Stuart Balcombe

Positioning is everything for job seekers right now. > The Product Manager who owns the roadmap... vs. the one who's turned user research into a competitive advantage > The Partnerships Manager who "has a deep rolodex" vs. the one who knows how to monetize > The Eng Director who's led teams of 30 vs. the one who's brought revenue-generating products to market with speed and efficiency Same people. Two different ways of talking about their experience. One makes them sound like everybody. The other lands interviews. Do you know what your competitive advantage is?

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Lots of misconceptions about what product-led growth really is. So I sat down with the man himself, Wes Bush to go deep on: - what PLG really means - Who it's for (and who it's not for) - How you can think about implementing a true PLG motion in your business. Even if you're sales-led today, this is a great listen cause it talks to the psychology of a buyer a lot. https://lnkd.in/d4VvJmru

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A hill I'll die on - You're *not allowed* to demo any feature / functionality, w/out FIRST describing the challenge it solves. This is "The Biggest Challenge" framework ^^ Ex: "The biggest challenge most product marketers face is not being able to spend enough time with customers directly. Gong solves this by [insert feature]" Challenge First, Product Second ^^ You can use this over & over again and it doesn't sound repetitive. Especially effective when used as transitions. Why does this work? People must feel like you understand their world, before they can trust, much less care, that you have a solve for them. P.S. - The "biggest" qualifier forces you to connect your product to your customer's must-solve problems, not the it'd-be-nice-if-we-could-solve problems. This framework forces this ^ to happen, every time. Give it a try.

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For a long time, I had very naive ideas about prioritization. Here's what I've learned over the years. 1. Unless you are a tiny startup, your company is designed to do multiple high-priority things at once. The argument, "Well, if everything is high priority, nothing is high priority," almost never works (while rational). The 🐘 in the room is that the mix of high-priority things has changed, and the org design is no longer fit for purpose. What seems rational to you—oh, obviously that team is overwhelmed and we need to set priorities—is, behind the scenes, "Crap, we got the budget wrong for that group. Anyone want to contribute? No? Hmmm. Surely they are inefficient and can juggle more than one thing, right?" See below. 2. Most senior execs know that the plans will change. They know that by March, there will be a new set of priorities. So they focus on budgets, not priorities. So when you see lackluster strategies and vague priorities, remember that there is a whole other prioritization activity that centers around the allocation of money, how people get bonuses, very back-of-the-napkin revenue attribution models, etc. 3. Humans, in general, are not great at building a mental model for capacity. Capacity in software is hard. People aren't fungible. The architecture is what it is. You can't have huge teams. You are building the factory (to meet the needs of a strategy) AND the factory is building "the product." Oh, it isn't a factory: it is more like gardening. This is important because our mental models for what we are prioritizing (e.g., focus, capacity, typing, bandwidth, etc.) are often all over the place. 4. Most companies are not progressive when it comes to thoughtful re-orgs, org redesign, reallocating capacity, etc. The simple thinking is: "If we stop doing X, then we should let those people go because they fit in this cell on the spreadsheet." People too heavily couple the finance spreadsheets with one-row-per-person, and the (most often useless and made-up) % allocations to things. This means that basic things like having priorities and reducing work in progress are fraught with very justified fears around layoffs. To some, a pristine list of force-ranked priorities looks like heaven. FINALLY, we can make decisions. To others, it is NOT GOOD. This is why efforts to visualize WIP often turn into Game of Thrones. There's a silver lining with all this! If you are aware of these tendencies, you can figure out approaches to prioritization that can nudge the org in the right direction. Knowing that the theoretically pristine force-ranked list of efforts is likely not possible, you can devise other strategies like building more realistic models with finance and being more open to "everything in high priority" yet focusing on the actual conflicts/trade-off decisions, etc. And embrace products like Runway and DoubleLoop that engage people in tangible discussions about how $s flow into outcomes and then back into your core models.

