On the Foundational Questions of a Product Company…

I’m germinating a framework on the over-arching “questions” every product company needs to define and answer. These are the large-scale, strategic, existential questions that define the… tone (?) of the product and the organization.

Clearly, these might be wrong (I’m posting them here before I’m totally comfortable with them). But, here goes –

💡 QUESTION 1: Where do you sit on the Product vs. Platform spectrum?

💬 Are you a product that people buy and use? Or are you a platform that people buy and build on? How configurable are you? How flexible do you try to be? And if you’re a product that’s intended to be sold and used as-is, how strong is your resolve to stay that way and not chase deals and markets that require you to be something else?

💡 QUESTION 2: Do you deliver what customers are asking for, or do you (try to) lead customers to a better future?

💬 Does every change to your product have to be justified by an existing customer or prospect who wants it? Do you require an ARR impact to drive new features? Or are you going to create things that your customers might not realize that they need, and then try to get them to understand the value and adoption model? Do you follow your customers (safe) or do you lead them (riskier)?

💡 QUESTION 3: How do you balance larger initiatives with smaller changes?

💬 How can you organize and lead a Product team that’s responsible for large-scale evolution of the product, while still responding to smaller Support and Customer Success requests and frustrations? Can you get your developers interested in small-scale evolutionary changes as much as they get naturally interested in large-scale revolution? How do you prevent small changes that delight existing customers from falling through the cracks, or getting delayed because “we’re gonna rewrite that whole feature someday anyway…”?

Again, these might be incomplete, or even just wrong. But with every product I come into contact with at any level, these same questions seem to keep popping up. They are …transcendant? …eternal?

And to be clear: no answer to these questions is necessarily right or wrong. You just need to decide what your answer actually is. Wherever you choose to stand, know precisely where that is and why.

If you’re thinking about building a software product, maybe put some thought into these up-front? They might save you a lot of pain, confusion, and soul-searching later on.

Tell me if I’m crazy.