Handling the DIY objection for B2B startups
Your biggest competition is a customer building the solution in house For B2B Saas products, frequently the alternative is not a competitor of yours but Engineering or IT teams building in house. The DIY alternative. Many applications that are not core to the company will of course be outsourced e.g. CRM, ERP, calendar scheduling, eSignature. […]
Why Emotional and Social Jobs are the Secret Weapons of Product Success
Are emotional and social jobs important to consider? Are you familiar with the Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) framework? It’s a powerful tool that goes beyond simply understanding what features users want, but rather why they need them. The JTBD framework breaks down user needs into three distinct categories: functional, emotional, and social. While the functional job might […]
Don’t obsess on the TAM, yet
Starting your startup in a niche will improve the odds of success One of the frequent comments I hear from startups is they want to go for a big TAM. This is what I often hear. ”We want to go after a big TAM.” ”Our investors want to see a big TAM.” “Our solution […]
-1 to 1 : Starting up your startup
What you need to do once you have an idea You have this awesome idea about a product and decide to start a company. Where do you start? What are the very first steps? Frequently, startups will jump right into product building and hope that it will sell. We tend to bias our own experiences. […]
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 […]
A band aid is better than bleeding
Trade offs in short term vs long term decisions Recently I have been thinking about trade offs in product. The discussion about trade offs is something that is not spoken about much. I was watching Season 3- Episode 5 of “Halt and Catch Fire”. The two startup co-founders are arguing about a software issue which […]