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I've been doing startup PMM work for a long time. Here's where I see it go wrong: 1. Product Marketing is seen as the "generalist" that can do it all. A PMM will spike in 1-2 other areas, but if you hire a PMM to do it all, just know that you will get sub-optimal results. 2. Product Marketing is not seen as a discipline. It's not for everyone, and not everyone can be a good PMM. For early-stage SaaS (let's assume there is an MVP), a PMM should work through problems like this: 1. What is our positioning, and who are we selling to? (this requires competitive intel, market intel, etc) 2. What is our messaging to reinforce our positioning? 3. How much should this cost? 4. What is the ideal customer journey/GTM motion to get more return on our investments? 5. Where do our customers hang out? 6. Is the product we have today the right one? If yes, then: Build the product marketing and growth roadmap Notes: > Those questions should be worked in that order > Canonical docs or it didn't happen/no one will do the things you need them to do > You can get through 1-5 in about 30 days (give or take)

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Here’s a quick tip for retaining users in your mobile app: Most churn doesn’t happen because users hate your product. It happens because they never figure out how to love it. One fix? Make onboarding seamless: 1️⃣ Highlight just ONE key feature to get them started. 2️⃣ Keep the first-time flow under 2 minutes. 3️⃣ Make it impossible for them to fail—success breeds stickiness. This approach increased retention by 30% for one of our clients.

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I saw a rare example of bad advice from YC recently. They told folks that it doesn’t matter if you’re passionate about your company’s product / mission. While that’s fine from the #VC’s perspective, as lots of enterprise b2b applications are extremely profitable, which was their point. And their business is driven by repeatably successful actions. Growing a b2b business in their wheelhouse, with their network is definitely a successful and repeatable activity. However … most people should not even be an #Entrepreneur. Let alone a founder of a VC-backed startup. The lifestyle will make them miserable. To be a successful #founder, you need to be motivated to get up and work on your company 10+ hours a day, 7 days a week. It’s all-consuming. Usually for an entire decade. So focusing on a product and customers that you don’t care about … that will compuound the personal pain and build a personal hell. I’ve seen that happen to a number of my friends and associates over the years, even when they were seen as tremendous successes. Focus first on what matters the most … your happiness. That includes solving a problem that you’re excited about. But only if you’re actually an entrepreneur. Before you dive into being a business owner…figure out if that lifestyle is for you.

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Hot take: The most impactful systems builders rarely come from IT. They come from Sales, Ops, Customer Success—the people who live and breathe the problem they’re solving, who’ve been told “no” more times than they can count, and who can’t help but think about optimizing every process in sight. These are the builders who see the inefficiencies hiding in the day-to-day and chase solutions to make things truly better, faster, and smarter. They’re the ones I want to see at the center of the future we’re building, not sidelined. But here’s the key: both IT and these frontline builders have to buy into working together. And I’m hopeful that AI can finally bridge this gap, helping each side speak the other’s language with minimal effort. When AI accelerates what no-code was always meant to be but hasn’t fully delivered on yet, we unlock the real potential of collaboration—systems that don’t just work, but transform the way we work. Let’s get there.

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Curious about what top Product Leaders are reading right now? Here are the top 5 pieces of content shared in Supra this month: 1/"How to work with exec recruiters." Colin Lernell interviews Bobby Gormson, Partner at True Search, who reveals strategies for landing executive roles. Bobby covers building reputation, crafting impactful LinkedIn profiles, and creating standout "Executive Blurbs." He explains the differences between search firms and provides practical tips for enhancing your job search strategy. https://lnkd.in/dwAjTN3w 2/"An Unfiltered Look into Product Leadership" by HEARD. Through their research study with the Product Leadership Summit, HEARD explores product leadership beyond functional tasks, examining social and emotional demands. The study provides unique insights into what it truly takes to succeed in product leadership today. https://lnkd.in/dRhAWNZc 3/"Beyond the resume: master the art of telling your career story" by Nikhyl Singhal. This article/workshop will help you craft a compelling 30-second career overview that captivates your audience. Perfect for professionals looking to enhance their personal brand through powerful storytelling. https://lnkd.in/dPrhnBfg 4/ "How ChatGPT Brought Down an Online Education Giant" by the WSJ. The article explores how ChatGPT's emergence led to Chegg losing over half a million subscribers and 99% of its stock value. Despite developing AI tools and partnering with OpenAI and Scale AI, Chegg struggles as students increasingly prefer ChatGPT (62%) over their service (30%). https://lnkd.in/dWYQZDj7 5/ "Product Management Is Dead, So What Are We Doing Instead?" by Claire Vo. She explores why traditional product management is dying, how AI is transforming product development, and the emergence of AI-powered "triple threats" who combine product, design, and engineering skills. Learn how to stay relevant and manage AI-powered product teams. https://lnkd.in/dC7S26AG What other great content did you read this month? For context, I run Supra, a private community of high-caliber product leaders. Our members share fantastic pieces via our Slack channel. --- Enjoy this? Follow Marc Baselga for similar posts.

