Brendan Fortune discusses the limits of product feedback management tools on Startups For the Rest of Us.
Insight
Fortune: Product roadmaps are lagging indicators of team alignment
“What the best roadmaps are lagging indicators or like outputs of alignment. With the team, no matter how small that team is or how big the team is. So they're not connections to your user feedback.”
Insight
Fortune: Startups should not hire a PM until affording $120k-$130k salary
“When can you afford to pay an employee A 120, a 130,000 a year. Now I'm assuming USD, and it kind of depends on where in the world you're hiring, but like, when can you afford, and that's not the only question, but it's a pretty good indicator. Like if you're …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Fortune: Customer.io Sees 98-99% Monthly Retention and Over 60% Monthly Expansion
“Customer.io, where I work, only a couple percent of customers churn each month, which means there's about 98%, 99% customer retention each month. And of those greater than 60% expand their profile count each month.”
Insight
Fortune: Relying on low-pain, low-effort features harms SaaS growth potential
“Moving down the framework, if it's a low pain, low effort thing, then do it, but try not to do too many of them. There's the temptation sometimes to only do these things because you see the problem, you understand the problem, and you understand the solution, …”
Insight
Fortune: PMs synthesize product insights through conversations, not solitary analysis
“Trying to retreat into your own mind, write a lot, maybe do a bunch of diagramming and stuff, that rarely is going to help you synthesize. Instead, what happens, where that happens best, in my experience, is when you're talking out a theory with another member…”
Insight
Fortune: Product managers build from customer feedback while product marketers tell stories
“Product management is listening to the market and reacting and building. And product marketers are speaking to the market, so both of them need to understand what, you know, customers very, very, you know, at a detailed level, they need to understand, have a, …”