👋 Welcome to the Elezea Newsletter

Elezea is a Swahili word that means to elucidate, explain, clarify, and relate. Everything I write is in that spirit.

Hi! My name is Rian van der Merwe, and I’m a business & product leader, constant learner, and music fanatic. I first created Elezea as a blog in 2009, and have since moved all my writing and sharing to this newsletter.

For 18+ years I have led and worked with empowered teams to create technology products that people love to use, and that also enable sustainable product-led businesses (come say hi on LinkedIn as well). I read a lot, and one of my love languages is sharing things I like with people who I think will also like those things. And that’s why this newsletter exists—so that I can share interesting, helpful, and entertaining things with you.

The topics I cover are pretty broad, but if you’d like some examples of what to expect, these are the categories I primarily read and write about:

• Product management and leadership, since that’s been my main career focus for a while. But not the fortune-cookie stuff you see on Twitter. I’m looking to write and share real stories and advice about actually doing the work.

• Technology, but not so much the day-to-day stuff you go to The Verge for. I am interested in the meaning of it all, so I like to read in-depth analyses and opinions about what’s happening around us in the tech world.

• Internet culture, because even as a 40-something I would still like to know what it means when my daughter says “yeet”. But again, not really the day-to-day meme culture stuff, more about trends and interesting “vibe shifts” (See? Still got it.)

• Music, because collecting and listening to music is my primary hobby outside of work.

If this all sounds interesting to you, excellent! We’re going to be good friends. I can tell.

✍️ Posting schedule

New posting schedule starting December 2022:

• The main weekly post goes out on Tuesdays. It includes an introduction/article, ~3 interesting and helpful software development / technology links to read, and some stray links to other fun things online.

• The Friday Edition goes out on… uh, Fridays. It’s a quick post with five(ish) links to check out for your weekend reading/watching/listening enjoyment.

• If I’m going to miss a week due to vacation or other commitments I will announce that in a newsletter.