Akash Mukherjee

How can product leaders move the needle and take the lead in this shift? Moving Off the Solution – guide your team to step back from the tech stack and view the challenge from the POV of a new user. Measuring Customer Perceived Value -- require PMs to sit with a cohort of users -- typical users. Conduct a discovery exercise. A small sample size is sufficient. Embrace the Change – this should require a complete change in mindset but a different orientation. Focusing the team on adoption, cross sell and upsell has clear near-term and long-term ROI for the company. Learn more: https://lnkd.in/gjJk_K5V #leadership #prodmgmt #ROI

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🎙️Tonight is the night! Join Bosky and me for a deep dive into the importance of soft skills in product management. We’ll discuss how EQ can help you grow your career, enhance your products, and build better relationships. See you at 8:30 PM CET at this link 👉🏻 https://lnkd.in/e3RiyHjE

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GPT-4o, the next-level large language model that's shaking things up in the design world. You meticulously craft your PRD (product requirements document), outlining every feature and function. Then, with a sprinkle of AI magic, GPT-4o transforms your text into initial Figma designs! Here's why GPT-4o is a game-changer: 👉 Boost your design speed: GPT-4o can generate wireframes and layouts based on your PRD, giving you a head start and freeing up valuable time for iteration and refinement. 👉 Break the communication barrier: Ever feel like your PRDs get lost in translation between you and your developer comrades? GPT-4o can bridge the gap by using your PRD to create designs that are not only visually appealing but also technically feasible. 👉 Spark endless creativity: Let's be honest, sometimes staring at a blank screen can stifle inspiration. GPT-4o can introduce unexpected design elements based on your PRD, sparking new ideas and pushing the boundaries of your initial concept. The future of design is collaborative, efficient, and driven by powerful AI tools like GPT-4o. What are your thoughts? Share your take in the comments! Credit: Eric Vyacheslav __ 👋 Join The AI Journal community! 🚀Subscribe to the newsletter: https://lnkd.in/ex9mu2hM 🎤 Get involved in the AI conversations on X: https://lnkd.in/ew6E-ZtP #GPT4o #designrevolution #AIpowereddesign #futureofdesign #Figmamagic

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YC is right about so many things, but I think it gives one piece of unhelpful startup advice: "Don’t worry about competitors; listen to your customers." This advice worked when there were few excellent tech companies. Just listening to your customers and building fast in tech was a way to differentiate. But that’s no longer the case. Listening to your customers is still essential but must be paired with a strong strategy. I have wasted a lot of time treating this advice as gospel. I built a product that a small group of people loved but could not break into the market because listening to our users was not guided by a sound strategy. In an increasingly competitive market, you must understand how you will differentiate from your competitors in a way that cannot be quickly copied or competed away. Ultimately, there are three broad approaches to do this: Do something your current or future competitors (A) can’t do or (B) don’t want to do. Approach (A)—traditional “moats” or “powers”—sounds great, but it requires particular circumstances when in a crowded market with similarly funded and sized competitors. (B) is often the right strategic move for most startups competing in a crowded market—doing something your competitors don’t want to do. Three ways to do (B): 1. Adopt a counter-positioned business model If most competitors pursue a particular business model (e.g., freemium, PLG SaaS), switch to closed free trials through salespeople. Or vice-versa. The model still must work with your segment and give you some asymmetric advantage. But if so, it will be hard to copy you. 2. Focus on an undesirable segment Find a sub-segment of your market that is unattractive for some reason (e.g., longer buying cycles, harder needs to satisfy, harder to reach) and focus on them. They still must have a burning problem that your product meets in a differentiated way. And there should be a path to grow deeper with or extend beyond them. 3. Narrow to an uncomfortable level so that it feels like your “TAM” is too small This is a subset of 2: Find a way to further segment your existing ICP into a more targeted/narrow definition. This deeper segmentation needs to be along a meaningful dimension that creates differences in needs, preferences, and behaviors. It's a bonus if this smaller segment is fast-growing (H/T to YC for the excellent advice). Often, people are scared to do this because of a smaller “TAM,” but focus is a source of power. TAKEAWAY Struggling to get traction in a crowded market? Start doing one of three things today: change your business model to something hard for your competitors to copy, focus on an undesirable segment, or narrow your ICP to an uncomfortable place. Doing so will help you run in a less crowded lane where you’ll control your destiny. — I wrote this with Alper Yurder 🤝 at Flowla 🌊 from a discussion about how we're competing in crowded markets. Check out what he’s building; he’s thinking about this right.

