What I'm Learning about Building Great Products after 10 Years as a PM
A compilation of my in-progress learnings about what it takes to build great products
If you looked at my career: Figma, Google, Microsoft, Vevo — it might seem like a random walk through some reputed software companies. But the through line has always been this: I want to build helpful software with great people I can learn from.
I’ve always loved thinking about software as a creative process. I view my job as a PM as a means to bring technology to people that helps in a tangible way. At my core, I am a techno-optimist. I believe building technology is a uniquely defining characteristic of humanity. It is our unique ability to progress and survive as a species.
In my career, I’ve often been drawn to consumer experiences as I’ve thought about how software can bring people closer together or help them experience the real world. But I’ve also been drawn to working with talented people that I knew I’d learn from. This is a bet I’ve always been willing to make. Growth-mindedness is a core value for me. And there’s no better way to grow than to saying yes to interesting challenges with interesting people. You’re not guaranteed success, but you are guaranteed learnings.
Over the last year, I’ve kept an Apple Note open for what I was calling My Product-Building Philosophy. It’s still evolving but here are 10 principles I’ve jotted down:
Be truth-seeking, even when it’s inconvenient. Why do users love something or not? Why does something work or fail? The best teams orient around finding the insight and confronting truths head-on, even if it’s late in the process. They’re willing to pivot when they discover something important.
The best products reflect a core insight. I believe building something great requires at least one core insight. It can be more than one, and these can have compounding effects. But this unique belief or view on how things should work is what gives builders a real edge. Products that are borne out of recognizing a deep truth about people or our world can stand the test of uncertainty and thrash. The journey to building something great is never clear or linear. This insight becomes a guiding light through those dark times. The best builders set out on this path not because they’re focused on building a business, but because they recognize what the world needs and that it’s up to them to deliver it.
The best products express an opinion. Building for how the world should be requires conviction or having a real point of view. There is a line in the sand drawn about how things ought to be. You can examine the edges and details of the product and feel this opinion. It’s intentional.
The best products have moments of magic. And they maximize the odds and minimize the time it takes for you to get to this magic. The best products are optimized around you finding that moment of magic. Just like the best songs, movies, books all guide you to those moments.
The best products induce feelings in these moments of magic. They get you to experience an emotion. This emotion connects you with a product in an intangible way. All the metrics we obsess over try to validate this connection, but are downstream of this moment (and whether it’s repeatable). There is immense power in invoking an emotional connection with your product. It’s even more powerful in a world where we are increasingly drowning in noise, distractions, and stimulus. These products get your attention, for the right reasons.
The best products just “work”. They feel familiar yet can introduce novelty without making you break your head. There’s a surprising level of intuition with how you navigate something new. It almost feels like you’re falling through the product, effortlessly. Only when you stop to think about it is when you can admire what was built. Someone manufactured that feeling for you.
The best products get the small things right. The details matter because if you didn’t obsess over them, your users would care and would notice. Builders who obsess over the details are going to win in the long run. In a world where “how” you build something is no longer scarce, “why” you are building becomes precious. Getting the details right is part of your “why” and your users will notice.
The best products keep the main thing, the main thing. There’s so much noise around building products and growing your business. The best builders can distill what to focus on and ruthlessly ignore the noise. Good products come down to a few simple things, and it’s your job not to lose sight of those. Stay laser focused on what matters, don’t lose sight of your guiding light of insights, and carry on.
Conviction matters. There is no right or wrong. Everything you are trying to do has been done before and yet never in the exact way you are trying. When both these things are true, what matters the most is your belief. Your belief on what needs to be done and in a way that is undeniable. It is okay to waver on conviction as you reorient towards the truth. But when you’ve lost conviction, you’ve lost the battle. That distinction is binary because either you are fighting to win or you are actively losing. There is no Switzerland when it comes to conviction.
The best builders don’t lose long-term optimism. They have the humility to recognize when they were wrong. But they keep taking shots because that’s what makes them great. They know failure is part of the journey. And the quest for building something great requires enduring failure and periods of wandering. Despite this, these builders don’t lose their optimism. They believe anything within the laws of physics is possible, and they get after it with a fervor.
I don’t have all the answers. I’m still learning and growing every day. But I’m sharing these in the hope that it helps you, in any small way.
Thanks for sharing! So much of this resonates and things that keep coming up as we're in the early stages of scaling Enterpret!