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Blog Articles
Startup Product Management
I’ve been working with quite a few startups over the past few years, usually in an advisory capacity, but sometimes more directly involved. Startups are essentially all about new product creation, so they’re a terrific place for product managers to do their thing, and it’s why I love working with startups so much. Yet I believe that the prevalent model for how startups go about coming up with their first product is terribly inefficient, and why so many otherwise good ideas never get funded or make it to market.
Beware of Specials
How many times have you seen the situation where a sales rep brings to the CEO a proposal from a prospect that says, “if you will just add these seven features to your product then we’ll buy your software and even pay you an extra $X.” Or, lest anyone thinks that this situation is unique to enterprise software companies, for consumer service companies, your ad sales person comes over saying that “a big prospective partner will sign a seven-figure advertising and sponsorship deal with you if you’ll just agree to these site integration and placement requirements.”