# Stories by Michael Dubakov on Medium Stories by Michael Dubakov on Medium This is one page of public article previews, not the complete archive. Follow Next page to continue. Summaries are not the original full articles. ## Fibery vs. Notion 2025: not Better, Different DevFeed: [Fibery vs. Notion 2025: not Better, Different]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Michael Dubakov Published: 2025-04-11T07:52:12Z Content type: comparison Language: en Sources: [Stories by Michael Dubakov on Medium]() Topics: [Notion](), [knowledge-management](), [Product Management](), [Wiki](), [Low-Code / Internal Tools]() Tags: [2025](), [automation](), [notion](), [permissions](), [processes](), [product-management](), [productivity](), [saas-tools](), [tools-for-thought](), [visualization](), [vs](), [wiki]() ### AI overview A founder-authored comparison explains that Fibery and Notion serve different use cases rather than one being universally better. It presents Notion as well suited to personal knowledge management, company wikis, knowledge bases, and simple processes, while describing Fibery as better suited to complex processes with deeper hierarchies, relations, permissions, formulas, automations, and advanced visualizations. ### Source excerpt Disclaimer: This post is written by Fibery Founder, so it is inevitably biased (but I tried to be as objective as I can). You came here to find out how πŸ‰ Fibery is better than 🐼 Notion. Well, it is not. Fibery is different. Notion is a great tool and it works exceptionally well for some use cases, but it fails for others. Let me just quickly answer your main question and then feel free to dig into details later. 🐼 What Notion is great for? Personal knowledge management (PKM) Company wiki and knowledge base Simple (not complex) processes: basic project management, basic CRM, basic candidates tracking, etc. "I've been using Notion for the past few years. It's undoubtedly the most flexible note-taking app on the market. Offering both simplicity and complexity, it caters to a variety of users. Its recent integration with AI and automation further elevates the note-taking experience. Imagine having your own personal Wikipedia, comprehensive databases, calendar, tasks, calculator, and more, all within a single app. This truly makes Notion the best of the best." -- Notion userπŸ‰ What Fibery is great for? Company wiki and knowledge base Complex processes: product management, feedback management, portfolio management, OKR, HR, Vacation tracking, etc. "We use Fibery to manage all our startup processes, from customer discovery over HR until CRM, Project management and documentation. We could replace 27 of our 36 internal tools: Fibery is a rocket for managing all sorts of processes and lets us the freedom to create our own templates and spaces aka processes, if needed." -- Fibery user It can be illustrated like this: Notion and Fibery areas of best applicability Fibery will help you when Notion is just not enough. When you need deep hierarchies and relations, advanced access and permissions control, formulas and automations across these hierarchies, visualization of information in hierarchical timelines and table views, complex charts. In general, Fibery is harder to "get" and ma ## Fibery special pricing for Startups, Ukrainian companies, and more DevFeed: [Fibery special pricing for Startups, Ukrainian companies, and more]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Michael Dubakov Published: 2022-11-30T10:40:07Z Content type: article Language: en Sources: [Stories by Michael Dubakov on Medium]() Topics: [Software](), [Open Source]() Tags: [education](), [no-code](), [nonprofit](), [open-source](), [pricing](), [product](), [startup](), [startups](), [ukraine]() ### AI overview Fibery describes special pricing plans for startups, Ukrainian companies, nonprofit and educational organizations, and open-source projects. Eligible startups can use Fibery free for one year, Ukrainian companies receive a 50% discount through 2030 after August 24, 2023, nonprofit and educational organizations receive a 50% lifetime discount, and open-source projects can use Fibery free. ### Source excerpt We're building an open company that tries to share all kinds of knowledge, including ideas, mistakes, failures, and successes. We support Fibery users and customers as much as we can and want to provide great value for the money. But money is not everything (well, they are oxygen to run the company for sure). Fibery is a connected workspace for product companies Fibery has several special pricing plans that you may enjoy. 