Brian Donlin

@willnitze The sweet spot is to build for a niche in a way that is scalable to mass market. Solving "Niche needs" = pains that are ONLY experienced by the niche. Avoid this. "Scalable needs" = pains that are still felt by mass market. IQBAR is doing this. I screwed it up with my biz!

"Don't try to be everything to everyone." Good advice to someone building a cult brand. Arguably bad advice to someone building a mass-market brand. If you're in the latter camp, at least seek to be "most things to most people."

@chuckiegregory Would love to know about the failures--how did you know it was time to move on?

Speed to first $1M month: My 1st brand Club EarlyBird - 3 years, 5 months 2nd brand Primal Queen - 9 months 3rd brand UndrDog Hemp - 5 months Longer you're in the game, the quicker you can shrink time. You break mental barriers, build the skills necessary, create stronger instincts, and get the capital needed to move quicker. If you're new to the eCom game, be patient. Even on days when you don't realize it you are fine tuning your instincts and skills. It will pay off. I promise you. You got this. Time in the game matters. Asterisk: many failed brands in between these which have leveled me up just as the successful brands. And a decade of running off online business before eCom.

@jacob_posel MUCH easier said than done, but identify problems that are really hard to solve such as the ones here conviction.com/startups.html

How do you escape the SaaS bloodbath? 1. If everyone is more productive, I’m going to work harder than them. If every minute means I can ship a new feature I’ll just work all day every day and ship until my fingers fall off. I won’t be outworked. There are no excuses anymore, “we don’t want to own/manage/prioritize that”. Yes we do. 2. “SaaS” is essentially commoditized, but agents are not. Not everyone knows how to build good agents. Alpha here. 3. Go after the labor. The mess, the nuance, the change management. Build for outcomes not tools.

@chuckiegregory UndrDog looks cool, I have a hemp tee from a different brand that I like. Are you not concerned about knockoffs though? "whats ur moat" is an annoying question but I do think it's important for long term success

Here's the 2 options I always lean on when starting a brand. 1) Find a fast growing market and hop on by niching down. Primal Queen w/ beef organs niching to women. 2) Find a massive, competitive market and attach a unique angle that is scroll stopping. Go into a red ocean with a blue offer. UndrDog Hemp w/ blank tees. The hard route is creating something brand new for a market that doesn't exist yet. If you have to create the market it's much harder and much more expensive. Stick with niching down or entering red hot market with unique angle. Don't get tempted by the blue ocean.

@michaelmiraflor This goes for pretty much any visual creative work I see these days, it's really unfortunate

A half day of art show hopping at Basel so far and I have to admit that generative Al has ruined my ability to fully appreciate the experience. I’ve paused multiple times to ask/think “is that real or AI?” especially for photography that seems a bit too perfectly composed. First time I’m feeling this. I feel ruined to an extent. Pretty sad about this development.

@oliviaakory This goes for most services honestly. Plumbers, contractors, engineers...

Just left the dentist. It’s so funny how hard they rip on the work of previous dentists while the patient has absolutely no way to verify the claims. Not too dissimilar to agency ad account audits honestly

@MehtabKarta So along with MOQ and launch costs, are you thinking about it as % of the next X years of revenue from that particular product? This is the side of product dev that is largely a mystery to me. Would love to learn more but not sure where to look

@DonlinDesign Depends a lot on category. We do the math backwards based on manufacturing MOQs and launch costs.

The BIGGEST mistake consumer brands make is not keeping the product pipeline full. Product is ~95% of a brand's success but what percentage of revenue did you spend on product dev last year? 🤔😡 Product fixes seasonality issues Product fixes CAC Product fixes TAM issues/scalability It's one of the first things we do when we get involved with a brand because the payoff is exponential and the cost tends to be quite reasonable.

@emmachristine15 @oaknd1 As an ND alum and designer--good work. Can't imagine a more difficult graphic design project.

A lot of drawing, meetings, and planning later; proud of how this one turned out ☘️ HUGE thank yous to everyone at Notre Dame and Under Armour for helping bring this to life (special shout out to my partner in crime Tim O’Connor! @oaknd1) One down, more to come!

@elanmiller I'm an industrial designer, not a branding person, but this type of conversation is literally the hardest part of the job. I struggle with it, especially the bottom-up approach. Great article, would love to hear/read more about this

You're three slides into your brand positioning deck when the founder jumps in: "This feels too risky. Shouldn't we play it safer?" (Translation: "I'm scared and want to follow best practices.") Do you push back with data and precedent, or facilitate a discussion about what "safe" actually means? After years of getting this wrong (and occasionally right), I've developed a framework for reading the room. It comes down to one key question: Am I the expert they need, or the facilitator they need? I wrote about when to be opinionated vs. when to step back and guide. Link in bio.

