AMA: Airtable Product Strategy & Operations Lead, Wade G. Morgan on Product Strategy

Our mission as a team is to clarify & accelerate the product roadmap. For us, clarification means a couple things: Do we know what we aspire to invest in over the next quarter, half year, or FY? Have we clarified our decision / prioritization framework of what causes an initiative to be above or below the line for what we will commit to? Do we have a shared understanding of the tradeoffs that will occur as a result of our decisions, and are we ok with the outcomes of the tradeoffs? On the ac ...Read More

This is a natural question and I would specify the question a bit to say "how do we validate that our product strategy is the right one for us?"  Might seem like a small delineation, but the truth is, no one strategy is right for every company or product. What works amazingly for one company could yield paltry results for another.  For that reason, I'd say the best starting place to determine whether you're developing a strategy that is right for your situation is To be clear on the first princi ...Read More

Love the spirit of this question, and will broaden it a bit to "how do you balance market needs with the vision your company may have?" Prior to shifting to Product Strategy & Ops, I was hired as the 2nd Account Executive at Airtable. I found this experience so valuable because I had a front row seat to literally thousands of customer perspectives on what our product needed to evolve. One of the biggest lessons I took away from that experience was how to think about the balance between provi ...Read More

For us, product strategy stems from company strategy, so it's first important to have a firm grasp on where the company strategy is headed holistacally, and why. Additionally, we serve as a partner function for the entire ProdDev org, so rather than owning a specific segment of the product, we're responsible for helping the company zoom out a bit to identify key areas that could make sense to invest in.  As a result, when working with our exec team it's critical to understand both the company st ...Read More

Love this question as well, and I'll approach it from a couple different perspectives. First, I'd acknowledge that some markets are so big or fast growing that multiple amazingly successful winners can emerge. As of today, Apple is worth $2.8T and Microsoft is worth $2.25T. While I'm sure both companies wouldn't mind adding their other's market share to their portfolio, I also think any reasonable person would consider both outcomes desireable. This example is not to say there's not need to play ...Read More