Frequent Product Updates

"How did your startup grow so fast?" I've been getting that question a lot, and I believe it comes down to a single word: momentum. We tried to codify momentum and came up with a new concept called... >> The Heartbeat Framework Getting momentum is extremely hard, and losing it is very easy. As makers, we not only have to ship software. We have to ship and talk about it. We have to push new content constantly if we want to create a feeling of “always shipping”. That's why we think about our efforts as a heartbeat. It's a rhythm that we follow to expose internal momentum to the outside world. Just like a heartbeat, there are big peaks followed by small peaks. It's important to have a balance between them, but the beat must be always present for people to know we are "alive." In contrast, if there's a flat line, it means we are "dead" and don't have momentum anymore. The framework is divided into: A) Launch Weeks B) Mini-Launches C) Change log D) Blog E) Customer story F) Social post A) Launch Weeks 🩺 Frequency: 2-3x/year Launch Weeks are the big peaks. It's when we launch 5 new features in 5 days. As the biggest "sign of life", launch weeks are often the most impactful way we share our momentum. But we are also careful not to do them too frequently, since they require a heavy "cost" from the team. 👉 Real-life example: https://lnkd.in/dFVU7_xv B) Mini-Launch 🩺 Frequency: 4-5x/year Mini-Launches are small wins that are worth sharing in a more detailed way, but don't require the same level of planning and coordination as Launch Weeks. 👉 Real-life example: https://lnkd.in/ge4mDz6q C) Change log 🩺 Frequency: 1-2x/month As we update the product, we post regular change logs to highlight how the product is evolving. A fun exercise is to create an internal streak to motivate the team, so you don't miss a single week/month without shipping. 👉 Real-life example: https://lnkd.in/d3pPvTDw D) Blog 🩺 Frequency: 1-2x/month There's nothing more telling than going to a company blog and seeing the last post from 1 year ago. 👉 Real-life example: https://lnkd.in/dr7TKiiu E) Customer stories 🩺 Frequency: 1-2x/month We exist to serve real developers, so it's important for us to talk to our customers and share their experiences. These are not only crucial for attracting new customers, but also to keep the team motivated with real stories of how our product is helping people. 👉 Real-life example: https://lnkd.in/gUmjHi84 F) Social posts 🩺 Frequency: 1x/day We try to be very active in only a few places. We found that X and LinkedIn are the most effective places for us to be at this moment. 👉 Real-life example: this post ;) Startups are all about momentum, so make sure you don't lose it once you find it. I hope this was helpful.

I've written dozens of product updates only to have stakeholders complain that they didn’t know what was going on. Turns out, I was making a few basic errors. I grew tired of writing updates that nobody read. Five reasons why stakeholders aren't reading your updates: 1️⃣ Too long | Everyone is busy. Respect their time by keeping your updates easy-to-read and short. Allow links for people to deep-dive if they want. 2️⃣ Too much jargon | One of my clients once sent a release note that read "Created User DMS pipeline for data extraction from Platform DB". If your PMs don't know what it means, your marketers definitely won't. Make sure your updates are in user language, not technical language. 3️⃣ Wrong channel | The people who needed to read my update were getting over a hundred emails a day, yet I was sending emails. Make sure you're sharing your update in places that work well for them. 4️⃣ Everyone everywhere all at once | How many product teams are there at your company? Is every team sharing updates in different ways at different times, or is it coordinated together? Having everyone's updates be in the same place at the same time makes it easier to follow. 5️⃣ No context | At first, I would just provide status updates. What I learned was that if I included the WHY behind what we were building, I got fewer repeat questions about what I had written. Addressing these five issues will go a long way towards making sure everyone knows what the product team is up to. What are the best methods that you've used to get everyone on the same page?

Executive: “We’ve got a new product update—let’s get a press release out!” Communicator: “That’s exciting news. Thanks for sending the background on the update. Before we jump into a press release, let’s take a moment to define the broader goal. Are we looking for media coverage, customer engagement, or driving another key business objective?” Executive: “We’d like some media attention, but mainly, we want to show our customers and partners the value of this update.” Communicator: “Makes sense. How does this product update tie into our bigger business goals? Are we focused on boosting customer loyalty, positioning ourselves as industry leaders, or proving our commitment to innovation?” Executive: “Exactly. We want to highlight our continuous innovation and build customer trust.” Communicator: “Perfect. For that, a press release might not be the most effective tool, especially if the update doesn’t have a strong news hook. Instead, I suggest a multi-pronged strategy. One idea is to build a narrative around how this product update solves real customer problems. We can develop blog content and social media posts with customer testimonials, and, to strengthen the story, we could include some internal data to show the measurable impact this update has had. Data is powerful, proving that the update is already delivering results.” Executive: “I like the sound of using data. That would add credibility.” Communicator: “Exactly! Numbers speak louder than words. Combining a customer success story with data backing up the product’s performance will give us a more compelling narrative for a media pitch. Targeting industry-specific outlets with this type of pitch increases the chances of media pickup. We could send personalized communications or host a briefing for other key stakeholders to show how the update aligns with our long-term strategy and delivers measurable value. That way, we’re not just telling them about the product—we’re proving its impact with data.” Executive: “That feels like a much stronger approach than just a press release. Let’s do it.” Communication isn’t just about sending out a press release. It’s about crafting the right strategy to achieve business goals—whether through a media pitch that includes customer testimonials and data or personalized communications to engage key stakeholders. We are experts at using the right tools to deliver impactful, measurable results. 💡 #StrategicCommunications #PublicRelations #CorporateCommunications #ProductUpdate #DataDriven #CustomerEngagement #MediaRelations

