Posts tagged "Article"

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How I Scaled My Blog Archive with AI

7 min read

How I built a scalable, AI-powered blog archive by learning GenAI coding constructs and focusing on product thinking, not syntax.

I’ve built this site from the ground up. Over the years, I’ve used nearly every blogging platform: WordPress, Ghost, Substack, and more. But with the rise of generative AI, I wanted to roll my own. No templates, no prebuilt themes. Just me, rolling up my sleeves and vibe coding every page and design element into existence. Part of this project is about learning firsthand how GenAI changes the way we build. I wanted to experience...
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Platform Products Need to Earn Their Keep

8 min read

Platform products need empathy and accountability. Treat them like external products — measure impact, earn trust, and prove real value.

Every company wants to build platforms. Few succeed. The promise sounds irresistible: build it once, reuse it across teams, and move faster forever. But inside most enterprises, “platform” has become a buzzword attached to sprawling systems that no one loves and everyone tolerates. Some of these platforms thrive because they are built with empathy and clarity. Others limp along as corporate mandates — used begrudgingly, updated reluctantly, and funded indefinitely. I’ve seen both ends of...
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The Factory Robot for Apps

7 min read

Cloudflare’s VibeSDK acts like a factory robot for apps. It turns plain language into live software while teams stay focused on customer value.

Cloudflare announced a game-changing open source AI vibe-coding platform: VibeSDK. Think of it like a factory robot that understands plain language and builds the gadget you describe. You walk into a high-tech workshop and say, “I need a device that tracks expenses with clear charts.” The robot designs the blueprint, picks the parts, assembles the device, tests it, and rolls out a working demo in minutes. You request a tweak, and it updates the device...
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Rethinking Product, Market, Channel, and Model for AI Era

6 min read

How Brian Balfour’s Four Fits framework has been updated for the AI era, and what product leaders can learn from the shift.

Frameworks that endure disruption are rare. Brian Balfour’s original Four Fits framework has long been a foundational lens for growth strategy. He recently released The Four Fits: A Growth Framework for the AI Era to capture how AI is shifting the constraints inside each dimension. The Four Fits have always been about scaling companies to $100M+ revenue at venture speed. To succeed, all four fits must align simultaneously. In this article, I explore the evolution...
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From Product-Led to Product-Agentic Growth in B2B

7 min read

Product-Agentic Growth reframes how B2B software must evolve: AI agents doing work for users, reshaping PLG with autonomous workflows, predictive expansion, and real ROI.

Picture this: A procurement manager signs up for your B2B marketplace. Within 30 minutes, your product has analyzed their company's spending patterns, identified $2M in potential savings, and pre-vetted 15 suppliers that match their compliance requirements. It drafted three RFPs based on their historical templates and scheduled demos with the right stakeholders. The procurement manager didn't do any of this. The product did. This isn't just good onboarding. It's not even personalization in the traditional...
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The Massive AI Opportunity Hiding on Your Home Screen

7 min read

Most 'AI products' aren't AI-native. Use the Home Screen Test to spot the billion-dollar opportunities hiding in plain sight.

Right now, stop reading and look at your phone's home screen. Count how many apps are built specifically for AI—not regular apps that added AI features, but products designed from the ground up for the AI era. ChatGPT probably makes the list. Maybe a few others. But for most of us, the answer is surprisingly close to zero. This observation comes from Andrew Chen's recent piece on how AI will change startup building, where he...
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Outcomes Over Outputs For Real

7 min read

How to make outcomes real, align cross-functional teams, and still give leaders confidence with a dual lens scorecard, DORA metrics, and probabilistic forecasts.

Everyone in product circles nods when we say we focus on outcomes, not outputs. It sounds right. It signals maturity. Yet when the sprint boards fill up and deadlines loom, many organizations slip back into outputs, features shipped, story points burned, demos completed. The intent is good, but the execution gets hijacked by the process. There is so much to unpack here, I'm expecting several more posts in this series. Let's set the table first....
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Learning How to Learn Is Your Real Superpower

5 min read

Learning how to learn is the real superpower for product managers. It’s not about speed, but reinvention, adaptability, and enjoying the process.

“It’s very hard to predict the future, like 10 years from now, in normal cases. It’s even harder today, given how fast AI is changing, even week by week. The only thing you can say for certain is that huge change is coming.” Demis Hassabis, speaking at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, in the same context, said the most important skill of the future isn’t coding, design, or even...
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GTM Playbook for Feature Products in the Platform and AI Era

9 min read

A GTM playbook for feature products competing with platforms in the AI era, focused on delight, speed, and switching costs before the bundle arrives.

Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces. Zoom and Microsoft Teams. Dropbox and Google Drive. The pattern is not about who shipped first or who had the clever feature. The pattern is that platforms with native distribution absorb features, then win on adoption. In 2025, AI accelerates that cycle. Features can be cloned in months, not years, and updates land on millions of seats overnight. This is not a reason to stop innovating. It is a call to...
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APIs are the Strategic Foundation for Agentic AI and Beyond

7 min read

APIs are not small. They are the backbone of digital growth and the foundation of agentic AI and MCP orchestration.

(Expanding on my earlier quick-thought piece on APIs) APIs Hidden in Plain Sight APIs are often dismissed as “technical plumbing,” invisible to most business leaders. Yet they quietly power nearly every digital interaction, from mobile payments to streaming recommendations. Some of the most valuable companies in the world—Amazon, Stripe, Twilio—built their fortunes by turning APIs into products. Now, APIs are entering an even more strategic chapter. They are becoming the backbone of agentic AI and...
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What Makes a Real Data Moat

4 min read

Data moats are the key to AI defensibility. Tesla and Stripe show what makes them real and how product teams can build them.

The age of generative AI has created a strange paradox. On one hand, anyone can plug into models like GPT and build features quickly. On the other hand, defensibility has never been more elusive. If everyone has access to the same foundation models, what stops a competitor from copying your product? The strongest answer is the data moat. Done right, it’s the most durable form of AI advantage a company can build. Done wrong, it’s...
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The Big Squeeze in B2B and the Challenge of Lasting Defensibility

5 min read

In B2B, escape velocity isn’t enough. Startups must turn rapid distribution into lasting defensibility before incumbents close the window.

AI has created the fastest-scaling companies we’ve ever seen. Lovable, for instance, hit $100 million ARR just eight months after launch. As Brian Balfour observes in The Big Squeeze, “Escape velocity elevated Lovable from obscurity to household name. And now the company has a real chance to build a large and successful business. But there’s no guarantee they’ve found long-term defensibility or can turn this wave of interest into a sustainable business.” That tension—between speed...
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Why Customer Success Belongs at the Start of Product Strategy

7 min read

Shift-left Customer Success by embedding it early in product strategy, design, and GTM to boost retention and drive SaaS growth.

Customer Success (CS) is one of the most misunderstood roles in SaaS. As Saahil Karkera wrote in a widely shared LinkedIn post, one quarter CS teams are heroes; the next, they're blamed for churn, adoption drops, and burnout. This volatility exists because CS sits at the fault lines of Product, Sales, and Customer expectations. The solution isn’t hiring “miracle CSMs.” It’s treating Customer Success as a shift-left strategy—designed into product, GTM, and organizational incentives, not...
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How Product Leaders Can Adapt and Thrive in the AI Era

5 min read

Practical playbooks for product leaders to adapt and thrive in the AI era using wedge expansion, jobs-to-be-done, and dual transformation.

In the first post of this series, we looked at why AI disruption affects startups, giants, and companies with product-market fit differently. We saw that structural forces—like scale economies, network effects, and capability stacks—shape who adapts and who stalls. This post turns from why to how. The real challenge for product leaders is not predicting disruption but navigating it. While AI is reshaping every industry, companies that apply structured playbooks are better positioned to adapt...
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Why Startups Struggle and Giants Stall in the AI Era

7 min read

Why AI disruption challenges startups and giants while firms with product market fit adapt faster, explained through proven strategy frameworks.

Sam Altman has observed that both startups and large companies face unique struggles during the current wave of AI disruption, while firms that already have product-market fit often adapt more effectively (OfficeChai). Startups, despite their speed, often lack the foundation to scale. Giants, despite their resources, get trapped in bureaucracy. Companies with strong user adoption and proven fit, on the other hand, can use AI to deepen their advantage. This raises an important question for...
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Product Managers Who Think in Systems Will Survive the AI Era

7 min read

AI is reshaping product management. Learn how to map, optimize, and automate your systems before someone else does it for you.

AI is not a side trend. It is changing the work of product managers right now. Elena Verna wrote about eliminating her own job in Growth by automating 101. Read it in full. Her point was simple. If you automate yourself, you survive. If you do not, you are replaced. She was right on. But for product managers, this is not only about using a few AI tools. It is about thinking in systems. Your...
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When AI Becomes Your Medical Translator

8 min read

How AI LLMs are transforming healthcare by empowering patients with PhD-level medical knowledge and reshaping the entire industry ecosystem.

Picture this: You receive an email from your doctor with three different cancer diagnoses. Your heart stops. The medical jargon feels like it's written in a foreign language. But instead of spiraling into a Google rabbit hole of worst-case scenarios, you take a screenshot and upload it to ChatGPT. Within seconds, you have a clear, understandable explanation of what you're facing. This isn't a hypothetical scenario—it's exactly what happened to Carolina, one of the patients...
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Architect vs. Gardner: Product Development Mindsets

5 min read

Product leaders must know when to act as Architects and when to act as Gardeners. Learn how to balance precision and adaptability in product development.

