North Star Playbook
The guide to discovering your product’s North Star
Authors and Contributors
About the Authors and Contributors
John Cutler, Lead Author
John Cutler currently works as a product evangelist at Amplitude. Prior to working at Amplitude, John was a UX researcher at AppFolio, a product manager at Zendesk, Pendo.io, AdKeeper and RichFX, a startup founder, and a product team coach. John’s key focus at Amplitude is helping teams foster an environment conducive to learning and fully integrating measurement into day-to-day product development.
Jason Scherschligt, Co-Author and Editor
Jason Scherschligt is a product management, user experience, and strategy executive, and a consultant, speaker, and writer. Jason has held content and product leadership roles at the Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper, Capella University, Jostens Corporation, GoKart Labs, and Edmentum Corporation. Jason has a masters degree in English from the University of Chicago. He lives with his wife and kids outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota—the North Star state.
Amplitude Contributors
Much of this playbook is drawn from the experience of Amplitude, a product analytics SaaS company. Some of the content originally appeared in whitepapers, presentations, and blog posts from Amplitude. Amplitude has worked with thousands of product teams and leaders, and we regularly conduct workshops on a variety of product topics, including the North Star Framework. We also use the North Star Framework ourselves.
Amplitude contributors to this playbook include:
Justin Bauer – VP of Product
Sandhya Hegde – VP of Global Marketing
Abbie Kouzmanoff – Product Manager
Dana Levine – Product Manager
Parth Misry – Analytics Practice Lead
Archana Madhavan – Product Marketing
The Coach – Amplitude Team
Reviewers
The authors are especially grateful for the insights of the product experts who reviewed early drafts of this book.
- John Albrecht
- Micah Andrews
- Rami Banna
- Felipe Barbosa
- Markus Bernhardt
- Josh Bruce
- Macdara Butler
- Federico Casabianca
- Viktor Cessan
- Mathew Cropper
- Colin Curtin
- Bruce Epstein
- Megan Gleason
- Patrick Gregory
- Tristan Harward
- David Heath
- Chanade Hemming
- Chris Hill
- Catherine Hills
- Amy Hoy
- Christopher Janzen
- Nate Kerl
- Maike Küper
- Justin Lai
- Charles Lambdin
- Kristofer Layon
- Hartog de Mik
- Renee Murphy
- Tom Newton
- Alexa Nguyen
- Kieran O’Neill
- John Phamvan
- Ty Pierce
- Steve Portigal
- Lex Roman
- Kate Rutter
- Galina Ryzhenko
- Pavel Samsonov
- Rob Sehr
- Kurt Schmidt
- Michael Schofield
- Chris Shinkle
- Michal Subel
- Jen Swanson
- Stan Tead
- Aarthi Videep
- Nick White
- …and more (current updating from latest round of feedback)