A few days ago I was talking to a client about taking a new product to market and something struck me. In hindsight it seems obvious. “Are you a fire starter?” I almost asked because everything I had seen up to that point suggested otherwise. The skills and attitude needed for the product manager or the founder of a startup
It was a bone crushing time for the company and a morale crushing time for the employees. It happened nearly 20 years ago at a tech company I worked for. We were caught in the perfect storm. Bad News The dot com bubble had busted. Technology spending had plummeted. The company was mandated to restate its earnings because of accounting
Many #startups that I speak with are confused about the role of a PM. Often this role is filled by #founders, or business analyst or by someone in BD or sales. There are also organizations where this role is not created and sort of everyone (or no one) is driving. Is it simply lack of awareness? Or a legacy of IT Services culture?
Well, if you don’t know where you are going, how will you get there? Just like you need a map (now GPS) to get to a new destination, you need a map to help you chart a course for your product and business, whether you are a #startup or not. When you use a map for getting from point A to B,
From the time #productmanager has a become a hot job Training factories have started offering various courses Even MBA colleges have started offering #productmanagement certifications These last from 4 weeks to as long as part time over 6 months Most of these do no cover the basics even of hard skills that a PM must have or develop. And almost
The purpose of competitor analysis is to get better at winning in the market. The way you do it is to gather as much information as can be attained about what competitors are doing. The next step in going about it is to conduct a thorough analysis. This will help you evaluate the gaps and issues that you can take
Many #startup and new products usually claim to be “disruptive” There is one thing you want to avoid (or be cautious of) disrupting Even if you are a far better product That is your pricing model This is especially true for #b2b from my own experience in working with over 50 clients Here is a playbook of sorts
Could this be a case of “penny wise, pound foolish”? This is a far too common startup trap. Even smart people seem to fall into it. They want to sell software to others. But they don’t want to pay others for software. Technologists and engineers fall into this trap. This often is case of tech driven startups. Using open source
© 2026 by Prodzen | All Rights Reserved.
