“This post is part of a series about making better product decisions. Three customers are at risk today. You don't have a feature they want and your sales team is concerned they will switch to your competitor's product who does have the requested feature. What do you do?”
Marty Cagan argues that web products spread worldwide quickly, but making them work well in other countries requires a different product approach than simply localizing a US product. Early companies that handed off US…
Jake Fuentes, co-founder of Cascade, reflects on the lessons from shutting down his B2B data-visualization startup after four years. He argues that failure rarely gets studied carefully, and that several decisions which…
Cagan argues that the next big product is usually not a wholly new market but a new version of something existing that does the job far better, faster, or cheaper, thereby redefining its category. He illustrates this…
Jason Fried, co-founder of Basecamp, answers a common question: why build something brand new instead of adding it to an existing product? He argues that a fresh start gives teams the freedom to explore new technology…
This essay traces Medium's history from its 2012 launch by Evan Williams through its 2018 monetization struggles. It argues Medium's minimal design and long-form focus reinvigorated interest in in-depth writing and…
Cagan and Fredell argue that most M&A deals fail to deliver expected results, and that the usual due diligence misses what matters most: whether the acquired organization can keep building successful products under the…
Marty Cagan follows up his earlier talk on why product teams fail by describing ten attributes of strong product teams operating under a Continuous Discovery and Delivery model. He argues that empowered, durable…
Cagan argues that many companies lack a clear way to tell whether product managers' work actually aligns with business strategy, and that teams drift into chasing feature ideas. He proposes a 'Product Scorecard': a…
Marty Cagan addresses a recurring question: how Agile relates to the Product Operating Model. He argues Agile is only one of three dimensions of the product model, covering how software is built, tested, and deployed…
In the season opener of this podcast, hosts Teresa Torres and Petra Wille reflect on the 2025 Product at Heart conference theme of curation. They argue that curation, choosing what to build, prioritize, and serve, is…
The supermarket shelf used to hold maybe 1,000 SKUs. Now it can hold 10,000, because AI makes it just as easy to build the wrong thing as the right one. Brian (Aha!) argues this is exactly where product managers earn their keep: strategy and discovery decide what deserves a spot on the shelf…
In this interview from Melissa Perri's CPO Accelerator series, Abbie Moore, CPO of the non-profit Adopt-A-Pet, explains that product leadership at a non-profit shares most fundamentals with for-profit work: customer…
Marty Cagan argues that enterprise software companies sometimes need to become consumer or small-business companies, whether because enterprise markets are saturated, investors demand bigger markets, or leaders tire of…
Marty Cagan shares a curated list of favorite product and leadership mantras he has collected while visiting companies, explaining what each one reveals about good product practice. Many of the quotes are attributed to…
Marty Cagan and Martina Lauchengco argue that the terms "product" and "solution" are often misused, especially in enterprise and infrastructure software. They define a real product as one customers pay for, that works…
Cagan argues that a rebrand rarely fixes a company's real problems, because a brand is not a name, logo, or ad budget but the sum of every way a company touches customers. He contends that strong brands are built on a…
Marty Cagan argues that 'The Innovator's Dilemma' describes a symptom of large-company decline rather than its root cause. Drawing on Ben Horowitz's 'Peacetime CEO/Wartime CEO' framing, he contends that startups are…
Lenny Rachitsky closes his eight-part marketplace growth series by asking founders and operators what they would do differently. The answers cluster around a few recurring regrets: spreading effort too thin instead of…
Torres argues that many good ideas begin as seemingly infeasible or bad ideas, and that their value often emerges through hard work and reframing. She proposes evaluating ideas first against the team's vision and…