In a startup, the founders and Product Development team define the first product. The job of the Customer Development team is to see whether there are customers and a market for that vision. (Read this last sentence again. It's not intuitively obvious, but the initial product specification comes from the founders’ vision, not the sum of a set of fo

Here's what I'm always trying to understand: Are your customers who you think they are? Do they really have the problems you think they have? How does the customer solve this problem today? What would be required for them to switch?

For virtually all product decisions, the key is to properly frame the decision to be made, and to first get everyone on the same page in terms of: What problem exactly are you trying to solve? Who exactly are you trying to solve this problem for—which persona? What are the goals you are trying to satisfy with this product? What is the relative prio

But as any experienced founder knows, this process is fractal.

The deeper you get into asking questions about a person’s day, the more detail there is to observe. And true needs or jobs—the ones that are burning or unfulfilled—get lost in the process of mapping the infinite contours of an individual life.

What actually works? Drop the objectivity. In

The job of the startup product leader is to explain how their business can potentially solve the user’s problem and whether you have agreement with the client. “In the beginning all you need to create is a high-level plan,” says Weinberg. This is step one for Weinberg and his teams. In this high-level plan there are a handful of questions that need

Product creators often fall into the trap of thinking there is only one way to position an offering, and that we have no ability to shift that contextual frame of reference, especially after we have released it to market. We set out to build something (a new dessert or a new way of doing email, for example) and then almost unconsciously position ou