We rebuild core AiSDR workflows every 6-9 months. When I realized this today I was shocked, but it's true. We've built our lead search and enrichment engine, made 3 iterations on it and in 9 months completely rebuilt it from the scratch. Two months in and I already know what we need to add. Last month we've completely rebuilt our onboarding workflow. Now we are rebuilding our outreach sequence engine. These are not features. They are fundamental parts of the product, but we need to update them so often for one simple reason. To keep up with what's possible with AI. If you don't do that - your product will become obsolete in 1-2 years. I believe that the only way to win these days is to build a product that makes the most powerful features of the latest AI models instantly useful for your customer audience. This means that: (1) your product must be designed to switch between models fast; (2) your product and engineering team must move extremely fast to rethink and improve workflows as new AI capabilities come out. Challenging, but I am grateful to have an amazing team at AiSDR, who can do that.

Keeping up with HubSpot updates is hard. That’s not a problem to solve. It’s a responsibility to own. Over the past two years, the volume of product updates has become unsustainable for most people. But if you call yourself a HubSpot Specialist or CRM expert, then it doesn’t matter how frenetic the pace is. Your job is to stay sharp. Your clients, your team, and your reputation depend on it. You don’t have to do it alone and you definitely don’t have to do it manually. Here’s what the ecosystem is already offering: 👉 Kyle Jepson and Max Cohen run the Monday morning briefing on LinkedIn: a weekly walkthrough of what changed and why it matters. Context-rich, conversational, and always worth your time. 👉 The HubSpot Tips and Tricks page curates updates from around the ecosystem. 👉 HubSpot’s in-app product updates feed is still one of the most direct and relevant channels, especially for admins. 👉 They’re also experimenting with AI-powered email roundups based on your hub and subscription level. If you're an individual contributor in-house, you probably don't need to chase every update. If you're an admin, you should be checking the feed weekly. If you're in the partner ecosystem or implementation work, you need to be up to date to the day. And if you're in a team, set up a shared channel where one person keeps everyone else informed. Just make sure that person isn't a single point of failure. It's okay to find it difficult. It's not okay to ignore it. We don’t get to opt out of learning just because it’s inconvenient. PS: James Bond you'll always have me to tell you about what's new 😉

I've been assessing a few parts of our tech stack and recently added a new row to my decision matrix for evaluating software: how often does the company’s product team ship updates? It’s no longer enough for a company to have the features I want today. I also need to know they can build the features I’ll want in three months—even ones I haven’t thought of yet. Smaller and younger companies have an inherent advantage here versus legacy incumbents. This flips the traditional risk model that favors category leaders as safer choices. The old adage was “nobody got fired for buying IBM,” but does that still hold true when the IBMs of the world are 6-12 months behind (or more) in R&D? A company that ships every 2-4 weeks simply innovates faster. Plus, I can usually have far more influence on their roadmap compared to a legacy player that ships quarterly. They’re slower to capitalize on market trends and less responsive to customer feedback. It’s counterintuitive because larger players have more money, more developers, and more PMs. Yet, 50-person startups with 5-10 engineers can run circles around them. There’s also a certain magic to working with a really dynamic product company. I’ve ridden this wave a few times in my career, and it's always awesome to have a vendor like that.

