My name is John Cutler.
I have been writing about product development since 2015—initially on Medium (which I later moved to cutle.fish), and since 2020, here on Substack. Before Twitter became “X,” I was also very active there.
I send out my newsletter once a week, and as of July 2024, we’re up to 300 posts on Substack. I recently introduced an option to support the newsletter ($5 per month or $50 per year). I'm grateful to everyone who subscribes.
The newsletter is called The Beautiful Mess because I love exploring the complexities of product development. If you’re looking for simplicity, I might not be the best read (though occasionally I do create simple models and frameworks). I delve into challenging topics like cross-functional collaboration, incentives, sociotechnical systems, patterns, and continuous improvement.
For four years, I worked at the analytics provider Amplitude, where I had the honor of meeting teams from around the world. This experience was very rewarding and gave me a unique perspective on the industry. All that exposure informs my writing.
Important: I almost never write about a single company or my employer. I might see something at work that inspires a topic, but when I write about it, I incorporate my interactions with many different companies.
