don’t have a coach, find one! I highly recommend Theresa Nguyen from Clifden Consulting. Some areas I’ve personally worked on with others include: • Entrepreneurship: maintaining focus in chaos. • Learning to Say No: Respectfully setting boundaries to make space for creative thinking • Advocating in the Boardroom: Gaining confidence to effectively advocate for oneself • Managing FOMO and Burnout: Understanding the deeper reasons for pushing oneself past the limit, and finding ways to create balance. If you’re feeling stretched or stuck, a coach could be the support you need.

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Looking for work at an org who cares? Bright + Early's partners are hiring! This week’s newsletter edition was a roundup of Bright + Early clients, current and former, who are looking to add to their teams. Whether they’re building deep tech, revolutionizing the internet, leading in the arts or making a true difference for vulnerable people, what they have in common is a commitment to creating human, inclusive places to work. In fact, we'll only work with teams who do. Note: Though they’re all B+E partner organizations, we aren’t part of the hiring teams or process for any of these roles, so be sure to apply directly! Passionate about health and all things remote? Maple (getmaple.ca), a team working on bringing high-quality video medicine to Canadians, is hiring a People and Culture Manager and HR Coordinator, and other roles. Love helping people party plan? The legendary Drake Hotel Properties is looking for an Events Sales Manager, as well as hospitality staff for both its Toronto and Prince Edward County locations. Calling all sales pros! Voiceflow, a scaleup building conversational AI tools, is looking for a Senior Enterprise Account Executive. Passionate about making a difference for folks experiencing homelessness? Blue Door is hiring a Resource Development Manager.  Lillio (formerly HiMama) is hiring a People Operations Associate, Staff Software Engineer, and Customer Support roles, and many other roles. Are you bilingual and wanting to make a difference? Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking is hiring for its hotline response team. Bring your passion for the arts to Luminato Festival Toronto as a Production Coordinator. Want to see more women elected in Canada? Equal Voice is hiring a bilingual Communications Coordinator. Want to build robots? Promise Robotics is hiring Software Engineers in Toronto and a Production Lead for its team in Edmonton. Know a Software Developer that’s passionate about DevOps security? boostsecurity.io is likely the team for them. Reclaim the internet (and work on the future of it) at one of Mozilla's many open positions. Stay gold by joining jewelry disruptor Mejuri They have roles across everything from retail to real estate across North America. Help bring the magic of baseball to more kids by joining the Jays Care Foundation team as a Senior Manager of Major Gifts or a Grants Manager. Join the dream team (get it?) at Endy. They’re looking for a Junior Accountant and a bilingual Customer Success hire. Petition Change.org to be their next hire in UX, Product Management, Engineering, or Marketing. Want to hear about future roles with B+E organizations? Sign up for our newsletter here. It's chock-full of resources on building companies that care, and we're starting up a hiring session in each edition. https://lnkd.in/gjCmit3a

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This weekend's outage was crazy because of how preventable it was. Feature flags can stop things like this from happening in a couple of really simple ways. 1. Kill switches. Put the feature behind a feature flag that lets your product team quickly shut off a feature when you notice an issue. 2. Canary releases. This is what we’d recommend in situations like the CrowdStrike one. Instead of rolling out the feature to all Windows machines, do a progressive delivery that targets a percentage of users. Connect the feature flag data with observability tools to see how it’s performing in production before deciding if you increase the percentage or not. If something does go wrong, tools like Dynatrace and Grafana Labs can show which machines are impacted (Dynatrace have written about how to do this) With feature flags, stuff like this becomes really simple. There’s lots of talk about this right now. If you have questions DM me or anyone at Flagsmith #CrowdStrike #featureflags #observability #canaryrelease

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I'll be posting weekly goals, learnings, and progress on Linkedin for ContactOut and Athena.vc moving forward. I was doing this weekly on our internal Slack, but making this public: 15th July: Last week: Monday - meetings Tuesday - meet with guillaume, run athena ama & focus group wednesday - on break thursday - qa unlimited plans, talk to 2 deeptech founders, 1 podcast interview, finish reading book of founder of thiel fellowship friday - qa unlimited plans, meet michael gibson founder of thiel fellowship, also Nicolas Gaume saturday - re-read zero to one What did I learn: Focus on getting founder to focus on deep tech. There's not enough progress being made on science and core breakthroughs, most of the developments in recent years is software only. Atoms not bits. Some interesting areas include: biotech: longevity, crispr, energy: fusion, fission. computing: AI, better processor designs, quantum computing. physics: photonics, plasma physics. Major tech breakthroughs usually start with small teams of 1-3 in bedrooms. e.g steve wozniak single handled built the apple 2, all hardware and software. javascript was a part time summer project. special relatively was Einstein's part time project whilst working as a desk clerk. There's a 12 year old who made a nuclear fusion device in his bedroom. People who have achieved great things are not smarter than you. They have just chosen 100000x bigger problems. and bigger problems are easier to solve than you think given a timeline in 10-30 years. Key is to just work on big problems and keep at it. Michael Patrick Gibson from thiel fellowship said that they didn't scale it up because people wouldn't know what to do with the money, and the way to scale it up is to have milestones. Which reinforces what we're thinking at athena.vc with $100 goals for talking to users, studying competitors, talking to mentors etc thiel learnings: https://lnkd.in/gUiGiag5 yc learnings: https://lnkd.in/g3D8__Q2 Next week: QA and release unlimited plans continue reading YC content: startupschool, founders at work book, zero to one write up founders curriculum

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