Cagan: Almost all innovative tech products come from domain outsiders
Marty Cagan · 20Product: When to Hire a CPO, The Three Different Types of CPO, How To Know What You Need, How To Structure the Hiring Process, What Are the Must-Ask Questions, What Tests and Case Studies Should Be Used, How Should Their Compensation Package Be Structur · Feb 3, 2023 · at 33:25
Marty Cagan discusses why product potential outweighs prior domain expertise when hiring product leaders.
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“My evidence for that is just look across our industry, across time, that all the innovative products, almost all of them, came from people and teams that had no real domain experience.”
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More from Marty Cagan
Almost all innovative products are built by teams without domain expertise
“Look across our industry, across time, at all the innovative products, almost all of them came from people and teams that had no real domain experience.”
Founders who outsource engineering to firms like Accenture are not serious
“When I find a founder that thinks that engineers are somebody you can just do a contract with Accenture or somebody. I'm like, you're not serious about this. Come back. If you decide to get serious.”
Startup failure stems from inferior solutions, not a lack of demand
“The issue is rarely demand. The issue normally is the solution that you've come up with is not significantly better than the alternatives that are out there. And if it's not significantly better than the alternatives, people won't switch to your product.”
Startups need 50 to 100 attempts to reach product-market fit
“You will probably need to do between 50 and a hundred attempts before you get to product market fit.”
Product teams can validate or invalidate ideas within hours
“Most of the time we can figure out in hours that this is not right. Hours, sometimes minutes. In fact, it's not unusual to do a dozen iterations in a day.”
Qualitative research should find product flaws, not seek affirmation
“With qualitative feedback, your goal is to find all the things that are wrong with the product. So that's the difference. You're not looking for affirmation, which is what these, you know, naive founders are doing. They're not, you're not doing that. You're ac…”