100% free for startups with ARR < than ours (for 1 year) We love startups. For all relatively small or fresh startups we provide Fibery for free for 1 year (if your revenue is less than Fibery's revenue). Early-stage or small startups are money-sensitive, and we want them to enjoy modern all-in-one software for free. Stable startups that earn more than we do can afford to pay for the service, and we need to grow as well :) When Fibery grows and increases ARR, more and more startups can join our startup program. Neat! We hope that eventually, we can provide Fibery for free to all startups. πŸš€ Apply to the free startup plan. Ukrainian companies support Ukrainian companies operate in challenging conditions. In March 2022 we made Fibery free for all Ukrainian companies for the entire 2022, but the war is not over and conditions became even more challenging with all these insane strikes on critical infrastructure. We decided to extend this plan till August 24, 2023. After this date, Fibery will provide a 50% discount for all Ukrainian companies till 2030. πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡¦ Apply to the special plan for Ukrainian companies 50% discount for nonprofit & educational organizations Non-profit and educational organizations usually don't have much money as well, so we provide a 50% lifetime discount for them. Education is what moves our world forward and we want to help here at least a little bit. πŸ™ Apply to the special plan for Non-profit or Educational organization. Open source companies support Yeah, open-source projects prefer open-source tools. Fibery is not like that. Bu ## A critique of Google search ads and SEO-focused results for remote-work queries DevFeed: [A critique of Google search ads and SEO-focused results for remote-work queries]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Michael Dubakov Published: 2022-11-25T15:06:35Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [Stories by Michael Dubakov on Medium]() Topics: [Search engine optimization (SEO)](), [Google]() Tags: [ads](), [advertising](), [google](), [marketing](), [rant](), [search-engine](), [seo](), [spam]() ### AI overview The author criticizes Google search results for a remote-work query, describing prominent ads and generic SEO-focused articles that they found lacking in practical information. They report finding more useful resources through Hacker News and express frustration with the search experience. ### Source excerpt I used to love Google. Now I don't. I used to enjoy search for new information and explore some new topic in Google. Now I don't. I'm on the verge of switching to another search engine. Yesterday I dug into remote work. I searched for various info, primarily I wanted to find exact remote companies practices from real practitioners. This is a typical screen in Google for any relatively generic search request. Screen 1. Ads On the first screen I see only ads and some glimpse of hope in the footer. I have to scroll down. Screen 2. SEO-optimized bullshit No hope. All these articles are not good enough. All are generic, and I have a feeling most of them were written by people with zero experience in remote work. I got very little interesting info from them. I have to scroll down. Screen 3. More SEO-optimized crap More SEO-optimized articles, maybe HBR was relatively OK. I have to scroll down. Screen 4. More Ads Final screen has more ads. Is it me? Maybe in some poor country with GDP < 1K per person I will see less ads? Not sure there is VPN for South Sudan... Next page... It appeared to be very hard to find good resources about remote work. Google is filled with generic, non-concrete, SEO-oriented bullshit. I had to dig this piece of crap for an hour to find some rare gems. Most gems I found on HN. My rant is over. Hug me, please. P.S. HN discussion thread ## How Fibery will transform product companies work and knowledge management processes DevFeed: [How Fibery will transform product companies work and knowledge management processes]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Michael Dubakov Published: 2022-05-25T11:31:57Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [Stories by Michael Dubakov on Medium]() Topics: [Product Management](), [knowledge-management](), [Software as a service](), [Software](), [Development]() Tags: [analysis](), [article](), [future-of-work](), [knowledge-management](), [product-development](), [product-management](), [productivity](), [saas](), [software-development](), [startup]() ### AI overview The article presents a vision for how a future version of Fibery could support product companies. Using a 50-100-person B2B SaaS startup as its context, it describes fragmented tools, disconnected discussions, weak customer-feedback handling, ad hoc feature prioritization, and poor links between specifications and work items. ### Source excerpt We're working on Fibery for 5 years already and are still far from our main goal. What is our main goal? How do we envision the near future of work? Last year I wrote a long article about these topics -- Augmenting Organizational Intelligence, but it's quite abstract and hard to apply to usual use cases. Here I want to narrow the context and show you how a product company can operate having a "future" Fibery. The future is hard to show and explain, but I'll do my best to be as concrete as possible. Context: Product B2B SaaS startup, post-round A, 50-100 people. 