The product perception loop 🌀, growth as a trust problem 🤝, building buy-in 🧱

AI perception is now a product signal. The Product Perception Loop helps PMs measure what AI believes about their product ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ 

Sign Up |Advertise|View Online TLDR Together With TLDR Product Management 2026-01-16 Guide: How to turn your integrations into growth engines on the Contentful Marketplace (Sponsor) When ISVs like Shopify, Ninetailed, and Vercel wanted instant visibility within the workflows of thousands of builders, developers, and enterprise teams who are actively looking for solutions, they chose Contentful.  The Contentful Marketplace puts your app in front of customers who have a problem to solve right now — and the path to getting listed is clearer and faster than ever. In this guide, you'll get: Straightforward integration guidance with an overview of Contentful's App Framework, APIs, SDKs, and AI app-building resources. A simple three-step roadmap to becoming a Contentful ISV. Proven partner success stories. Download the guide and turn your integration into real product growth. 📱 News & Trends The Product Perception Loop (6 minute read) AI perception is now a product signal. The Product Perception Loop helps PMs measure what AI believes about their product and deliberately improve it over time. Place good startup bets (5 minute read) Good startup bets optimize for learning and upside. Choose problems you care about, markets that grow, and teams with a real edge and early momentum. 🚀 Opinions & Tutorials Growth Is Now a Trust Problem (9 minute read) Growth now runs on trust. As AI commoditizes everything else, the products that win are the ones users believe in and stick with. The Traps of Borrowed Internal Developer Platform Roadmap Certainty (6 minute read) Roadmaps break when belief hardens into certainty. Treat every roadmap item as a hypothesis, and let learning, not delivery, decide what survives. 🧑‍💻 Resources & Tools AI should help teams collaborate... but does it? (Sponsor) 82% of leaders want AI that helps teams collaborate, but something's missing. That's the finding from a new Forrester study of 500+ AI decision-makers. On Jan 22, Forrester analyst J. P. Gownder and Miro dig into the data and explain why canvas-based collaboration might be the missing link. Save your spot → Build buy-in for your 2026 strategy (9 minute read) Strategy works when teams believe in it. Build buy-in early, communicate often, and treat execution as a shared commitment, not a mandate. How To Lower Your Anxiety To Speaking Up And Sharing Ideas (3 minute read) Leaders stall when they wait for perfect ideas. Share early, ask for feedback, and let learning, not ego, set the bar. 🎁 Miscellaneous One bottleneck at a time (6 minute read) Progress comes from fixing one bottleneck at a time. Focus beats busyness. Throughput improves only when the true constraint is removed. What We Learnt From Speedrunning the Idea Maze (8 minute read) Entrepreneurship improves when you learn how to see uncertainty, not eliminate it. Effectuation turns luck into a skill by reshaping how decisions are made under risk. ⚡ Quick Links My Fitbit Buzzed and I Understood Enshittification (2 minute read) Metrics can make products worse when they replace judgment. Personal Taste Is the Moat (2 minute read) Taste is the moat when correctness is cheap. Love TLDR? Tell your friends and get rewards! Share your referral link below with friends to get free TLDR swag! https://refer.tldr.tech/9d8f47c2/9 Track your referrals here. Want to advertise in TLDR? 📰 If your company is interested in reaching an audience of product management professionals and decision makers, you may want to advertise with us. Want to work at TLDR? 💼 Apply here, create your own role or send a friend's resume to jobs@tldr.tech and get $1k if we hire them! TLDR is one of Inc.'s Best Bootstrapped businesses of 2025. If you have any comments or feedback, just respond to this email! Thanks for reading, Ellen Le Manage your subscriptions to our other newsletters on tech, startups, and programming. Or if TLDR Product Management isn't for you, please unsubscribe.