In episode 699, Rob Walling chats with fan favorite Derrick Reimer, the founder of SavvyCal, about scaling products tastefully. Derrick offers his perspective on maintaining a tidy UX and deciding which features to implement. They also cover best practices for maintaining knowledge bases, changelogs, and documentation. As a bonus, Rob and Derrick offer podcasting advice to their past selves.

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Topics we cover: 

• 2:35 – Establish design systems and language as you scale your product
• 8:36 – Building out a front-end directory to maintain consistency
• 10:17 – Truly understand how customers are moving through your product
• 16:28 – Naming convention dilemmas, industry norms vs. accuracy
• 19:22 – Hiding product features with feature flags
• 23:04 – Scaling new products that serve different verticals
• 31:12 – Best practices for maintaining a product knowledge base
• 37:11 – Bonus: What advice would you give to your prior self starting a podcast?

Links from the Show: 

• Register for MicroConf US in Atlanta, April 2024
• The SaaS Playbook
• Derrick Reimer (@derrickreimer) I X
• SavvyCal 
• Allen D King (@allendking) | X
• FunJoin
• FullStory
• Episode 681 | Why Launching a Second Product is Usually a Bad Idea
• Help Scout Knowledge Base
• Headway Changelog
• CleanShot X

If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!

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