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I learnt product management the hard way.
15+ years. 10+ products across 4 startups. A few successful ones and many failures. And still learning.
Here are a few mental models.
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15+ years. 10+ products across 4 startups. A few successful ones and many failures. And still learning.
Here are a few mental models.
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Product management is a specific skill (in @naval's words).
It cannot be taught, but can only be learnt.
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It cannot be taught, but can only be learnt.
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Build something people want.
Products can be thought of as solving for Intent by reducing friction. For every intent that users have, they are ready to bear a certain level of friction — not more than that.
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Products can be thought of as solving for Intent by reducing friction. For every intent that users have, they are ready to bear a certain level of friction — not more than that.
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So are you reducing friction for known intent or have you found a secret or contrarian insight on what users want? Even better, is it a mix of both?
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How do you find what users want? One way is to be curious and observant of what is happening around you. What is changing in the world? A safer strategy is to bet on things that do not change.
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The best product managers start with a NO - that your users don't need what you are building. And then build conviction from insights and find a YES to finding things that users really want.
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They don't focus on cool ideas and things that are trending. They focus on things that help users get users' jobs done.
They don't focus on things that they want to do, but on things that users want.
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They don't focus on things that they want to do, but on things that users want.
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Surveys don't work most of the time. They are biased in multiple ways. Also, they tell what users tell, and not what they think or feel or will actually do.
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The best way to build a consumer product is to build one for yourself. You will have at least one user that way.
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Building products require detailed solutioning. That includes covering both happy and unhappy use cases.
Unhappy cases are scenarios when users go through what is not expected.
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Unhappy cases are scenarios when users go through what is not expected.
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More users the product has, the more ways users will use the product (sometimes in a surprising way). Building products at scale is different from building 0-1 product.
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Product solutioning also involves building an ecosystem. Whatever it takes to get the user's "Job" get done. Operations, compliances, and many more things.
Electric cars -> charging stations.
Online shopping -> logistics
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Electric cars -> charging stations.
Online shopping -> logistics
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Good PMs write. A lot.
Writing doesn't just help in communicating with your team. It helps in clarifying your own thoughts.
At an early stage, whiteboards are good enough. At a larger scale, writing becomes a superpower.
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Writing doesn't just help in communicating with your team. It helps in clarifying your own thoughts.
At an early stage, whiteboards are good enough. At a larger scale, writing becomes a superpower.
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Product management is one of the highest leverage actions for the company.
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Good PMs are optimistic but always doubtful. Bad PMs don't realize they are bad PMs.
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Just like appreciating good art does not make you a good artist. Having a good product sense does not make one a good product manager.
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A PM can suck at a lot of things but still can be a rockstar PM - if one can generate contrarian insights about customers and identify the right problems.
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If something is obvious in hindsight, but difficult to imagine before you see the product - there is some rockstar PM behind it (imagine describing twitter in 2005).
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Bad product managers keep engineers busy with building feature after feature. Good Product managers work hard to find out what users really want.
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Building products that work with system 1 thinking (intuitive) requires system 2 thinking (deep, analytical and insightful thinking).
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Building features that everybody else is also building is like investing in index funds - you will get benchmark returns. Fine if you have picked the right markets. Good PMs look for alpha.
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That's all for now.
We are hiring product folks (product, design, analytics, engineering).
If you have read so far and resonated with this, and if you have built something in the past, do write to us on [email protected]
Tell us what you have built, we would love to talk.
We are hiring product folks (product, design, analytics, engineering).
If you have read so far and resonated with this, and if you have built something in the past, do write to us on [email protected]
Tell us what you have built, we would love to talk.