@natelagos Those types of insights are absolutely valuable to product people (like myself). It's just important to recognize when it's a genuine insight and when it's just your own personal opinion/preference

I'm not a watch designer by any means... in fact, most of you have seen the way I dress, I have no business working in the fashion industry whatsoever... But, there are still some instances where marketing needs to inform product development. 1. When there's low hanging fruit based on sales data 2. When the product launch calendar needs to support performance marketing 3. When there's customer feedback 4. When you need new products to expand your TAM I break down these 4 points with real world examples in this 8 minute episode. You're welcome. (Also I show the results of a crazy split test in the ad read that's increasing Profit Per Sesh by 50%... thanks @Intelligems)

@living_energy Thanks!

@DonlinDesign Lovely design!

What regenerates vitamin C? Glutathione. What boosts glutathione? Melatonin. What builds melatonin? Sunlight. What releases melatonin? Darkness at night. So get your sun, and keep the lights off at night!

@SolomonHanes Anyone involved in the business of manufactured goods (all of DTC and product dev) was impacted severely by the tar!ffs. The good news is, it's not you, it's macro. The bad news is, that means there's not much we can do about it.

Getting laid off is hard. Especially in the direct to consumer industry right now. The last couple months I've had conversations with over a hundred people in this space. Multiple interviews every week. Had some temp work. Lots of nos, maybes and ghostings. But the questions keep coming up as I continue to look for work: "Am I good enough?" I want DTC so badly. I'm a pretty self-aware person and know exactly where I can give value and grow. But does DTC want me anymore? I debated making this post. It's vulnerable and opens me up to people wondering what's wrong with me that I'm still looking. But I could explain each scenario. And sheesh, it's taxing. Maybe an operator feels differently but it feels like an employer's market. I heard from an operator that they posted a job and LinkedIn closed it an hour later because of the number of applicants. I had an awesome first interview with a different operator last week. All positive vibes and answers. But they still picked someone else the next day. For any employees reading this while unemployed or struggling with purpose, the market is competitive right now. You, the employee, probably aren't the problem. Just gotta keep looking for that fit. Maybe someone needed to hear this. An employee's perspective of the "employer's market", you could say. People are kind (seriously, you guys are amazing!) but the survival of the fittest is not. Just being honest on here! And would love to hear an operator's take. This platform is suited for this dialogue. Love you guys

@michaelmiraflor Interesting, my theory is kind of the opposite--the product needs to be appealing on its own merits, regardless of the brand. But you've studied this more than me!

It's impossible to break down into best practices because it is highly dependent on market context, but there are best practices. End of the day imho it's more of a branding exercise vs anything qualitative, which is why it's difficult to produce any sort of reliable framework for.

I wrote my graduate thesis in part on the ability of some brands to extend to new territories (what Clayton Christensen called an “extendable core”). Why do some brands have permission (Airbnb doing Services feels natural and accretive to the brand) while other brand extensions seem dilutive? Luxury is a tough one, and we have short memories. In the 80s and 90s brands like Gucci over licensed themselves and diluted brand value in the process. You could buy a Gucci notepad, a $40 scarf, cheap cologne - stuff like that. The playbook in the 2000s and beyond has been to cut all that and focus on premium core product. Now that growth is tough to come by (esp now that China is not an easy sales lever), leveraging brand to expand into new businesses becomes a tricky calculus. Nobu Pilates is already pushing it imho. Not every brand has an extendable core. I should write about this, maybe.

@TaylorHoliday @jacob_posel The best solutions I'm aware of are royalty/profit share situations. I'd love to hear other ideas though! Jacob, to be more specific, I think it's product innovation, not just design. Design-as-beautification is already being automated/disrupted

@DonlinDesign @jacob_posel I think this could be solved.

Service firms capture disproportionate value because they are closest to the point of outcome realization Why AI is so valuable

@TaylorHoliday @jacob_posel As a designer, it's on my mind a lot 😂 I/we create new products that can be the foundation for massive biz growth, but we capture relatively little compensation compared to marketing folks. Not many good solutions, either.

@DonlinDesign @jacob_posel That’s a good callout.

@moizali The spirit of this is solid, but the "gut" part rubs me the wrong way. Feels like this leads to "my gut instinct is better than your gut instinct" type of debates

I read this in an onboarding document and thought it was so good.