One Year Wiser is a free newsletter that has interviews with founders and product leaders one year after their product launch. Hear directly from founders about what really happens after launch day and the work it takes to grow a business.

Hi all, I’m a product manager at Reddit and spend some of my free time on side projects. I’m excited to share this project with the Product Hunt community. The year following a launch is usually quite challenging, and most products don’t go gangbusters with exponential growth. Instead there are countless tweaks, features developed then abandoned, marketing techniques tested, and long nights spent stressed about the future. This newsletter is dedicated to that first year. I started One Year Wiser, two years ago, because I’m fascinated by all that transpires in the year after launch. So much of startup and tech culture is focused on celebrating launch day. We often focus less on the hard work that goes into iterating the product after launch to find the proverbial product market fit and sustainable growth. If you are interested, be sure to subscribe on my site so you receive my interviews via email. The next interview I’ll be sharing is with @john_li3 about the insights he’s gained while building Vimcal — a badass calendar app that launched on Product Hunt a little over a year ago. Some of my favorite interviews are: - Softr and Mariam Hakobyan: From 5k to 50k users in one year without spending a single dollar on marketing - mmhmm and Phil Libin: A year after their beta launch they announced $100m in funding, the co-founder of Evernote outlines his approach to building impactful products - Pinterest and Annie Ta: The Head of Inclusive Product gives us a glimpse into how Pinterest is working to make their product more inclusive and open - Butter and Jakob Knutzen: How Butter is building a product to help facilitators host virtual workshops that people actually want to attend and beating the countless other companies trying to do the same thing You can also browse my full archive here: www.readoneyearwiser.com/posts Last but not least, a big thanks to you, the Product Hunt community. All of the founders I’ve spoken to have had nothing but good things to say about you and are always brimming with gratitude toward all of the support that they receive as they build their products. If you have feedback or suggestions on how I can make One Year Wiser better, leave a comment here or send me an email at: tyler[at]readoneyearwiser.com. Cheers.

We've been featuring some of Tyler's "One Year Wiser" interviews in Product Hunt Stories over the last year and I'm glad to support him launching them officially here today. As a PM (currently @ Reddit) and founder, his articles always ask thoughtful questions of the makers in our community. The trajectory of startups and products can change drastically after launch(whether it's because of funding, feedback, or something else), and it's awesome to have some surface those lessons.

Congrats Tyler! And thanks for letting me be a part of it! Any themes, patterns or insights jump out from all your interviews?

@kyleighsmith of course! I really enjoyed our conversation about Harold 2.0 and your book. "Any themes, patterns or insights jump out from all your interviews?" Good question and yes there are some. Some of the common themes have been: -Don't use shallow metrics -Make it easy for customers to give you feedback -Don't be afraid to try non scalable things to grow your company -Not all money is the same Here's a post I wrote where I do a deeper dive into the common themes I observed in my first year of interviews.

One Year Wiser

Interviews with experienced founders one year after launch

Interviews with experienced founders one year after launch

One Year Wiser

Interviews with experienced founders one year after launch

Interviews with experienced founders one year after launch

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