The Product Team You Need
As a company grows and matures, nearly every function within it undergoes transformation. The product team is no exception; in fact, it's often at the heart of this evolution. The way you structure your product organization, the type of talent you hire, and the roles individuals play must adapt to the company's current point in its journey and its unique challenges.
Many leaders fall into the trap of either scaling their product function too haphazardly, leading to chaos when growth accelerates, or prematurely building the "product team of the future," which can stifle early-stage innovation. The key is to right-size your product team for the specific circumstances your company is facing. Understanding these different points in a company's lifecycle – from the early, uncertain search for initial market validation to the frenetic pace of rapid expansion – is crucial for building a product engine that not only keeps pace but actively drives success.
The Quest for Initial Traction
This initial period is characterized by intense experimentation and a high degree of uncertainty. The primary goal is to stumble upon something that resonates with customers – to find that elusive initial market validation. It's less about a clear roadmap and more about rapid iteration, learning from failures, and trying to build something, anything, that people want. This period of intense searching can last for years, and many startups never make it beyond this.
Role of Product vs. Founders:
During this early quest, founders should rightfully own the product vision. They are closest to the initial idea and the urgency of finding a viable path before resources run out. Early engineers are their partners in rapidly bringing this vision to life.
So, where does a product manager fit, if at all?
- Execution Focus: If you do bring in a product hire at this stage, their role is not to define long-term strategy or dream up the next big thing. Instead, it's about translating the founder's vision into reality, efficiently and quickly. Think of it as an extension of project management – building schedules, coordinating releases, writing clear requirements, and ensuring the team can ship reliably.
- Accelerating Learning: A good early product person can help the team navigate the ups and downs of experimentation faster, ensuring that insights from each iteration are captured and fed back into the process.
It's tempting to expect an early PM to be a strategic visionary, but that's often a mistake. The focus must be on execution and enabling the founder's vision to be tested rapidly.
Common Pitfalls:
- Hiring a Strategic PM Too Early: Founders, frustrated after several failed experiments, might bring in a senior PM hoping they'll have the magic bullet for market validation. This rarely works. The founder needs to own that search. A premature strategic hire will either be frustrated or will try to impose a structure that the company isn't ready for.
- Hiring No One (or a Pure Project Manager Too Late): Conversely, if the founder is overwhelmed and execution is suffering due to a lack of coordination, waiting too long to bring in someone who can manage the process of getting things built can also be detrimental. The team needs to be able to ship to learn.
The key is to ensure that any early product hires are aligned with the experimental, execution-focused nature of this period. Process and structure are light; speed and learning are paramount.
Gaining Momentum
Once you've found that initial market validation, the game changes. You have evidence that you're onto something valuable, and the primary goal shifts from exploration to exploitation – scaling what's working. Predictability and reliability become increasingly important.
The Evolving Role of Product:
As founders get pulled into other critical aspects of scaling the company (hiring, fundraising, sales), the product team needs to step up and take more ownership.
- Owning Collaboration and Communication: Product managers become central hubs for communication, ensuring alignment between engineering, design, sales, marketing, and support. They drive the product development process, ensuring that releases are delivered predictably.
- Focusing the Roadmap: While innovation isn't dead, the emphasis is on understanding the core user base and deepening the value proposition for them. The roadmap becomes more defined, focusing on improvements and features that enhance the core offering.
- Predictable Delivery: The ability to reliably ship quality product becomes a key measure of success. This involves better planning, clearer requirements, and more robust processes than in the freewheeling early days of searching.
Founder's Transition:
Founders start to transition from being the primary product visionary and decision-maker on all details to delegating more of the day-to-day product execution. They still set the overall vision and strategy, but they empower the product team to manage the roadmap and delivery.
Key Shifts for the Product Team:
- From Project to Product Management: The role matures from pure execution (getting things built) to more holistic product management (understanding the market, defining the what and why, and managing the product lifecycle).
- Increased Process and Structure: While agility is still important, some level of process is necessary to manage growing complexity and ensure consistent delivery. This might include more formal sprint planning, roadmap reviews, and feedback collection mechanisms.
- Data-Informed Decisions: With a growing user base, data becomes a more powerful tool for understanding user behavior and making informed product decisions.
This period is about building a repeatable product development engine that can reliably deliver value to a growing customer base. The product team is crucial for making this happen.
Rapid Expansion
Rapid expansion is an exhilarating but demanding time. The company is scaling quickly, and the product organization must evolve again to both support this growth and drive future innovation. The challenge is to maintain momentum on the core product while also identifying and pursuing new opportunities.
The Strategic Product Team:
At this juncture, the product team needs to become more strategic and forward-looking.
- Articulating the Strategic Roadmap: Product leaders must translate the company's mission and long-term vision into a multi-quarter strategic roadmap. This involves making tough choices about resource allocation and balancing investments in the core product with bets on new initiatives.
- Balancing Innovation and Execution: The team needs to excel at both scaling existing successful products and introducing new ones. This requires a blend of operational excellence and creative, strategic thinking.
- Developing Product Leadership: As the team grows, a new layer of product leadership often emerges. These leaders take ownership of specific product areas or initiatives, making decisions independently and mentoring other PMs.
Hiring for Rapid Expansion:
The talent you need during such intense growth is different from earlier periods. Simply promoting from within might not be enough to meet the new challenges. Consider these profiles:
- Entrepreneurs at Scale: Look for individuals who have experience in both scrappy startup environments and larger, more structured companies. They understand how to innovate and move quickly, but also how to navigate the complexities of a scaling organization. People who have been founders or played significant early-team roles often fit this mold, provided they also have experience operating at scale.
- Internal Talent Development: Don't overlook your existing team. Rapid growth creates immense opportunities for individuals to step up and grow. Consciously create pathways for internal talent to take on more responsibility. When new senior roles open up, give strong internal candidates a serious look before defaulting to external hires. This signals that growth opportunities exist within the company.
- Building Diverse Teams: As you scale, it becomes even more critical to build a diverse product team. Different perspectives and experiences lead to better product ideas and a deeper understanding of a broader customer base. This isn't just about hitting quotas; it's about building a stronger, more innovative team. This requires a conscious effort to cultivate an inclusive environment and actively seek out candidates from varied backgrounds.
Key Challenges:
- Maintaining Agility: As processes become more formalized, there's a risk of losing the agility that characterized earlier times. Finding the right balance between structure and speed is crucial.
- Communication Overload: With more people and more moving parts, effective communication becomes harder but also more vital. Invest in clear communication channels and practices.
- Avoiding the Innovator's Dilemma: Success can breed complacency. The product team must constantly challenge assumptions and look for new ways to create value, even if it means disrupting existing successful products.
During rapid expansion, the product team transitions from primarily executing and optimizing to also shaping strategy and leading innovation, all while managing the complexities of fast-paced growth.
Conclusion
Understanding these different points in a company's lifecycle is paramount for any leader aiming to build an effective and impactful product organization. The core lesson is clear: what got you here won't get you there. Too many startups stumble because they fail to adapt their product team's structure, talent, and focus as they mature.
Whether you're navigating the initial chaotic search for market validation, systematically scaling a proven product, or managing the intense demands of accelerated growth, the ability to right-size your product team for the challenges at hand is a significant competitive advantage.
Great product management, in the end, is about creating value through people, collaboration, and a deep understanding of the customer and the market. It requires constant adjustment to the company's culture and current context, a willingness to scale what's working, courage to change what's not, and the foresight to push for innovation when the time is right. By consciously designing your product team to meet the evolving needs of your business, you set the stage not just for survival, but for sustained success.