Sharad Goel

There is no one path:) These are the things I can recommend: * Constantly solve new problems and learn new things - if you are comfortable in a role then its time to change. * Don't limit yourself to just product - you need to understand other functions and how they relate to your product and customer. If possible do a tour of duty in those functions. * Be open to feedback and reflect on that constantly to see how you can improve * Work for someone who is at that role and that you respect and learn from them * If possible, join a smaller company because you will see more of the details of the various functions and you can learn faster

It depends on the role you want to play and the need of the company. In my current role given the size of my organization I cannot be an IC on any feature. So you need to decide your need and what you want and based on that decide the split. My recommendation is to be clear on setting expectations with yourself (and others)- sometimes managers feel like they can IC in "extra time" - it usually comes at the cost of burning out yourself or delivering a sub-par product experience, or both.

I don't believe those can work effectively - the nature of product is that it is very cross functional in nature and that requires a lot of interaction and I have found technology to be a constant barrier here. Nothing beats a good old fashioned whiteboard discussion or scribbling together on a design board. Is there a healthy hybrid model - yes because there are periods when you need to focus on getting stuff done by yourself.

Talk to your customers. You should have a rhythm where every week/2 weeks you're talking to X customers. This will help you continuously evolve and solidify your understanding of the problems to solve.

You need to determine what is your value in the market. I encourage you to constantly determine that by talking to external recruiters. Also ask your company to share benchmark data on where you are compared to where the benchmarks are - these are readily available and every company should be investing in these.

Ask your leadership/marketing team what gives them anxiety and then attack those points as part of your 1st launch. For e.g. if they are worried about bad PR then ask them how small a group are they comfortable launching to and then stick to a rollout number below that. Over time you will build the muscle.

This is based on a few things: * Your strategy - are your customers going with integrated solutions? If yes your hand may be forced * Market needs - sometimes the opportunity has a timing and you need to ride that curve otherwise you will be left behind * Your existing product maturity curve - how much investment do you need to make in your existing product to grow it at the pace you want * Your internal capabilities - do you have the people/cash flow to invest in this Assuming you are past your 1st product (and you feel you have a good handle on it), my general recommendation is to have a resource allocation portfolio where you always have space for new business initiatives. Could be low % to start with but it helps you contain your costs while shielding that team and builds a new muscle.

The various frameworks are just guidance to help you think through the various approaches. There is no silver bullet; however, using a single framework helps to make decisions in a clear consistent manner. I don't prescribe a single framework to every squad in my team but when they use one framework they stay consistent unless the team is ready to get more sophisticated. I recommend keeping this simple because the more dimensions to your framework, the more assumptions you are making and the less likely that your framework is accurate any more. I also recommend that you start with your business goals - what goals need to be achieved and then what product outcomes will help you get to those business goals. That will help narrow down areas tremendously.

If this is a brand new product (i.e no existing product in market) you can go the TAM route: * Do a total addressable market (TAM) analysis - you can either use public sources or pay for private sources to understand the market size. Make sure you understand the specific segments in your TAM. * Determine what market share you already have from that TAM. * Determine how much additional market share you expect to have and in how much time. * Based on your average sales price (ASP) you can then determine what revenue you plan to make. If you have an existing product in the market and you are about to launch a new product that is an attach to that existing product then you can build an attach forecast model based on early learnings and talking to customers. There will be a lot of assumptions baked in in these forecasts. That's ok. Base your assumptions on data you have access to - for e.g. you may find a few blogs/articles online that say that in your domain customer sign-up > activation rate is 10-15%. Create a conservative model with 10% and an optimistic model with 15%. Then you can use this to align with your leadership. You can also be super conservative by saying your conversion will be 5% since you are early and haven't optimized the conversion funnel. Lastly, align with your leadership on what does ideal look like to them - for e.g. if they want to raise Series A in 18 months then they may need to get to $xM in revenue in that time period. Or if you are an established company then every new product is an opportunity cost - your leadership may say that you need to get to xM customers in 3 years or $xM in 3 years and you need to work backwards on can you get there.

It depends on the product outcomes you are looking to drive based on your company goals. For e.g. if your NPS is really low then understand what is causing that NPS to be low and prioritize those. If your customers are churning then figure out why and prioritize that. If you have a lot of great capabilities but you are not making money then figure out whether you need to invest in repackaging and pricing. Every company has come combination of customer growth, retention, and monetization investment. The key is to align with your leadership on the goals to be hit for each of those and then creating a product roadmap that helps you deliver those. Outside of these you will always have things to improve quality (via bugs).