A book by Spencer Shulem
Ship First
How to Build Self-Improving Products
A customer asks for something. You build a small working answer. They try it in their own workflow. What happens next tells you what to improve.
This book explains how we use customer evidence, practical research, and working releases at BuildBetter to make that loop repeatable.
24 chapters · 6 illustrations · PDF + EPUB · Free
Learn from software people can actually use.
Start with the customer’s job
Keep the real request, the workaround, and the person who raised it attached to the work.
Choose the right experiment
Use conversations, grounded personas, surveys, prototypes, and working releases to answer specific questions.
Follow the release through
See whether customers can complete the job, return when they need it, and benefit from the next iteration.
Inside the book
From the first request to the next useful release.
01–06
The case for a working answer
Customer demand, the product factory, research costs, continuous discovery, and shaping the bet.
07–16
Build with better evidence
Grounded personas, session friction, unfinished chats, prototypes, and adaptive surveys.
17–24
Make the next release better
The shipping loop, customer confidence, onboarding, nonuse, measurement, and adoption.
About the author
Spencer Shulem is the cofounder and CEO of BuildBetter. He started his first software company at thirteen and has spent nearly twenty years in product and user research.
Ship First is a short companion to Customer-Led Development, grounded in the team’s practice at BuildBetter and published product research.
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