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I've seen so many PRDs in my time, but what makes a good one? Most PRDs contain these sections: - Problem Statement - Customer Segments - Goals & Success Metrics - User Story - Mock-ups - Requirements But if you really want to elevate your PRD, consider adding more depth: - Why is this the right time? - Add key trade-offs or decisions you made. - Add deeper insights that led you to the target segments. - Add any risks and mitigation plans that you have considered. - Add the launch plan and GTM. - Add a feature roadmap for 6 months post launch. Add features that are out-of-scope. Many PMs think of the PRD simply as a set of requirements, with everything else being space fillers. ⛔ 𝗗𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲. Here are some more tips to consider while writing your PRD: 1️⃣ Use the pyramid principle to write with clarity and use data to back-up your arguments. 2️⃣ Write at an 8th-grade level so it's easy for anyone to understand. Use Grammarly or the Hemingway app to check your writing level. 3️⃣ Spend as much time explaining the trade-offs and risks as you do explaining the solution. This will help readers understand your thinking and reasoning. 4️⃣ Focus on understanding the purpose of each section and how it can help you reach your goals. 5️⃣ The PRD is often a live document. Don't focus too much on perfecting it and handing it over to your tech team. The process of writing and collaborating on the document is more valuable than the final outcome itself. __________ 🥷 Get this and 5 other product templates FREE 👇 Link in the first comment — filter by “most recent” to see it.

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⭐ Start Up Reality Check - Getting to Product Market Fit ⭐ Clay’s Path to Product-Market Fit — A 7-Year 'Overnight Success' Clay co-founder and CEO Kareem Amin sits down with First Round Partner Todd Jackson for a behind-the-scenes look at how he grappled with narrowing Clay’s scope and tactics for landing on the right ICP. In the earliest days of building, the founder is the company. Their fingerprints are pressed across every nook and cranny of the business — each decision, hire and product feature. Most early-stage investors will tell you (us included) that the strength of the founding team is the single most important factor in whether a business sinks or swims early on. While some might tout that it’s the tangible stats here that matter most (like the founder’s previous experiences), Clay co-founder Kareem Amin believes that it goes many layers deeper. “Your personality plays a major role in your success because building a company exaggerates all of your traits. You’re influencing how things get done — for better or for worse. So you need to be able to clearly see what is going on in the organization and how your personality is being amplified through this process,” Amin say Read the Rest of the Article Here https://shorturl.at/Nm9vT 😀 👈 #startups #tech

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Here is the big mistake most startup PMM make and it is hurting. Personas aren't just for messaging. They're for building products that your customers actually want. A serious disconnect you startup PMM should avoid. Early startup, PMM has much deeper role then at an established brand. If your personas don't shape your roadmap, you're building in a vacuum. You're out of touch with your customers' real needs. Why is this? A startup PMM's main job is to find the best user for your product. Startups evolve over time. Not using personas to shape the roadmap misses a chance to grow with a defined set of early users. A 4-step process to build buyer personas. They will help your product team and guide your product roadmap. 1️⃣ 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗸 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗮𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗽𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝗮𝗱𝗱𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗲𝘀. Go beyond basic info. What are your persona's top 2-3 problems? How does solving these problems also improve your product roadmap? 𝗣𝗿𝗼 𝗧𝗶𝗽: Use clear insights to build your personas. Focus on the specific challenges that your product will solve. 2️⃣ 𝗨𝘀𝗲 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗮𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗹𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝘀. Your product team will get endless feature requests. Use your buyer personas to focus on what matters most to your core users. 𝗘𝘅𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲: If your persona values speed, focus on features that reduce workflow friction. 3️⃣ 𝗕𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗸 𝗗𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝗧𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝗦𝗶𝗹𝗼𝘀 Personas are for everyone! Get marketing, product, and customer success talking. 𝗣𝗿𝗼 𝗧𝗶𝗽: Regular cross-team meetings keep everyone aligned. 4️⃣ 𝗞𝗲𝗲𝗽 𝗜𝘁 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗨𝘀𝗲𝗿 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 Personas evolve. Update them based on actual customer feedback. 𝗣𝗿𝗼 𝗧𝗶𝗽: Use real user insights to back up your roadmap decisions. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗰𝘁? 👉 Tighter product-market fit 👉 More engaged users 👉 A roadmap that actually delivers value. When personas drive your product decisions, you know what users want. You're not guessing.

