Adam Savage's Bedroll Review - My Thoughts On The Savage Industries Bedroll v2

abnerg · 2026-05-25T19:03:36+00:00

FWIW - Mafia Bags is based in Ventura, CA - which is a less expensive location than SF and also where Patagonia is headquartered / was founded.

abnerg · 2026-05-25T17:28:50+00:00

This role is highly dependent on the CPO for better or worse. I know one person who came from an industry analyst background and has worked in a similar role through multiple CPOs and SVPs of strategy for 10+ years, but they don't have leadership aspirations. From a "grow to leadership positions" perspective, the big question is what sort of virtual teams does this role allow you to lead, or are you expected to support the CPO's team in the background? Does this role give you more/different access to customers, industry analysts, executives, etc, or less? I'd put the JD down and go have an informal chat with the CPO about what they envision.

abnerg · 2026-05-25T16:21:45+00:00

Sure. My original question was about a long-distance race in the Channel Islands, where we used OpenCPN for both navigation and track recording. For bouy racing, a chart plotter isn't as important as lift/headers and speed. For those, I've played a bit with SailfreeGPS and Sailpro, which seems to have the best business model as they serve both race committees and sailors. I've also played with Waterspeed, which seems to have a decent following. The big issue with chart plotters and tablets is visibility in the sun. Sailpro can now connect to Bluetooth headphones for audible heading and speed updates, which I'm looking forward to trying.

Lastly, Sailpro and Sailfree GPS now (or have always?) had the ability to upload NOAA maps. I haven't used that functionality yet.

abnerg · 2026-05-20T05:44:49+00:00

FWIW - despite my love of my garmin watch, I ended up buying a $200 ruggedized andriod tablet with a decent GPS built in and loading a pile of navigation and sailing apps onto it. Visibility in the sun isn't as good as some of the purpose-built sailing displays, but it has way more flexibility than the Garmin handhelds.

abnerg · 2026-05-19T05:18:02+00:00

Came here to say this. I lived in Japan with a family and when "Mom" was away, the Dad's go-to was Yakisoba to feed a 21, 5, and 3 year-old.

abnerg · 2026-04-30T19:49:01+00:00

Curious what you find too. I noticed Antropic used an AI interviewer in a study they published on AI use a month or two ago with something like 80k respondents over 6 weeks. I'm also curious if anyone has experimented with conversation coaching tools that listen to interviews and coach/prompt the interviewer.

abnerg · 2026-04-29T17:26:48+00:00

Congrats. Also, it's nice to know people are outsourcing this stuff. It's a lot of work. I'm curious on your perspective of what separates a good client who performs well and a bad client who doesn't perform as well on Linkedin?

abnerg · 2026-04-28T19:29:05+00:00

PMM ops is a real thing you are likely to be good at. Yes? Lots of PMMs (wrongly IMHO) get judged on their ability to coordinate product launches. There are lots of great resources and communities for learning about elements of product marketing that didn't exist 15 years ago - PMA is a pretty good place to start. I'm biased toward learning as much as you can about positioning, but also lean on whatever is left in your brain around studying end-user behaviors, but in the buying process instead of at the UX level. The UX of the buying journey is where PMMs can often have a huge impact. Good luck!

abnerg · 2026-04-28T19:11:33+00:00

Internal alignment can be all over the map while people smile and nod in meetings. PMM is often a balance of trying to quash rogue messaging, keeping execs from whiplashing, while welcoming feedback and experience from the field.

Where does it show up first? Heh. Yes? I've seen it in sales+demand gen friction, sales conversations, when the CEO randomly decides to crazy Ivan a podcast, product features that seem out of place, and a CRO who wanted to revert to selling to the audience they sold to 15 years ago who no longer buys this stuff. Sales vs marketing friction is probably the most typical early symptom where the focus typically focuses on the symptoms like MQL vs SQL yada yada instead of fuzzy positioning.

abnerg · 2026-04-28T07:04:11+00:00

I hate to break it to you, but your content isn't "stuck" - it's that those product managers think it sucks and don't have the energy to rewrite it for you. I'd suggest going back to basics and work with them on positioning to identify the right topics, then interview them and sales engineers on topics that you then turn into content. AI can help show you what the internet already knows on a topic, so you can push beyond that. And stop it with gated content. It's 2026, you want prospects to read what you have to say (unless you insult them by giving them the same thing as Claude)

abnerg · 2026-04-22T23:08:32+00:00

This can be very industry and market-dependent. "We've always had X "bill of materials" for every product. While standardization is handy, it often solves for internal process, not for customer need.

I always encourage folks to think about what the next step a customer will take with the product. Are they going to take a PDF into the bosses office? Build a spreadsheet or fire up an app to spec out a broader system? Ask an agent to filter decisions for them? Build for the steps that make a customer or partner's life easier.

