Bridging the Confidence Gap with Enterprises
Learn the levers of growing the top line for your organization One of the issues a startup faces is the notion that they are too small for Enterprises. Young startups often face an uphill battle when trying to win the trust and confidence of enterprise customers. The most typical set of objections from Enterprises are […]
Differences between segments and personas
How to think about segments and personas In my coaching and teaching PM courses, some things always come up as point of confusion to new PMs. One of them is the confusion between Segments and Personas. It’s important to differentiate between customer segments and personas as these concepts are foundational for effective product management and […]
Market Sizing for B2B SaaS Founders
A Comprehensive Guide for founders to estimate market size – TAM, SAM, SOM Market sizing is something we rarely do as regular PM work. Startups founders however have to estimate their market size, especially if they are raising funds. Why We Do Market Sizing Market sizing is a crucial step for B2B SaaS founders, providing […]
Startups are hard right out of the gate
Navigating some hard initial steps when you are starting out Last week I had some interesting events. For the past 3 years, I have been an advisor at Berkeley’s Skydeck, an accelerator program. This is similar to the Y Combinator. And since my experience is B2B, I act as advisor for Enterprise SAAS startups. Each […]
Don’t Build an MVP yet
Test your assumptions before building your product Now that I am teaching and advising on product management, I get to coach PMs and founders on the craft of building products. Here is a common dialogue I go through. PM: What should be the MVP?Me: Depends. What is your hypothesis to test? PM: What should be […]
Why customer don’t adopt features?
Why don’t users adopt the features you have so painstakingly built for them? One of the most frustrating things about building products is to learn that usage and adoption is low or non existent. There are multiple reasons for that and understanding the root causes is critical before you create a plan of action. A […]
Beyond the PM job description
Things PMs do that never will be in a job description, and yet we must do them Hey PMs and aspiring PMs, A product manager’s job description has a number of bullet points, but there are many more things they do on a daily basis that are unwritten. Here are some things that I have […]
Product managers should follow 5 company metrics
As a product manager, do you follow the company’s financial metrics? Especially if you are a young company. Following the key metrics of your company helps you orient your product strategy. Based on how today’s numbers are moving (or not), you can influence downstream numbers, say 6 months and beyond, by implementing the appropriate product […]
Key Metrics to follow for B2B PMs
How to orient yourself to become a revenue centric PM As a product manager, do you follow the company’s financial metrics? In both my previous jobs, I used to diligently follow the company numbers. Each quarter, our CEO or CFO would present the performance and health of the company. I used to note down these […]
Managing Feature Bloat in Enterprise Products
Not everything is bloat. Some features are meant to be rarely used. Let’s talk about feature usage and adoption. What is common across these household products? That’s right. These are items you rarely or never need and yet you need to have them handy. Pray there is never a fire and you never have to […]
