Marty Cagan argues that consumer internet services differ sharply from traditional enterprise software: there is no sales force or distribution channel between the product and its users, so ideas can be tested and…
Cagan argues that strong products are the foundation of a sustainable business, and that weak products force sales and marketing into costly workarounds and frustrate customers. The remedy he proposes is a Charter…
Marty Cagan argues that green technology is poised to become the next major wave of innovation, much as the Internet touched nearly every business. He points to advances from Xerox PARC in solar concentrator…
Marty Cagan extends Marc Andreessen's 'software is eating the world' thesis beyond software itself, arguing that modern product techniques are disrupting entrenched industries such as automotive, animation, and…
Marty Cagan argues that after filtering out bad ideas, the next key tool for making hard investment choices is a Board of Advisors. Unlike a board of directors, which is shaped by investor duties and CEO oversight, an…
“New products don’t need to be revolutionary, life-changing, or disruptive breakthroughs to succeed. Entire categories can roll downhill, gathering complexity as they go. Each product one-upping the next until more becomes too much. The cycle feeds itself, never satiated. Competitors locked in a loop of mutual destruction through perpetual over-improvement. When that happens, the door cracks open for something new.…”
Marty Cagan highlights a talk by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and draws out four principles that connect to his thinking on product portfolio planning. The core message is that great product companies focus relentlessly on…
Marty Cagan argues that the term minimum viable product is used so inconsistently that it confuses product teams, and proposes a clearer working definition. He defines an MVP as the smallest product that is valuable…
This paid post explains how to measure retention using cohort analysis, including how to read cohort charts for trends and for signs of flattening that indicate product-market fit. It then previews a framework of seven…
Marty Cagan answers common follow-up questions about product vision, clarifying how it differs from a roadmap and how it should be scoped, owned, detailed and maintained. He argues a vision should describe a desired end…
Hiten Shah argues that building in public began as a risky, honest practice where founders shared unfinished thinking to find like-minded people and sharpen their own conviction. As audiences grew and tools for…
Marty Cagan introduces the discovery sprint, a one-week time-boxed effort to tackle a substantial problem or risk in a product's definition and validate a potential solution with real users. He explains that the…
Lenny argues that launches fail because nobody pays attention by default, so products must do something worth remarking about. The preview introduces ten buzz-generating launch strategies, illustrated with real examples…
Lenny Rachitsky compiles lessons from founders and early growth leaders at marketplaces like Lyft, Thumbtack, Rover, and Udemy on how to earn trust between strangers. The core argument is that trust is built through a…
Teresa Torres uses her annual January post to lay out Product Talk's plans for 2021, applying the same opportunity-solution methods she teaches product trios to her own business. She frames her desired outcome as…
Marty Cagan argues that many Agile coaches come from delivery backgrounds and lack the product and design experience needed to help teams with discovery. He describes Discovery Coaches as typically former product…
Marty Cagan examines top-down deadlines, where management sets a date for a major outcome such as a trade show debut or a startup's runway limit. He acknowledges that such deadlines can create a powerful sense of…
Marty Cagan revisits the distinction between product teams and project teams, which he says he should have written about sooner, after hoping the problem had faded. A product team is durable and owns an outcome over one…
A follow-up on activation metrics explaining a three-step method: brainstorm candidate moments from usage data, test them with regression against retention, then run experiments to confirm causality. It adds real reader…
Teresa Torres reflects on a live podcast discussion about writing user stories, where co-host Roger Cauvin argued that stories lacking the who and why leave engineers doing only the bare minimum. Torres clarifies that…
Teresa Torres reflects on 2025 and lays out her 2026 roadmap, framed around the idea of 'just now possible' enabled by generative AI. She describes building AI coaches and tools, sunsetting her cohort-based Deep Dive…
This episode of Just Now Possible features Tendos AI's leaders discussing how they automate the tendering workflow for construction manufacturers, where teams manually parse huge bid-request PDFs, match products, price…
Jason Fried argues that business cannot be learned from books, posts, or threads, because it is a practical skill built through doing. He compares it to music and sports, where reading about a craft never substitutes…
Marty Cagan argues that product opportunities are far from exhausted, pointing to three reasons: products that frustrate users always invite better alternatives, what is technically feasible keeps shifting, and today's…