🤔 The Continuous Delivery Paradox: When Evolution Becomes Invisible In the product development world, continuous delivery has become the norm. Daily minor improvements, bug fixes, optimizations... Products evolve constantly. But this approach hides an interesting paradox - users who interact with our product daily don't always perceive its evolution. We've observed this phenomenon across several of our clients. When asking their users about their platform's strengths, they often described a version from years ago! Despite years of technological and functional evolution, their perception had remained frozen in time. So if users don't perceive product evolution, how can we demonstrate the value of our investments? How can we justify a premium positioning when competitors seem to offer "the same thing"? 3 strategies to address this challenge: 1. Create dedicated storytelling moments - following Brian Chesky's example at Airbnb, who regularly shares major platform developments 2. Think end-to-end experience - product evolution isn't limited to features. Emails, customer support, marketing content... All these touchpoints are opportunities to highlight continuous improvement 3. Balance small improvements with visible changes - while incremental innovation is essential, it should occasionally be punctuated by more noticeable changes that create moments of awareness for users Continuous delivery remains a powerful approach, but it must be accompanied by a thoughtful communication strategy to ensure users perceive and value the product's constant evolution. #ProductManagement #ContinuousDelivery #ProductStrategy #Innovation

I've studied and worked with dozens of B2B SaaS companies. Most are terrible at feature announcements. Here's what the top 1% do differently: Your features aren't just updates. They're your secret weapon for growth. So stop telling people, "Look what we built." Instead, use these 5 steps to drive demand: 1️⃣ Build trust → Show your customers you care about making your product better. → Link your updates to feature requests or common pain points. → Tell stories around the 'why' of the feature. Not the 'how'. → It shows you take action, not just talk. 2️⃣ Address fence-sitters → Features often tip someone from “maybe” to “I’m in.” → Announce new features to address common objections you get from sales calls. → The more painful the objection = the better. 3️⃣ Gather instant feedback → See in real time if people are excited. → Users jump in, test, and give you feedback (sometimes fast, sometimes brutal, always helpful). → If there's no buzz, maybe you missed the mark. Share this with your product team, and your sales team, as this feature probably won't sell well. 4️⃣ Show off other features → New features rarely stand alone. → Show how your product fits together, not just single parts. → Sneak in a demo without being salesy. → This reminds potential buyers of the full value of your product. 5️⃣ Build your story → Every update is a new chapter. Frame it as such. → You become the product that’s always improving (people notice). → Mention the other launches you've done. Talk about how quickly you went from idea to shipped. All of these position you as a company that takes action. beehiiv and Breakcold are great examples of this - both shipping at insane rates, and talking about it. → Tyler and the beehiiv team do a great job at positioning beehiiv as a company that ships fast. Releasing hit after hit. Newsletter Apps. Website builder. Newsletter to podcast. Automation library. It doesn't stop. → Arnaud and Breakcold have been doing an excellent job recently of telling joined stories between them and their new integrations. A great way to build social hype. Your features aren't just updates - they’re a growth engine if used right. If you want more tactical growth strategies like this (the same ones growing the world’s leading startups), join founders from Morning Brew, AppSumo, ClickUp, and more (link in the comments). Would love to hear: How do you share your product updates? What’s worked for you?

We shipped 5 major updates in June alone. But... here's the brutal truth every founder needs to face: shipping quickly without adoption is expensive guessing. I used to think shipping fast was enough. Send the email blast, update the changelog, announce it on social media—surely our power users would find these features, right? Wrong. Last week, I was screensharing with one of our biggest advocates—someone who uses Supademo daily, refers customers, and genuinely loves our product. As I walked through a workflow, I casually mentioned our sandbox mode feature. Her response shocked me: "Wait, you have sandbox demos?" This feature had been live for months. She'd received three emails about it. It was in our changelog. But she had no idea it existed. That's when it hit me—it’s not just about building valuable features. The problem is we're assuming users will magically find them or find them intuitive. So here are tweaks we’re putting in place to cast a wider adoption net: 1️⃣ Mandated monthly 3 min video recaps for the 3-5 features everyone should know (this video) 2️⃣ Layering in-context product tours for core features (powered by Supademo): passively displayed via subtle tooltips or badges users can action on (when ready) 3️⃣ Continuing with biweekly product update posts and occasional emails for interested users Incredibly hard problem to solve, but we're trying to maximize ways for users to naturally discover our latest features and benefits — at their own pace and in the moment they’re ready (vs. an intrusive product tour popup). Founders and operators: what are you doing to drive feature adoption in an era of shipping fast?

HubSpot has published  ̶2̶7̶ 28 product updates in 2025...another one came out as I was writing this post. That's an average of almost 3 per day, and basically half those days were holidays or weekends. It's not unusual for them to push 7 or 8 a day on work days. HubSpot continues to be incredibly user-friendly and intuitive, but the functionality of the platform is expanding at a rapid pace. It's no longer feasible for a single admin to manage your existing processes and keep track of all the new capabilities that are being added. And those new capabilities are important! CRMs are expensive and companies chronically underutilize them. A new product release could transform your existing processes, saving you time and money, making up for those costs. If you're not keeping up with product updates, you are losing money. This is where having a good HubSpot partner comes in handy. It's our literal job to keep up with product updates and let our clients know when one comes along that could benefit them. Don't make your HubSpot Admin do it all alone. You'll burn them out, and then where will you be?