Founder Mode, done right (thread): Some ppl are surprised by the exuberance with which PG’s Founder Mode blog post has been received. There are many reasons for its strong resonance.

But the main one is that it introduces a catchy term for something that many founders & leaders have seen & experienced first-hand.

Since time immemorial, when a CEO asks a PM at Product Review, “what do you need to 10X users/revenue?”, “what will make you go faster?”, etc

The PM steadfastly responds “We need [N] more engineers”. The Eng Mgr nods approvingly

A story thread, with some hard truths to swallow:





“More engineers” will usually *not* solve your problems.

Because the real problem is often a strategy problem, culture problem, interpersonal problem, trust problem, creativity problem, or market problem.

More engineers *will* solve your “I don’t have enough engineers” problem.

Product life in midsized & large companies starts making a lot more sense when you understand that a large % of middle & upper management thinks their main job is to (i) try & decipher what the CEO wants done (ii) align their org with it (iii) propose a plan that the CEO approves This is instead of *often* telling the CEO what actually needs to be done, in a way that is grounded in (a) deep insight into customers & market (b) creative product & GTM solutions

Many in middle & upper management will of course blame incentives set by the company for this.

Those who don’t understand the great value of instinct call it luck. Useful to understand

https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1392512931925876738

Everything we create, everything we do, it all starts with our thinking

Clear thinking drastically improves odds of success in all departments of career & life

While clear thinking is quite rare, it can be developed with practice

Advanced principles for clear thinking:

(1/12) 1) Essence first. Not story. Not analogy

Most people get seduced by great analogies & exciting stories.

Clear thinkers don’t *form* their thinking via analogies. They identify the essence of the issue, in their specific context. Then, they use analogies as one of their inputs.

Apple Pie Position:
A statement that instantly elevates the person who is saying it and is simultaneously hard for anyone else to push back on, and so everyone avoids the personal risk and just nods “yes”, even though its actual value in this specific situation might be… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… Okay, so now that you understand Apple Pie, here’s your crash course on dealing with Apple Pie:

1) The greatest thing about Apple Pie Positions is that you now have a name to assign to a complex behavior (and it is a cute name, which helps a lot). Once you share this idea with… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Which book would sell more copies?

Business (auto)biography 1:
Failure 1, Failure 2, Hit rock bottom, Success 1, Failure 3, Wild success

Business (auto)biography 2:
Mild success, Major success, Mild failure, Mild challenges, Wild success

(Wild success being the same in both) Now, imagine you must choose to live one of these lives.

Which one would you choose?

(note: you *must* choose one of these, you have no other option)

(think & be honest to yourself)

(this is a thought experiment for you only, so pick one, don’t reply with “it depends”)

Failure is the absolute worst way to learn something and sadly so many people spend their entire lives under the illusion that failure is the best way to learn anything.

https://x.com/shreyas/status/1624988445780365314

Some thoughts on Individual Contributor (IC) vs. Manager paths in product management:

1) The manager path isn’t the “evil path”. The IC path isn’t the “loser’s path”

2) Early/mid-level PM Managers need to mostly exercise core PM skills, just at greater scope & throughput 3) So early on, fixate on the goal of building core competence, not the goal of “managing PMs”

4) Try being a PM manager at least a couple of times before you decide it is not for you. You might hate it early on, but you might just surprise yourself with how much you love it

A really important concept to understand in work & life: the Antithesis Principle.

It is best explained through some examples, so that’s where I will start this thread.

(1/18) First example.

Observation:

Most people learn better when the content / teaching is entertaining.

Many people *only* learn if the content is entertaining.

The next cohort of my Career Management course is now open for enrollment. I have designed this course to pack a massive amount of content very efficiently in just 2 days (4 hours each on Saturday & Sunday, plus 2-3 total hours of optional Q&A sessions).

maven.com/shreyas-doshi/… Course modules:
- How to craft your path
- How to grow your competence
- How to shortlist companies
- How to get hired
- How to choose the right offer
- How to grow within your company
- Review and reflection
- Bonus: The tech jobs downturn
- Plus: 2 Q&A sessions

It is easy to make fun of PMs in big companies who are just launching features and are focused on “outputs over outcomes”, but also understand that some environments are so messed up that a launch (really any launch) is by itself a huge achievement requiring superhuman effort. A lot of times, these PMs know that this is not ideal. They should be doing things differently. But the mess around them is just overwhelming. It would be impossible for anyone at the IC / first-level manager level to fix the mess. You might think you can fix it, but you can’t.