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As a product builder, one of my favorite concepts is Balaji Srinivasan's Idea maze (attached below). End users of a product only see the final decisions made. They don’t see every tradeoff the builders agonize over and the alternative universes that could’ve been. Great product are designed by builders that put an incredible amount of thought behind each decision. Steve jobs talks about a similar feeling in building the Mac. IMO this is the essence of finding product <> market fit, and makes a world of a difference in outcomes. For example, “video on the Internet” in the early 2000’s was an obvious emergent trend. But Youtube and Vimeo are very different products, and company outcomes. I think about this concept often for the market of “GTM signals” and "AI for Sales." It’s hot right now, many GTM teams are talking about using signals and AI, and there’s a wide diversity of products to choose from. Some tenured GTM operators gripe about how this is nothing new and it’s a renaming of age-old concepts like ABM, intent, B2B marketing, etc. There’s some truth to that and as a builder I’m always curious about the history of our space, but I also believe that AI (specifically LLMs) are unlocking new use cases that were previously not possible. So next time you see a new product in a confusing market, keep an open mind and see if it helps you accomplish something radically new. You could be looking at the next Youtube.

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📣 Product Folks: 😡 Have you and your team hit the wall with trying to focus on value? That *could* look like: ▶ No steady stream of data to inform strategy, prioritization + roadmaps ▶ Stakeholder misalignment ▶ Competing priorities ▶ Duplicative or overlapping work streams 🤓 Are you ready to put Product Operations into practice at your company? Join me for Produx Labs' Product Operations June 5 Masterclass! Snag your seat today. https://lnkd.in/ephFvTwf #productmanagement #productops

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There are a lot of newsletters out there, but the Product Leadership Essentials newsletter is your monthly guide to building up your product leadership skills. Subscribe and join and get the latest news and top tips sent straight to your inbox. 📩

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Simple, but really useful idea from Will Larson: Every company has engineers who complain, "There's no product strategy. Why don't we even have a product strategy?" Then, you talk to product managers, and they say, "There's no business strategy. How do we function without a business strategy?" When you go back to the engineers, they lament, "There's not even a technology strategy. What kind of company are we?" This pervasive belief that there's no strategy anywhere is common, but I've come to believe that strategy is everywhere—it's just rarely written down. The challenge is that unwritten strategy can be effective but difficult to use and refine. When strategies are updated, people have different understandings of the changes. It's tough to onboard new hires when there's no written strategy. You often have senior leaders who come in and just assume their last company strategy is your strategy because you don't have your strategy written down anywhere. Explaining confusing points becomes a series of one-on-one conversations or trying to interpret past decisions like case law. It's confusing and inefficient compared to just writing it down. One of the biggest improvements we can make in the quality of strategy across all areas—engineering, product, business—is to commit to documenting it. Once written, people can disagree, iterate, and revise the strategy. Unwritten strategies are hard to engage with, and writing things down, even imperfectly, can lead to significant improvements almost overnight. Without documentation, improving your strategy is incredibly challenging. Read the entire Review article featuring Will by following the link in the comments.

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Product Leaders: Visibility is your responsibility. Don't just say, "Oh, that's all politics." If you don't take 100% ownership of communicating your achievements to your organization, your career suffers. But even more so, the company suffers because wrong decisions get made on who gets promoted and put in charge of important things. Do the work, and then take responsibility for communicating it.

