Product quotes
The product manager is said to be a mini CEO in tech startups. When the company is under 20 people, one of the founders should be the product manager. I say its the mini-all-of-this-series-of-posts in the company. The frameworks on how to make decisions are very similar, the difference comes in the object of the decisions. Software products have smaller scale, hopefully faster feedback loops, and results tend to be more measurable.
A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step — Chinese proverb by Lao Tzu
Head in the sky, feet on the ground. Build iteratively and deliver value in every step.
It doesn’t matter how amazing your product is, or how fast you ship features. The market you’re in will determine most of your growth — Sahil Lavingia
This may look more like a growth quote, but it’s here to lift the weight from product teams. Great products are critical, but they will only be as great as the opportunities they pursue.
If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late — Ried Hoffman
It’s the small decisions that will define when your product is released and what features it includes. Falling short and launching early will always pay off the few bad experiences you will generate.
Paralysis by analysis — Alliteration, no author
I personally heard for the first time from my father, so its at least from the 80’s Yuppie management style. Many famous managers force decisions to be made within a timeframe, assuming the decision will be suboptimal. I wouldn’t assume all decisions need little analysis, but it’s certainly the PM’s role to push to limit the analysis and have a bias for action.
How do you eat your own dog food? — No author; this metaphor is believed to have originated in the 80s in Microsoft
In product discovery, you must never assume you are the target user of your product. But it’s just so much easier if you are / the founders are. Thats why you must eat your own dog food to truly build a great product.
Make it simple, but not simplistic — Didn’t find an author, but it seems to be a version of Einstein’s quote
The cost of complexity is invisible; great solutions usually look simple. The PMs role will most of the times be communicating solutions to management and users, so finding the sweet spot is always challenging.
The goal of consensus leads to “groupthink” and inferior decisions — I didn’t find the author
Product squads must have autonomy to pursue their own solutions, many times against consensus. Assumptions must be challenged when the upside potential is big.
Companies have to have a moat. The best moats are the ones you can disclose to you competitor, because they can’t replicate or steal it— Ho Nam, Altos Ventures
Differentiation is only valuable when it can be preserved. Otherwise you are managing a fruit stand.
Quality is what can be discussed once you are past survival mode— Chang Byung-gyu, founder of Korean startup Krafton
This is the only good reason to try to isolate builders from chaos in a startup.
Figuring out the right product is the innovators Job, not the customers job — Ben Horowitz
For a product to surprise me, it must be satisfying expectations I didn’t know I had. No focus group is going to discover those. Only great design can — Paul Graham, Y Combinator
On how to do good product discovery. I’d add that surveys are useless too.
Luck is the residue of design — Branch Rickey
A beautiful way to say that luck is a function of skill.