The biggest problem with saying that Execution is more important than Ideas is that it demonstrates a gross misunderstanding of how you get outstanding Execution: you get it through 100s of excellent (and usually correct) Ideas about what to do & how to do it, day in and day out. To elaborate:
The notion of That One Great Idea is silly. Think of Idea in plural form, not singular. It is not just the Ah-ha Archimedes Lighbulb moment. In the real world, to make any product spectacular, that moment must actually be followed by countless other ideas & choices.

High performing senior PMs are always very busy and often overwhelmed with the endless list of things they want to do, and it is important for their sanity, effectiveness, impact that they identify the 2-3 people to whom they can delegate many of their product-related tasks. Such folks exist on most teams, especially in companies with a high hiring bar. The problem is that these folks are often in engineering, design, ops, finance, analytics, etc. and many company cultures make the mistake of stressing that PM tasks can/should only be done by the PM.

One huge mistake that many managers make is to tell a senior member of their team:

“<XYZ> is entirely your decision. I am here to serve you. I will defer to whatever your decision is here.”

This happens at all levels e.g. a Founder/CEO delegating “product strategy” to the CPO. By saying this, they are trying to be a “good manager”. But then, to be a “good leader” for the company, to make the company-optimal decision, they often overturn this team member’s decision. This causes a lot of confusion for everyone & major frustration for said team member.

Listening and thinking actually don’t go well together. Your job as a listener is to consume in a few seconds / minutes what the speaker might have experienced over weeks / months / decades. So, as a listener, odds are stacked heavily against you.

What can you do about this?
👇🏾 Partition listening & thinking.

View them as phases or modes, not concurrent activities. When you are in listening mode, just be in listening mode. Just absorb. Don’t judge, don’t filter, don’t be overcome by emotions. This is not easy, but I have found it to be very powerful.

If you work in a company with many 100s or 1000s of employees, the best networking strategy actually lies in plain sight within your company.

Here’s how it works: Ask trusted colleagues to name 5 people they know are *really* great in your company. Reach out to them with a friendly message. Not everyone will be able to respond, but usually 4 out 5 of them will. Share what you work on, learn about their work, build rapport, get to know them

A subtle reason why creativity, attention to detail & pace of product progress suffers as a startup scales is that the Visionary founder has hired an Operator to run the product (which is fine) but that Operator has simply hired other Operators & there are no Craftspersons left. Main thread here:

https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1375491623308550144

New product initiatives within already-successful companies often fail to achieve their potential because they have too much rather than too little.

Too much of:

1) headcount: you are now under pressure to come up _something_ for all these people to do

👇🏾 2) democratic decision making: creative product ideas usually get killed (or watered down) by groups of people

3) optics requirements: need to manufacture metrics & milestones to *show* straight-line progress and demonstrate certainty during an inherently uncertain journey

Sharing a brief memo I wrote for a founder in response to this question:

What is product management?

Product management is the art, science, and practice of making successful products and making products successful.

(1/12) 2/
User adoption, Customer satisfaction, Business impact are good ways to begin measuring product success. Consistent product success comes from unique insight on customers & market, creative product solutions, and methodical execution in building & distributing the product.

Some people who succeed wildly in school don’t achieve their apparent potential in the business world. Some others who do okay (or worse) in school manage to build an extremely successful life. Why is that?

What we learn in school & must unlearn in business & in life:

(1/10) 1/

In school:
Your teacher provides a rubric, you follow the rubric to a tee, you deserve an A.

In business & life:
There is rarely a rubric. Even if it exists, and you follow it to a tee, you often end up with average results, not outsized returns.