Kassen Qian

But an orientation toward storytelling and vision can sometimes cause challenges with execution : The only new product launch that succeeded was Airbnb.com. Every other big launch over the last eight years has actually been a complete flop.

1. Shipping - The most basic need that a PM satisfies is shipping features. This involves day-to-day tackling of large and small decisions that block the successful release of a new feature.

Stripe and Google both have long-term big visions and optimism about the impact technology can have on people’s lives .

The biggest risk is building the wrong product - a product that doesn’t delight our users, or doesn’t improve success metrics such as user acquisition, user retention, etc. We call this “product risk". The 4-stage model helps us drive down risk and get products out the door quickly.

3. Strategic - You have PMF and a 2-3 year runway. Your Strategic PM, usually director level or VP level, will take your company's overall long-term vision and lay out the pathways that pave your way towards that. These pathways involve major decisions that could alter the company's future.

The Lean Startup model has pretty much become the orthodoxy for launching a new product or company today: build an extremely rough version one, launch it, find some users, and then iterate on the product as quickly as you can (pivoting).

3. Empowered Product Teams: in strong product companies, teams are instead given problems to solve, rather than features to build, and most important, they are empowered to solve those problems in the best way they see fit.

The King of the Hill at Airbnb has switched from designers to product managers in most parts of the org. Vision-led rather than design-led.