When you build products, you’re making bets — not certainties. The best product teams don’t pretend to know the answer or wait until all data clears the fog. Instead, they “think in bets.” That means approaching each decision like a poker player, not a chess grandmaster.
Most people treat product roadmaps as if they’re a set of sure things: follow steps A, B, and C, and you’ll win. But real product work faces incomplete data and random outcomes. As Annie Duke puts it in her book, Thinking in Bets:
“What makes a decision great is not that it has a great outcome. A great decision is the result of a good process...”
So, what’s the process?
First, treat every new idea — a feature, a redesign, a pivot — as a “hypothesis.” Will this change actually improve something users care about? Write it down in simple terms, like: “If we build an onboarding guide, new users will activate 20% faster.”
Now, here’s where the betting mindset helps. It asks:
- How confident are we?
- What info could prove us wrong?
- What’s the easiest, cheapest way to test this in the real world?
Quick bets matter because the future is fuzzy. If you gamble 12 months on a huge launch without real-world data, you might be in for a nasty surprise. Instead, top teams borrow from poker pros and run smaller experiments — MVPs, A/B tests, surveys with context. They measure, learn, and shift their bets if the early evidence says “nope.”
Spotify is a good example. Their “bets board” is a public way to show which pitches are actual priorities, what’s being tested, and which ones move on after the first round. Nothing sits still. If the initial result flops, the team adapts or walks away.
This approach also helps avoid “resulting” — blaming or praising people based mainly on whether the final result was good or bad. Duke explains (via Evan's Notes):
“Just because you lose doesn’t mean you made a bad decision. And just because you win doesn’t mean you made a good one.”
The product is a game that combines luck and skill. Short, smart experiments let you learn fast, place more bets, and react before it’s too late.
So next time you face 20 options, resist the urge to play it safe and delay until you “know for sure.” Instead, pick a handful, write out hypotheses, and ask: “What’s our bet? How will we know if it’s working?” Ship small. Learn fast. Then double down where the evidence is strong.
That’s real product strategy: it’s not about avoiding risk, but managing it—one bet at a time.