Bryan Dunn

I've consistently seen the best PMs do a few things to increase velocity, though I think this would be framed better as impact as a PM since the result of that velocity is shipping more product. Be the voice of the customer - this is the most important thing by far. The best PMs employ the help of their team to solve customer problems. If you do this effectively, you get everyone on the team to focus on the customer problem, not the tech or the design or the architecture. This is where great tea ...Read More

I've been working at fully (or practically) remote companies for ~5 years now and I believe they can certainly work. Tools like Zoom, Slack, and Miro can (mostly) handle the day to day activities of product teams. However, in person time is still critical for some activities and for building a product culture you want. Some rules I have: I try to do a team offsite at least quarterly. This allows for free flowing discussions and brainstorming that don't translate well virtually. I plan a few days ...Read More

This is always a deeply personal decision, but over the years, I’ve found myself in scenarios where I stayed too long because I was comfortable. Here is my rubric for determining whether to stay or go: Am I still learning? If you’re not learning something new, it’s easy to become complacent. The earlier you are in your career, the more you should demand to be in a position that challenges and stretches your skillset. If you have great leadership and perform well, you can often find ways to grow ...Read More

I've seen this situation quite a bit and the single most effective way to drive change towards impact-based product building is bringing data to show the downsides of the current approach. I personally failed to drive change early in my career because I tried to debate the merits of different approaches without bringing evidence (only theory). Even if you are to operating in a project-focused way, there are things you can do to shine a light on a better way: Measure the impact of everything you ...Read More

AI is going to compress the parts of the PM job that were already commoditizing: writing PRDs, synthesizing research notes, building slide decks, drafting status updates. If those tasks were the bulk of your value as a PM, you were already in trouble before AI showed up. What differentiates great PMs hasn't changed. AI just makes it more obvious. 1. Customer proximity. The single most durable advantage a PM can have is genuine, firsthand understanding of the customer. AI can summarize call trans ...Read More

The hardest product discipline right now isn't building AI features. It's saying no to the ones that demo well but don't compound into real value. AI makes it possible to ship faster than ever, which means you can also waste resources faster than ever. Apply the highest order bit. In binary, flipping a higher-order bit outweighs flipping all the lower-order bits combined. 1000 is bigger than 0111. The same is true for your roadmap. Before adding any AI feature, ask: is this the highest order bit ...Read More

This is one of the most misdiagnosed problems in product. GTM teams assume they have a product problem when they actually have a messaging problem, AND vice versa. Here's one approach to untangling it: Start with the data, not the narrative. Look at three signals: Retention vs. Acquisition. If people who try your product keep using it (strong retention, good NPS, healthy engagement) but growth is slow, you likely have a GTM problem. Your product delivers value but the market doesn't understand t ...Read More

Every big problem I've had on a product team traces back to a hiring mistake. The lift from hiring great people is enormous, but so is the drag from a bad hire. Here are my make-or-break signals, in order: 1. Mental horsepower (non-negotiable). The single best predictor of PM success I've seen is raw cognitive ability: the speed at which someone can absorb complexity, build mental models, and connect dots across domains. I've hired PMs with deep domain expertise who struggled because they couldn ...Read More

I think about this across three dimensions that evolve as you grow: Start with the outcome, not the metric. Before picking KPIs, I ask: "If we were wildly successful this half, what's the ideal outcome for customers using our product?" Any metric is a proxy. The ideal outcome is the real goal. This reframing prevents teams from optimizing for numbers that look good but don't move the business. Three dimensions of success: Impact. Are we moving the needle for customers and the business? I limit t ...Read More