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Notes

The XDF Blog

Occasional writing from members on building, designing, and operating small technical projects. New posts go up every few weeks.

Notes

Building slowly, on purpose

A member reflection on the shape of a small technical practice: why "shipping fast" isn't always the point, what shows up when you stop optimizing for growth, and the kinds of work that only emerge under patience.

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XDF Member
Feb 2026 · 9 min read

Recent Articles

Technical

Building Real-Time Systems That Scale

Notes on real-time event processing in a small team: architecture decisions that matter early, database choices that tend to regret themselves later, and monitoring that pays for itself quickly.

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XDF Member
Feb 2026
Design

Design Systems That Actually Get Used

Notes on building a design system that teams actually adopt: the difference between a library and a system, writing docs people will read, and getting engineering to want to use it.

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XDF Member
Jan 2026
Growth

The 0-to-10K Users Playbook

Notes from early growth work on small consumer products: what's worth trying at launch, what gets mistaken for growth, and the few tactics that reliably compound.

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XDF Member
Dec 2025
Product

Finding Product-Market Fit in NYC

Notes on finding product-market fit in a city full of noise: the customer conversations that actually teach you something, and how to read the difference between a real signal and polite enthusiasm.

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XDF Member
Nov 2025
AI/ML

Practical ML for Startups

Notes on when to reach for ML and when not to: where it adds real value on small teams, how to start without a data platform, and the surprises that show up in production.

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XDF Member
Oct 2025
Leadership

Scaling Engineering Teams from 5 to 50

Notes on scaling an engineering team carefully: the hires that compound, the structure choices that don't, and what tends to break quietly as headcount grows.

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XDF Member
Sep 2025
Content

Building Community Through Content

Notes on writing as community infrastructure: what draws a consistent audience over years, and why most content calendars don't survive first contact with real work.

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XDF Member
Aug 2025
Indie Hacking

5 Side Projects in 12 Months

Notes on running small experiments without losing a year: cheap validation, knowing when to drop a thread, and what you actually learn from shipping rough things on purpose.

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XDF Member
Jul 2025
Design

Accessibility is Not Optional

Notes on treating accessibility as default rather than retrofit: testing practices that are actually cheap, and the product decisions that quietly close doors to users.

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XDF Member
Jun 2025