Origin Story
Hi! I’m Ibrahim Bashir, aka @ibscribe. I am currently the SVP of Product at Ontra, where I lead product management, user experience, data science, and operations. Before that, I built product teams and scaled product lines at Amplitude (flagship Analytics), at Box (Platform business), at Twitter (Engineering org), and at Amazon (Kindle ecosystem). You can read more about my professional background here.
For a long time now, I’ve been writing about building teams, shipping products, and repeating outcomes. And I’ve been doing this as a way to clarify my own thinking, connecting the dots from lessons I’ve learned in practice to ideas I’ve absorbed from reading to frameworks I’ve borrowed through collaboration. At the start of 2020, I made a resolution to find a canvas to share these work-in-progress musings, and eventually came across Substack, which felt right both as a creator and a consumer. So here goes. I’m polishing and publishing the drafts folder, not just to revisit my own opinions, but for everyone who wants to engage thoughtfully and refine them…
What You Get
Run the Business covers the craft of B2B product leadership: strategy & execution, business outcomes, career growth, and team building. I publish 3 types of content: Run the Business essays, 5 Minute Fridays podcasts, and 60 Minute Stories videos. Every new post goes out free to all subscribers. After two weeks, posts move into the paid archive.
Free: Every new post, free for 2 weeks (essays, podcasts, videos)
Paid ($10/month or $99/year): Full access to the 200+ post archive, every new post delivered immediately forever, Slack community and Substack chat
Founding Member ($200/year): Everything above, plus a 1:1 call with me for mentoring, coaching, or advice
You can browse the archive by topic (B2B · Strategy · Leadership · AI) or ask LemonAid, my digital clone trained on everything I’ve written.
Subscriber Promise
My goal is to get something of substance out on a weekly basis, without falling into the quantity over quality trap. When you subscribe you get full access to the newsletter, so you won’t have to worry about missing anything, and every new edition goes directly to your inbox. Also, every update will be accompanied by a childish drawing / interpretation, because it’s the only way my kids will let me write in peace.
Beyond the Newsletter
You can find my speaking appearances here, and if you’re interested in coaching, advising, or other ways to work together, check out my Work With Me page.
Know someone who’d enjoy this? Share Run the Business.
You can see a mindmap of my newsletter topics below:
