The Lab — week 3 of 26
One brief, one Saturday, one product. In public.
— hi, I'm abdi
I started in engineering.
Became a PM.
Now I build my own products.
9 years across early-stage, scale-up, and enterprise. Currently in Barcelona, building 26 products in 26 weeks in public, and available for senior PM roles.
BARCELONABUILDING IN PUBLICSAT 3 OF 26
- — Products shipped
- 20+
B2B, B2C, mobile, AI
- — From zero to launch
- 10+
half of those
- — Clients & teams led
- 30+
UK, EU, US
- — Years in product
- 9+
since 2016
— the arc
three chapters, 9 years
- 012014 — 2019
Engineer
Studied software engineering. Wrote code that mattered. Then started asking why we were writing it — which turned out to be the question that mattered most.
— BSc · Bournemouth · APAK
- 022019 — 2025
Operator
Nine years across early-stage, scale-up, and enterprise. Mostly other people's products. Learned what makes teams move, what stalls them, and how to write a spec that survives contact with reality.
— AND Digital · Lovehoney · Neuro-Insight · LTIMindtree
- 032025 →
Builder
Co-founded Heat. Started the lab. Building 26 products in 26 weeks in public. Same product instincts, no safety net. Best PM training there is.
— Heat · The Lab · D3V
— things I get asked
tap any question
Writing code was easy. Writing the right code was the hard part — and that conversation was always happening one room over. I moved to product to be in the room. Nine years later, I still think the best PMs are the ones who could ship the spec themselves if they had to.
It means the product workflow runs through AI, not around it. Discovery, specs, user research synthesis, prototype mocks — all of it. Not because it's trendy, but because it shrinks the loop between question and answer to minutes. The PMs who don't operate this way will look like the ones who refused to use Figma in 2018.
Because the only way to stay sharp on product instinct is to ship things that ship. One brief, one Saturday, one product, every week. Public failures included. The lab is a forcing function — and a portfolio.
Not actively, but I'm openly. The lab is a way to see who shows up around the work. If someone keeps replying with sharp takes and starts treating my products like their own, that's a co-founder signal.
Yes — senior pm / lead pm roles, 2 weeks notice, remote or Barcelona. The lab and any client work fit around a senior in-house role; I'd rather have a real team and the lab on the side than the lab on its own.
— things I learned the hard way
with receipts
- 01— Lovehoney · 2020
Write the spec first.
Salesforce migration, day three. Senior dev pinged me: “your ticket is unactionable.” He was right. I'd written what I wanted to happen, not what needed to be built. Re-wrote it after lunch. He shipped it before EOD.
— fix
If the dev can't start without asking a question, the spec isn't done.
- 02— Neuro-Insight · 2021
The metric is rarely the metric.
Optimised lead-gen for a quarter. Numbers up ~30%. CSAT down. The metric we'd picked was a proxy for the wrong thing.
— fix
Define the bad outcome before you ship the metric. If you can't, you don't have a metric.
- 03— LTIMindtree · 2023
“Alignment” is just bad writing.
Three teams, four time zones, one slack channel. Half the friction disappeared the week I started writing decisions instead of facilitating them.
— fix
Don't run a meeting to align — write a 1-pager, send it, ask for objections.
- 04— Heat · 2025
Ship something of your own.
Spent a decade telling other people how to ship. Co-founded Heat. The first time I had to write the brief, build the deck, and own the metric myself, I rewrote my own playbook. Skin in the game changes how you see the work.
— fix
If you're going to advise on building, build something at the same time.
- 05— The Lab · WK 01
Learn to say no faster.
Brief one. Spent six hours adding scope. Shipped at 11pm. Should have cut it at hour two and shipped at 6.
— fix
Cut scope on the way in, not on the way out.
— currently doing
three lanes, no waiting
Heat — App Store approval pending
Real-time social discovery, co-founded in 2025. 3,000+ pre-launch followers.
Senior PM / Lead PM roles
2 weeks notice. Remote or Barcelona.