How do you think about the differences between "enterprise" product management and SMB or mid-market?

Fundamentally, the core skills of product management remain the same whether you are focused on enterprise, SMB, or mid-market. You still need to understand the requirements, identify a business opportunity and deliver value. The mandate is always the same: know your customer, understand their needs and deliver. However, the nature of those needs and the methods you use to discover them differ significantly. 1. The complexity of the needs In the SMB or mid-market space, needs are often relativel ...Read More

Let me start from the commonalities: You are building something that solves a user problem and creates customer value that also generates business value in the process. The line between enterprise and SMB is fluid, though in the case of companies like Faire (and I also observed this at Airbnb and Travelnuts to some degree), SMBs often act more like consumers. Two key differences are: Where you get your insights: The research process tends to be more consumer-esque for SMBs, where you rely on use ...Read More

SMB, or small-medium business, and enterprise segments may have different requirements along a few dimensions: Scale - how much of a load a system needs to handle Concurrency - how many of a single event at one time needs to be supported Fit and Finish - how comprehensive and complete are the experiences Ecosystem support - how extensive is the list of integrations required to support the JTBD for the target For the enterprise segment, they will often have the extreme of the highest requirements ...Read More

There is always going to be some nuance to individual features or problem sets based on a company being SMB, MM or Enterprise. However, I do believe that many features can still be used across business types, it really comes down to pricing, positioning and packaging. For example, you might have a feature that is intially only available via API. In many cases, an enterprise customer will likely be best-equipped resource-wise to take that on, given that they have in-house engineering resources. O ...Read More

There is a big difference between product management for enterprise customers and SMB or mid-market customers. The way you approach problems, prioritize your roadmap, and engage with stakeholders changes significantly depending on the segment. Key differences include: Buyer vs. user personas: In SMB or mid-market, the user and buyer are often the same person or team. In enterprise, the buyer is usually not the end user. You need to cater to multiple personas: End users care about usability and f ...Read More