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Seed-stage fundraising looks very different depending on the startup industry. Valuation and cash raised typically move together (not a lot of tiny rounds at very high valuations), but the disparity between industries can be quite large. All data from 1,271 priced Seed rounds raised from Apr 2023 thru Mar 2024. Primary rounds only, US rounds only. Industries had to have 10 separate raises to be included. A note on AI - if you tracked it as a separate industry, it would at the top of every list. But it exists within many of these categories as well, so we displayed it in the chart below as a little red box. 𝗢𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗞𝗲𝘆 𝗣𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘁𝘀 1. Healthtech overtook Fintech as the second-largest category in our data, a change from the last time we measured these metrics. 2. Seed volume is down across almost every category save AI (and even there, not up much lately). More seed deals are being completed on SAFEs (not shown in this chart) but the valuations and cash raised are very similar between SAFE and Priced rounds by industry. 3. The laggards in the chart (DTC Retail, Food, Personal Products) are essentially the same as last year. Are founders here turning towards other methods of funding, including revenue, instead of going the VC route? 4. Will many of these companies ever raise a Series A? Lots of talk lately about "venture stripping", "thin VC", "single round VC", whatever you want to call it - founders who explicitly set out to raise only 1 round and then fund their growth with revenue from then on. Very cool strategy! Remains to be seen if many $1B+ valuation companies can be built that way (though of course that isn't always the goal). Please share this post with a fundraising founder 🙏 #cartadata #startups #fundraising #seed #founders ---------- More data like this out every week in our Carta Data Minute Newsletter - subscribe at the link in graphic!

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Lenny Rachitsky I listened to your amazing podcast with Todd Jackson about product market fit. The 4P framework ( persona, problem, is amazing. All the benchmarks, strategies, and tactics that Todd Jackson shared are spot on. Recently, Sequoia Capital put out a solid framework, the ARC Product Market Fit Framework for Hair On Fire, Hard Fact, and Future Vision. When I combine these two, 4P relates well with the Hair on Fire category of the products. I wonder how the 4P framework would work with the products' Hard Fact and Future Vision categories. Lenny Rachitsky Todd Jackson I wish I could hear more about PMF in the Hard Fact and Future Vision categories. For rest, These are amazing content about #productmanagement, #productmarket fit, #startups Here are links: 1. This is the link to the entire podcast: https://lnkd.in/eTX5tGtE 2. This is where the 4P description starts: https://lnkd.in/eTX5tGtE 3. This is the link to the ARC Product Market Fit podcast. https://lnkd.in/ezprPT-Q

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Deep Dive: Lessons from 50+ Conversations with VP Product / CPOs Over the Last Year 🔍 In the past 12 months, I've engaged in enriching discussions with numerous VP Product and Chief Product Officers. These conversations have been insightful, revealing both challenges and best practices shaping the product management landscape today. Here’s a detailed list of the top 10 takeaways: 1. Integrative User Research: Successful products are built on a foundation of continuous user research, integrating feedback loops into every stage of the product life cycle to refine UX/UI. 2. Agile Leadership Evolution: Dynamic markets demand leaders who not only advocate for but actively implement agile methodologies, ensuring rapid adaptability and resilience. 3. Advanced Analytics for Predictive Insights: Leveraging sophisticated analytics tools to not only interpret current data but also predict future user behaviors and market demands. 4. Building Scalable Systems: Emphasizing the need for infrastructure that supports scaling, particularly as products grow and evolve in complexity and user base. 5. Enhanced Cross-Functional Synergy: Encouraging seamless interaction between product, marketing, sales, and tech teams to ensure a unified approach to product development and launch strategies. 6. Focus on Product-Led Growth: Shifting strategies to center around the product as the primary driver of customer acquisition, conversion, and expansion. 7. Emphasis on Continuous Learning and Development: Investing in continuous education and professional development to keep skills relevant and teams innovative. 8. Strategic Experimentation: Cultivating a culture where calculated risks and strategic experiments are encouraged to quickly test new ideas and learn from the outcomes. 9. Enhanced Customer Journey Mapping: Detailed mapping of the customer journey to understand and anticipate every touchpoint, improving personalization and identifying opportunities for product improvement. 10. Regulatory Compliance and Security: Staying ahead of regulatory changes and enhancing product security to safeguard user data and comply with global standards. Each of these points reflects a broader trend in product management that demands attention and strategic action. I’m keen to hear how others in the industry are navigating these complexities. What challenges have you faced, and what solutions have you found effective?