🦐 Now -> Many tools Let' me briefly focus on the "now". How this startup most likely operates and what unsolved problems does it have? Typical product development company core toolset: Notion as a company wiki/intranet and product management Jira/Linear for software development Slack as a chat Asana for various projects in marketing and other non-IT teams Intercom: chat + user guide HubSpot as a CRM Canny as a feedback portal Miro as a diagram/whiteboard tool Problems There are many problems, but I just want to highlight several of them as examples. Knowledge lives in many tools (Notion, Miro, Canny, Slack, Jira) Discussions out of context Customers feedback handling process is poor Features prioritization process is ad-hoc and mostly based on gut feelings Connection between features specification and features as work items is weak Problem 1: Knowledge lives in many tools (Notion, Miro, Canny, Slack, Jira) It makes invention much harder since you have to extract it from many tools and put it into some digestible format for the analysis phase. Then you have to jump between these tools: brainstorm something in Miro -> document results in Notion -> have a sudden discussion in Slack -> jump back to Notion to add some ideas and options, etc. Many tools... People tend to seriously underestimate this problem, since reflection about working processes is not something they do often. Status quo is always there and people get ## Fibery.io 2021 year in review DevFeed: [Fibery.io 2021 year in review]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Michael Dubakov Published: 2021-12-22T20:37:24Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [Stories by Michael Dubakov on Medium]() Topics: [Software](), [releases](), [Requirements](), [Automation]() Tags: [automation](), [blog](), [building-in-public](), [company](), [no-code](), [product](), [releases](), [review](), [software](), [startup](), [startup-lessons](), [year-in-review]() ### AI overview Fibery's 2021 year-in-review covers the company's transition to independence, its first seed round, remote work and team growth, blog activity, product development, releases, partnerships, and progress toward product-market fit. ### Source excerpt TLDR: Independence πŸ˜…. Emigration & remote work πŸ“». $3.1M Seed round πŸ€‘. Booming market πŸš€. 58 posts in our blog 🐧. $290K ARR πŸ₯. 100 new features πŸ’―. 34 new releases 🌢. 20 active partners 🀘. Fibery for Product Teams release 🎁. Some product/market fit 🍱. 4 new teammates πŸ‡©πŸ‡°πŸ‡΅πŸ‡±πŸ‡·πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡§πŸ‡Ύ. December is a good month to reflect and link the past with the future. This post is dedicated to exactly that. It is long. I will ramble about the most important or memorable events in our company. Grab a cup of something 🍢, turn on your music for concentration, and read on. Independence πŸ˜… Fibery was an internal project inside Targetprocess in 2017. It was started with the goal to explore the future of work management tools and maybe find something interesting. We've accumulated tons of feedback at Targetprocess and it was not so hard to define a set of requirements for the dream work management software. Then around 2018 we've decided to turn it into a new product. In 2021 Targetprocess was acquired by Apptio, and Fibery became an independent company with the clean cap table. You can't imagine how hard it is to attract investors when ~50% of shares belong to non-active founders. I tried to raise a round in 2020 and got it only after 50 talks with VCs. The end of 2020 was hot for me, and Fibery was on the verge of closing. I even announced this to the team and said that with a very high probability we are done here, and the next few days were quite strange. Should we continue doing things as usual? Should we just wait? So we decided to give day-offs to the whole team till the final decision. Fortunately, we were able to find a workable solution for all parties and Fibery got its independence πŸ—½. It's hard to express the feelings and relief since we felt we just started to deliver something unique and useful. But here we are, alive! Seed Round πŸ€‘ In July we've finally closed our first seed round lead by Altair Capital. This gave us 18+ months to focus on a product and value. I should say that Igor R ## Fibery.io Chronicles #39. Getting Started re-design in November 2021 DevFeed: [Fibery.io Chronicles #39. Getting Started re-design in November 2021]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Michael Dubakov Published: 2021-12-08T19:51:00Z Content type: article Language: en Sources: [Stories by Michael Dubakov on Medium]() Topics: [App](), [ui](), [Product Management](), [releases]() Tags: [building-in-public](), [product](), [product-development](), [product-management](), [releases](), [startup](), [startup-metrics](), [ui]() ### AI overview A November 2021 Fibery product chronicle covering a redesigned getting-started experience, a new Space Editor and terminology, simplified pricing, research into an activation metric, onboarding experiments, and new releases. ### Source excerpt TLDR: New getting started concept 🧢. New pricing πŸ§˜πŸ»β™‚. In search of Activation Metric 🧢🧢. Animalz cooperation πŸ‘Ž. Promising leads 🀞. Live onboarding experiment results. 