Product development demands vision and execution. But the mindset you bring to the work often shapes outcomes as much as strategy or process. Two powerful metaphors illustrate this tension: the Architect and the Gardener. Both have value. Both can lead to success. But knowing when to adopt one mindset over the other—and how to balance them—can mean the difference between building structures that endure and nurturing products that adapt. The Architect Mindset Architects design with...
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Modernizing the Product Requirements Process

4 min read

PRDs aren’t dead—they’re evolving. Learn how to modernize product requirements with outcome focus, living documents, and AI-powered prototyping.

Few artifacts in product management are as debated as the Product Requirements Document (PRD). Once a cornerstone of software development, the PRD has been dismissed by many as a relic of the waterfall era. Agile evangelists often claimed that documentation slowed teams down, stifled creativity, and created rigid contracts rather than flexible collaboration. Yet the pendulum has swung too far. In many organizations, the absence of structured requirements has led to chaos: misaligned expectations, duplicated...
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Cultivating Strong Product Culture

5 min read

Learn how to cultivate a strong product culture by empowering teams, aligning leadership, and focusing on outcomes over features.

Culture may feel intangible, but in product organizations it’s one of the strongest predictors of success. Teams with the right culture move faster, make better decisions, and consistently build products that matter. Teams without it often drown in process, produce outputs that don’t add up, and lose trust with customers and stakeholders. A strong product culture doesn’t appear by accident. It is cultivated deliberately through leadership choices, organizational design, and team habits. Technology as an...
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Cultivating True Agile: From Process to Outcome

5 min read

Agile is not stand-ups or sprints. Learn how to cultivate true agility by focusing on outcomes, empowering teams, and decentralizing decisions.

Few words in technology are as overused—and misunderstood—as Agile. Too often, teams say they are Agile because they run sprints, hold stand-ups, or use Jira boards. But rituals without outcomes are just theater. True agility is not about process compliance. It is about creating organizations that learn quickly, adapt continuously, and deliver meaningful results. Agile Theater vs. True Agility The Agile Manifesto was written to emphasize people, collaboration, and adaptability. Yet many organizations reduce it...
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Love the Problem, Solution will Follow

6 min read

Fall in love with the problem, not the solution. Learn seven techniques to uncover customer needs and build products that create lasting impact.

When you’re building a product, it’s easy to get excited about the “how.” The sleek design, the advanced tech stack, the long feature list. But here’s the hard truth that separates great products from forgettable ones: don’t fall in love with the solution; fall in love with the problem. This mindset shift can be the difference between a product that thrives and one that just exists. Albert Einstein once said, “If I had an hour...
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Beyond the Deliverable - The Strategic Product Mindset

4 min read

Learn how to move beyond delivery and adopt a strategic product mindset with practical steps, proven frameworks, and customer-first thinking.

"Strategic thinking." Sounds lofty, doesn’t it? The kind of thing we expect from leaders, not just order-takers. But here’s the truth: it’s not an inborn talent. It’s a skill that can be developed with deliberate practice. Like learning to ride a bike, or in our world, learning to ship something that truly matters. Too often, what gets labeled as “strategy” is really just a diagnosis or a broad policy statement. What’s missing are the coherent...
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Defeat Bias: Build Products that Truly Matter

6 min read

Learn how to defeat confirmation bias in product management with eight practical techniques to improve decisions and build products that truly matter.

When you’re deep in product work—dreaming up features, refining flows, or debating the next roadmap bet—there’s a sneaky force that can derail even the most well-intentioned efforts: confirmation bias. It’s a natural human tendency. You form a belief, and suddenly your brain filters reality through a lens that only shows evidence supporting that belief. Contradictory data fades into the background. In product development, this can be deadly. You may convince yourself you know “the next...
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Jobs-to-be-Done - Demand Reducers and Systems Thinking

5 min read

Explore the demand reducers in Jobs-to-be-Done—Inertia and Anxiety—and how systems thinking helps overcome hidden barriers to product adoption.

In Part 1, we explored the forces that generate demand: the push of dissatisfaction with the status quo and the pull of a better future. Together, they explain why customers look for change and what attracts them to a solution. But even when push and pull are strong, adoption isn’t guaranteed. Hidden forces often prevent products from being hired. These are the demand reducers: Inertia and Anxiety. As Alan Klement describes, these forces are as...
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Jobs-to-be-Done and the Forces that Create Product Demand

5 min read

Learn how Jobs-to-be-Done explains the forces that create product demand—Push and Pull—and why progress, not features, drives adoption.

We hear a lot about being “customer-centric.” It’s on slides, in strategy decks, and peppered into pitches. But too often it’s a buzzword. The real test is this: do we truly understand why customers choose our products—or why they don’t? The Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) framework, shaped by thinkers like Alan Klement, offers a clearer lens. Customers don’t buy products because of features alone. They “hire” them to make progress in their lives. That progress is the...
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