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Can hyper-growth actually hinder a startup's ability to build a great product? In this latest episode of the Product Thinking, I'm joined by Alex Wattrelos, former Chief Product Officer at sunday, who witnessed firsthand the double-edged sword of explosive scaling. Sunday went from an idea to 450 employees with $203 million in seed funding in a mere 4 years. While living the startup dream of rapid growth, Alex and his team also had to navigate how to stay laser-focused on solving real customer problems amidst the chaos. When the 2022 tech crisis struck, they faced the harsh reality of de-scaling the entire operation and ruthlessly prioritizing initiatives that drove market fit and profitability. Throughout our discussion, Alex shares firsthand insights into the key challenges he faced as Sunday's CPO, including the delicate balance of maintaining a clear product vision while continually pivoting priorities. He also shares insights on leveraging an MVP to unlock early success, solving the "busy restaurant bill payment" problem plaguing Europe. And we examine the critical differences between product management in the US vs. Europe markets. Don't miss Alex's hard-earned wisdom on: ►Scaling products AND teams at breakneck speed ►Abruptly de-scaling and reprioritizing the entire roadmap ►Keeping the team focused on driving real value vs. vanity metrics ►Navigating cultural nuances across European product teams For startups wanting to avoid growth at all costs, this is a must-listen on building the right product before chasing unicorn status. Have you ever had to rapidly de-scale your product roadmap? How did you approach it? Share your experiences in the comments! #ProductManagement #TechStartups #ProductLeadership #ScalingProducts

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🎙️ Have Burning Product Management Questions? Ask away! Ever found yourself grappling with product strategy, navigating user research, or juggling stakeholder demands? Maybe you're just curious about the ins and outs of product leadership? Well, you're in luck! Join me on the Dear Melissa segment of my podcast, where I'm diving deep into YOUR burning questions about Product Management. Here's the scoop: ✅ You can keep your questions broad or specific, but give me enough context so I can answer as accurately as a I can. ✅ Your privacy matters—rest assured, your name will stay anonymous. ✅ Don't hold back! Feel free to submit as many questions as you like! From revamping company strategies to mastering the art of product leadership and even picking the perfect tools and frameworks, we're covering it all! Head over to DearMelissa.com and share your questions. Yours could be featured on an upcoming episode! (P.S. Need a quick response? Drop me a voicemail—I'll give your questions top priority!) 🚀

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A simple way to understand seed venture capital: a founder needs to build a company worth roughly 20x the size of the VC that invests in it. Here’s why: A typical seed stage fund has a 10-year life and will pitch its investors 12% a year (compounding) returns. That means it needs to 3x it’s fund over 10 years. Statistically, it’s likely going to achieve most of that from a single investment, which it will likely own roughly 15% of at exit. So for founders the math is simple. You need to convince a VC that you can build a company that is worth the Venture Capital Fund Size x 20 (or 3/15%) I.e. A $100mm seed fund will be betting you build a $2bn company. The bigger the fund the bigger the number. Keep this in mind when you are pitching.

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If I asked you, “When someone turns in a work assignment, how accurate is it? 80%, 90%, 95% or perhaps 100%?” We don’t think this way about coworkers’ spreadsheets. But we will probably think this way about AI & this will very likely change the way product managers on-board users. When was the last time you signed up for a SaaS & wondered : Would the data be accurate? Would the database corrupt my data? Would the report be correct? But today, with every AI software now tucking a disclaimer at the bottom of the page, we will be wondering. “Gemini may display inaccurate info, including about people, so double-check its responses” & “ChatGPT/Claude can make mistakes. Check important info” are two examples. In the early days of this epoch, mistakes will be common. Over time, less so, as accuracies improve. The more important the work, the greater peoples’ need to be confident the AI is correct. We will demand much better than human error rates. Self-driving cars provide an extreme example of this trust fall. Waymo & Cruise have published data arguing self-driving cars are 65-94% safer. Yet, 2/3 of Americans surveyed by the AAA fear them. We suffer from a cognitive bias : work performed by a human is likely more trustworthy because we understand the biases & the limitations. AIs are a Schrodinger’s cat stuffed in a black box. We don’t comprehend how the box works (yet), nor can we believe our eyes if the feline is dead or alive when we see it. New product on-boarding will need to mitigate this bias. One path may be starting with low-value tasks where the software-maker has tested exhaustively the potential inputs & outputs. Another tactic may be to provide a human-in-the-loop to check the AI’s work. Citations, references, & other forms of fact-checking will be a core part of the product experience. Independent testing might be another path. As with any new colleague, the first impressions & a series of small wins will determine the person’s trust. Severe errors in the future will erode confidence, that must be rebuilt - likely with the help of human support teams who will explain, develop tests for the future, & assure users. I recently asked a financial LLM to analyze NVIDIA’s annual report. A question about the company’s increase in dividend amount vaporized its credibility, raising the question : is it less work to do the analysis myself than to check the AI’s work? That will be the trust fall for AI. Will the software catch us if we trust it?

