Startup Design Journal

Startup Design Journal

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August 2025

The $40 Cereal Box That Built Airbnb
When your startup is dying, sometimes you gotta get creative with breakfast
 • 
Mohammad Aminur Rahman Maruf
The Man Who Got Rejected Hundreds of Times and Changed Music Forever
How Tim Westergren's "impossible" idea survived two years of brutal NOs to become Pandora
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Mohammad Aminur Rahman Maruf
The Man Who Failed 5,126 Times Before Making Millions
How James Dyson Turned His Worst Vacuum into the Best Business Idea Ever
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Mohammad Aminur Rahman Maruf
The Accidental Business Model
How a Failed Social Movement Platform Became History's Fastest-Growing Company Through One Viral Pizza Deal
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Mohammad Aminur Rahman Maruf
From Gaming Failure to Workplace Revolution
How Stewart Butterfield turned a dying gaming startup into the $27.7 billion workplace communication giant and the hidden lessons every entrepreneur …
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Mohammad Aminur Rahman Maruf
How Self-Doubt Creates Better Products and Companies
How Founders and Designers Can Transform Imposter Syndrome Into a Competitive Advantage
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Mohammad Aminur Rahman Maruf
Founder Blind Spots That Kill Products
Founder blind spots that kill products. My insights on validation theater, feature obsession & customer disconnect
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Mohammad Aminur Rahman Maruf
The Zoom vs. Skype Design War and What 2020 Revealed About Product Resilience
How Microsoft's beloved giant fell to a Silicon Valley upstart and what it reveals about the ruthless psychology of user experience
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Mohammad Aminur Rahman Maruf
How to Write an Effective Project Portfolio for Any Industry
Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Professional Project Portfolio That Showcases Your Skills and Wins Clients Across Industries
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Mohammad Aminur Rahman Maruf
The Simple App That Beat Every Tech Giant
Why WhatsApp's "boring" design choice made it worth $19 billion (and why I still choose it over everything else)
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Mohammad Aminur Rahman Maruf
The Hidden Curse of Beautiful Design and the 5 Products That Paid the Price
How stunning UX design and perfect aesthetics destroyed million-dollar companies
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Mohammad Aminur Rahman Maruf
© 2025 Mohammad Aminur Rahman Maruf
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