Product strategy

So but how do we build software that can be anything without falling into the Zombocom trap? I believe that Bezos interview shows us exactly how.

1. You start from a systems-level insight ( the internet is growing rapidly )


2. Then work backwards to a first best customer who has a burning need ( can’t find book ) that is related to your superpower ( intern

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The difference between making sure a feature scales and just making a feature work is a huge investment in time.

To me, the clearest example is Dropbox. I’ve used Dropbox since the earliest days, and I love it. Nothing has ever come close to providing the speed, reliability, and cross-platform compatibility for file synching of Dropbox. Even though I technically get iCloud File Storage “for free” as part of some broader package, I still pay for Dropbox with a... See more

The most important features for a product are usually the ones that were built first. Once you get past a certain level of functionality, a lot of the new functionality on the roadmap often targets just a subset of users (e.g. power users) or supports use cases that are adjacent to the core use cases. So it’s a safer bet that you’ll drive more busi... See more

Google famously prioritized speed as a feature. They realized that if search is fast, you’re more likely to search. The reason is that it encourages you to try stuff, get feedback, and try again. When a thought occurs to you, you know Google is already there. There is no delay between thought and action, no opportunity to lose the impulse to find s... See more

It sometimes sounds like “more bullet points of more features” is always better, but you and I have used software that claimed to have lots of useful features that didn’t really work in reality. Usually the more features a product has, the worse each feature is.

When you try to make something that solves everything, you obsess over questions of power: how to make something that is omnipotent and everlasting. But when you make something that does one thing well, the questions are much more personal: does it solve my problem? and for how long? and who for? and where will it push the space around it? I want t... See more

I’ll refer to the work that you do to decide what to build as discovery and the work that you do to build and ship a product as delivery. This distinction matters. As you’ll see, many companies put a heavy emphasis on delivery—they focus on whether you shipped what you said you would on time and on budget—while under-investing in discovery, forgett... See more

I don’t want to know about the roadmap, I want to know how we got there. How are we segmenting the market? Where do we play? Where do we want to play? Who do we beat and why? Who do we lose to and why? What is our plan for relevant differentiation, for creating a moat, for sustainable competitive advantage? How are we optimizing each piece of the s... See more