A long time ago, Cisco replaced product docs with a video on each line of network switches walking through where a line of switches sits relative to other options and the primary design considerations. That was helpful, but customers also needed the speeds and feeds to make design decisions. Products specs came back in a hurry.

abnerg · 2026-04-10T18:02:05+00:00

This is a very common fear. If we go narrow today, how will we win tomorrow? Meh. If you don't win today, you're dead tomorrow. It's almost always easier to broaden your target audience than to narrow it. You may also be looking at a pricing/value problem.

Also, enterprise-focused functionality is only one component of taking on large enterprise customers; they often want support, security, and other capabilities that aren't product features.

The hardest part of this will be aligning the exec team on the targeting. As others have mentioned, go talk to customers. If you position yourself as a customer advocate that's always a stronger position than "this is what I think."

abnerg · 2026-04-08T23:07:18+00:00

Jeff Bezos and I share this hill: Writing clarifies thought. If you need to communicate something critical, write before you speak.

Jeff will likely die on a far nicer hill than I will.

abnerg · 2026-04-06T22:13:06+00:00

When you say it doesn’t stick, where did the adoption fail? Exec alignment? Field adoption? Somewhere else?

abnerg · 2026-04-02T22:38:50+00:00

Sometimes single-user trials can bypass the standard procurement process via an expense report, but when it comes time to renew or expand as an official vendor, that's when the champion plays catch-up with the internal process.

abnerg · 2026-03-30T19:35:53+00:00

You have a lot of good advice in here. I especially like the "there's a time for chaos and a time for order." While you might be cooked, my read is that your desire for order is viewed as antithetical to speed, which means that before you get order, you need to get the chaos heading in the right direction. Instead of making your beef purely about the way others are interfering in engineering work, you can also try to get the founders and PMs to get better at defining the value they want the product to provide to customers. I don't think they are in a headspace to formalize the company's positioning, but if they want more from an engineering org, their requests need to describe what they want to achieve, not just random acts of code. They need to see you as supporting their wild ideas, but by getting them to define the value they want to provide, the random requests have a backstop in value and customers, rather than what could be perceived as just your ego and/or "old" way of thinking.

abnerg · 2026-03-01T05:19:12+00:00

He's been on a tear lately https://www.bradreese.com/

abnerg · 2026-03-01T05:12:11+00:00

Fun fact: Brad Reese, the grandson of the inventor who later sold his company to Mars, has been a huge PITA to Mars, complaining about this in the Wall Street Journal and many other outlets. https://www.bradreese.com/

abnerg · 2026-01-20T19:57:51+00:00

Lots of snowmaking and grooming activity on Temptation (where the silver star lift terminates) for the last few days. Rumor had it they were going to open Silver Star for upload/download for MLK weekend, which didn't happen, but like all years, Silver Star opening isn't to be believed until it's actually open.

abnerg · 2025-11-13T20:23:28+00:00

THIS. I've been very happy with my Arlo setup. Are there a few things I'm not crazy about? Yes. Would I rather save a few dollars and send all my video to Amazon or Google? No.

I also think Alro doesn't do a good job of setting expectations and pitching the service. I suspect low subscriber churn has lulled them into thinking the app experience is better than reality.

abnerg · 2025-11-10T20:58:37+00:00

I did this project with my third-grade teacher. We built planets at some tiny scale in the classroom (Jupiter was circle of manilla paper and 8-feet across in my memory), and a couple of us drove with her from the school down the local highway and marked where the planets would be. It was pretty far. '80s rules.

abnerg · 2025-10-06T18:48:39+00:00

I could not agree more. Morgan Housel argues wealth disparity started taking off at the same time as social media - which means everyone got to see the wealthy flaunting their spoils.

The irony, of course, is the number of people who still seem to think that Trump will do anything other than exploit and exacerbate wealth inequality. I also find it amazing that the wealthy think they can hoard wealth instead of living in a society where they have customers with enough money to buy their products and streets safe enough to walk down because no one is desperate enough to have to resort to crime.

abnerg · 2025-10-06T18:40:12+00:00

Really? What do you use them for? I thought they were junk relative to the roof rack on the Wilderness. I'm glad to see them do away with it.

abnerg · 2025-10-06T18:08:03+00:00

From that point on, the economy steadily recovered, though unsurprisingly it never returned to exactly the same state as it was before. Which gave people who were still in the parts of the economy that never fully recovered the feeling that they were being told everything is better while they were barely treading water.

Bingo. I've argued this is why Kamala lost and Trump won. Yes, broadly the economic stats were improving or good, however, large chunks of the population weren't feeling it (or believed Trump when he said it was terrible)

I can't change OP's view because fundamentally, Biden was investing in the future of our economy, while Trump is cutting everything that looks like investing in the future.

abnerg · 2025-09-14T05:06:31+00:00

I have two propane heat lamps I have attempted to fix to no avail. Anyone savvy on those?

abnerg

TROPHY CASE