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Defaulting settings in products is not about auto-filling user information. It's about strategically removing barriers to help users and companies achieve their desired outcomes more efficiently. Here’s how I would identify where in your product you can set a new default value:  1. Identify the Desired Outcome: What is the ultimate goal for your users? 2. Map User Steps: Break down the journey towards that outcome. 3. Reduce Friction: Reduce friction by setting a default value for that outcome that is further along in the user’s progress. Examples:  - Uber Health: Boosts ride completion by automating calls to passengers right before pickup. - Mural: Collaboration = Higher Value; Setting a default number of seats at checkout. - Yelp: uses IP addresses to tailor the browsing experience from the first visit. - Ebay: Lower the time from 72 hours to 24 hours to close a sale to increase urgency. By defaulting to the right settings, you not only make your product easier to use but also increase the likelihood of user adoption, in turn higher revenue. What are some interesting ways you’ve leveraged this concept in your product? ---- PS: Interested in diving deeper into growth themes like this? Sign up here for more insights and discussions: https://lnkd.in/gq_tiQ4t. Happy to help!

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👋 How can improv help product managers have effective conversations? Shardul Mehta is a rare combination of a seasoned product leader and an improv instructor! In just 6 min on Product BLAH, Shardul shares three improv techniques to level up. Shardul teaches product managers how to launch and scale products. He has been an entrepreneur and a senior product executive at growth-focused companies. He also performs and teaches improv. 🗣 We bring the BLAH, now its your turn to bring the BLAH BLAH :-) Love to hear your thoughts! Product BLAH 2 - Level Up with Improv | Shardul Mehta #productmanagement #productleadership Product Leader's Journey

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Alignment. The most frustrating part of the product marketing job. One way to make it easier? A little psychology. One perpetual challenge of product marketing is achieving a semblance of stakeholder alignment around product launches, messaging, and go-to-market strategy. Imagine the assortment of opposing viewpoints, priorities, and personalities you're attempting to unite: ➖The CEO wants big swings and is impatient for explosive growth ➖The product manager considers their labor of love an uncompromisable masterpiece ➖The sales team is skeptical of any potential disruption to their cadence ➖A myriad of conflicting agendas from CS, marketing, legal, and beyond Having so-called “synergy” with this eclectic group takes an impressive feat of diplomacy. The main issue is that people are hard-wired for psychological biases that cause resistance to unified alignment. Some tendencies working against you: 1️⃣ Confirmation Bias We instinctively discredit or dismiss information that doesn't adhere to our preconceived beliefs, no matter how valid. 2️⃣ Authority Bias We inherently trust and defer to authority and hierarchy rather than objective facts, data, or logic. 3️⃣ Sunk Cost Fallacy We're irrationally inclined to continue courses of action we've already invested in, even if changing paths is wiser. 4️⃣ The Anchoring Effect We latch onto the first piece of information as a reference point, distorting subsequent judgments. So how do you achieve stakeholder buy-in and alignment despite the psychological opposition? Being as intentional about addressing the core psychological drivers as your actual strategy. Balance data-driven influence with personal rapport-building to make stakeholders feel genuinely heard. Use intellectual humility to earn trust and establish objective credibility from the outset. Most importantly, leverage psychological biases in your favor: ✅ The Mere-Exposure Effect Repeated exposure builds familiarity and leads to buy-in. Gradually introduce information, rather than an information overload. ✅ Loss Aversion Frame alignment as an opportunity to avoid losses or negative consequences rather than solely focusing on potential gains. ✅ Social Proof Befriend respected internal champions. Their advocacy carries weight in selling your vision. ✅ Decoupling Isolate issues to avoid conflation and overwhelm. It's meticulous work, but mastering psychological angles is equally vital as any technical PMM competency. Your entire launch falters if you can't align a diverse collection of personalities. So be like Freud (well maybe only 50% like Freud to comply with company drug policy).

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