Lifehacks: insights from people who build products

An API (application programming interface) is a set of rules that lets one program ask another for data or an action. How a request and response work, the main types of APIs, everyday examples, what third-party APIs cost in 2026 and what to check before your product depends on one.

QA vs QC in software testing: QA is the process side and prevents defects, QC is the product side and finds them. The 5 differences, where testing fits, what changed with AI-written code in 2025-2026, a release checklist and how we budget QA.

Half of developers now work fully or mostly remote. If you hire a development team, the communication rules decide how much of your week goes to chasing answers. Here are nine rules to agree before the team starts, with time zones, channels and a week-one plan.

Six steps to choose a software development company: write a one-page brief, pick the engagement model, shortlist companies with proof you can check, compare their own prices, score the answers and start with a small paid step.

What counts as a security incident for a software product, and a one-page runbook for a small team: what to prepare, what to do in the first hour and day, and what to change afterwards.

For a retailer with physical stores, the app’s job is to help people buy from you wherever they decide. The features to build first, the loyalty card that needs no app, the data behind it all, and what to leave for later.

On a short build there is no time for a test phase at the end. Here is how we set up QA from week one: a test environment for every feature, what to automate, the store testing windows to plan for, and the crash rates to hold before launch.

The 2022 list had ten DevOps tools. A startup needs six kinds. Here is what we would use for a new product in 2026, what each tool costs on its vendor’s own pricing page, and the setup to have before the first user arrives.

Most SaaS products don’t need a data lake in their first years. The signs that you do, what to run at each stage, 2026 prices for storage and queries, why file format matters more than size, and how to plan deletion before you collect.

Part 2 of our customer development guide: the guess, test, decide loop, what to write hypotheses about, a template with a pass and fail line, how to rank by risk, and a hypothesis log you can copy.

How a founder turns customer obsession into weekly habits: interviews about past behavior, problems in customers’ words, ABCDX segmentation, the smallest release that tests the top problem, and what to watch after launch.

What customer development is, why it matters more now that building is cheap, how to talk to users without pitching, five questions to ask, where to find the first people, and a map of the four other guides in the series.