3If you're new here, welcome to Zoom Out — where I share aha moments from client calls to help enterprise executives discover fresh tech-driven ideas on how to grow their companies.

Now onto this week’s issue…

I actually overheard this cool story on Shaan Puri’s podcast with Tim Ferris (the 4-hour week guy).

A friend of Shaan’s, who was a founder of a successful company, had a mobile app. One time, he was having a tactical meeting with his product managers. The PMs were disappointed by the recent push notification open rate. 

They said, “It’s only 10%, that’s very low.”

The founder replied, “If we find a way to boost that open rate to 15%, our funnel will look good.”

And this is where the story gets cool.

The product people started convincing him that their users were busy people who received tons of notifications from other apps, and push notifications were not the right way to engage them, etc.

The founder finally had enough and summoned the IT guy responsible for push notifications.

“Hey bro,” he said, “can we send a custom push notification to all our users right now?”

“Sure, what would you like to send?” said the IT person.

“Your Uber is arriving.”

“Seriously?”

“Yep. Send it.”

The room went silent. Everyone realized that close to 80,000 people would bring their phones closer to their faces to make sure the push said what it said.

Five minutes later, the founder asked the IT guy to announce what the open rate was. 

“It’s 53%.”

The founder switched from the IT guy to the product team and said:

“I want you to stop making excuses. Next time, be 100% sure you did everything to test your hypothesis. Never do something like what I just did again, but clearly, our customers see and open our notifications. Let’s get that extra 5%.”

The moral of this fun story for corporate Product Managers and IT people is this:

That’s all for this week…but one more thing. If you’re enjoying this, can you do me a favor and forward it to a friend? Thanks.

-Alex

My boutique software consultancy → Techery

Let’s connect on Twitter/X: @pshenianykov

Or on LinkedIn: Alex Pshenianykov

What else was on my mind last week 👇

FUTURE OF HEALTH
Exercise to stay young

Duh Alex, what’s so new about this?

Well, Scientists found that specific fats, which increase with age, can be reduced through exercise. Do I have your attention now? 

Researchers from Amsterdam UMC and Maastricht UMC+ discovered that these fats, called BMPs, accumulate in tissues as they age. Not cool. 

But. You’ve guessed it! Exercise was shown to significantly decrease BMP levels in both mice and humans. Cool, right?

This finding suggests that regular exercise can help reverse some aspects of tissue aging. 

🫠 THIS MADE ME SMILE