🐑 Three new releases. Flashback: #38. Experimenting in October 2021 Brief Overview Life is good 😎. New getting started concept We've released the new getting started experience and new Space design UI in November. If you struggled to understand how Fibery works, now is the best time to give it a second chance. Here is the cool video that explains why you should try Fibery again: https://medium.com/media/0a50d9897b726c269d0783723983f460/hrefNew Terms & New App Space Editor After the dense and deep discussion around new Fibery terms, we decided to stick with this: App -> Space Type -> Database Space was a natural choice, but Type/Database/Table was not. We've decided to replace abstract Type term with a more concrete Database term. This decision still has some drawbacks, but we hope it will help people to understand Fibery better. New Space Editor is much less abstract than the previous one. You can see the data right here and change data model on the fly, set relations and create automations faster. Space Editor with Relations Schema openedNew pricing We've simplified Fibery pricing. Our original idea is that Fibery will be used by product teams for product management and in many cases product management team is small. So we had a $100 entry ticket for such teams. However, Fibery is used by more people usually and this entry ticket looked weird. Band plan was removed There is no more minimal and maximal users limits No huge jumps from 4 to 5 and from 20 to 21 users If you are an existing customer, check New Pricing FAQ. In search of Activation Metric We spent a few weeks trying to nail Fibery Activation Metric. User activation is a one-time event that happens when a product delivers on the value it promised -- it's the critical "aha" moment when a user experiences the value of a product firsthand. After ## Fibery vs. Monday. Complex vs. simple processes. DevFeed: [Fibery vs. Monday. Complex vs. simple processes.]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Michael Dubakov Published: 2021-11-24T21:22:29Z Content type: comparison Language: en Sources: [Stories by Michael Dubakov on Medium]() Topics: [Product Management](), [Databases](), [ui]() Tags: [complex](), [databases](), [mondaydotcom](), [product-development](), [product-management](), [product-management-tool](), [simple](), [software-development](), [software-development-tool](), [ui](), [vs]() ### AI overview A comparison of Fibery and Monday.com for organizing team processes. It presents Monday as feature-rich and flexible but complicated, with weaker support for modeling hierarchies and relationships, while Fibery uses connected spaces, databases, relations, and views to represent product-management structures such as Epics and Features. ### Source excerpt Usually posts X vs. Y are shallow. This post is not. As the Fibery CEO, I have to switch off the bias. Take this post with a grain of salt. The major goal is to explain how Fibery is different and what strengths and weaknesses it has. Monday is a very feature-rich product. However, it's quite complicated. Let's dig something interesting together. General feelings Monday is very similar to ClickUp in many ways, but it seems that Monday is slightly less feature-reach (surprisingly). UI is high-contrast and snappy, but very flickery. When you move the mouse, everything blinks and changes, and this is quite distracting. It is visible that some parts of the system are new, while others are old, so the general feelings about the user interface are mixed. I can't say that I like it, but I feel that I can get used to it with time. The first 30 minutes are hard, but if you overcome the initial resistance, then the system starts to make sense. PhilosophyMonday = Work OSmonday.com is a Work Operating System (Work OS) that powers teams to run projects and workflows with confidence. Monday is a platform to build your processes. In this regard, the main mission is very similar to Fibery. Flexibility is the most important feature here. Monday has all important building blocks to organize processes: Flexible databases, Views, integrations, rules, and many productivity features. 🦐 One serious problem is that you can't model hierarchies and processes in a nice way. It's not possible to have a tree view that shows Epics and Features. It's not possible to have a board that shows Features by Epics, etc. Connections and relations are not a strong part of Monday. For complex processes, you will have to live with many workarounds. Fibery = Set of connected Spaces In Fibery everything is connected. The main building blocks are Space, Database, Relation, and View. Here is an example of a connected workspace for product development. Several connected apps in product development workspace. Spa