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Product-led is awesome. It’s been fantastic for us. Not a great idea for everyone though. Here’s why: If your self-service experience isn’t great (bad adoption and retention rates) you’ll immediately lower your users perception of your platform's value. Their first experience with you will feel like a complete waste of time. Now your product has been disqualified before it ever got a fair shot at competing. Your best shot at nailing PLG? Make sure that the self-service experience isn’t just a glorified lead generation tool and treat your PLS motion less like sales and more like CS. Karen Chi founded and grew LinkedIn’s first product-led sales function. During our conversation on Revenue Rebels we discussed: -how to implement a working PLS motion -how to educate your users -which channels to use to convert from free to paid -what makes a great PLS salesrep …and much more Full episode down below!

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New level of product-market-fit is when your customers create a Causal slack emoji 😎 In all seriousness, I love it when customers share messages like this with me because it speaks to what we have built here at Causal and how much our customers appreciate it.

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Product marketing, especially when you're in a player/coach role, can feel like a never ending series of side quests, all distracting you from the bigger mission. It's so easy to let 1-pager and other collateral requests take over your life at the expense of doing "big picture" pmm activities like: -revisiting internal messaging and positioning docs -checking in with x-functional partners to make sure they're getting what they need from you and vice versa Last week, we brought Maxio's GTM teams together onsite in our ATL office and I had the opportunity to present on our global positioning framework, but also ladder down and show how all the new product enhancements we released in 1H support the "big picture" positioning, and most importantly, how to tell that story. It feels so basic to the DNA of what product marketing is, but truthfully it had been a while since I presented something like that. So this is a friendly reminder (to myself and all the other PMMs out there), make sure you're balancing the tactical with the big picture. It helps if there's a deadline, so think about how to create self-imposed deadlines so this stuff doesn't slip a full calendar year without getting your attention ❤️

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I'm at Lenny's Newsletter Summit today along with about ~1000 high-quality product people 🔥 For those that couldn't make it, I'll save you the FOMO LinkedIn probably won't like it but to make it easy I'll post my best takeaways as comments to this thread 👇 Hopefully it's useful 💚 (if you want to stay notified hit the 🔔 icon on my profile: Pulkit Agrawal) #lennys

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A while back, a friend of mine launched a SaaS product. It looked slick, but user engagement was flat. Sign-ups were high, but retention rates? Not so much. That’s a brutal reality: without a solid retention strategy, all your efforts in acquisition mean little. The problem? The onboarding experience was awful. New users were sign-ups roaming in a digital jungle without a guide. Confusion set in, and many bounced before they could see the value. To turn this around, they focused on refining the onboarding process. They invested in interactive tutorials, in-app guides, and contextual support. Suddenly, users were not just signing up; they were staying, learning, and growing. The result? A significant drop in churn and a solid increase in user satisfaction. It’s not rocket science. When users find clarity and value quickly, they're more likely to stick around. If you're launching a new product or struggling with retention, focus on onboarding. Make it intuitive. Eliminate confusion. Invest in your users from the get-go. Want more practical insights like this? Check out my newsletter 5 Minute Founders. It’s a no-nonsense approach to getting the high-level strategies you need in five minutes or less.

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Maven is having a killer quarter after a strong last 12 months. People rarely share this publicly, so here's an insider look into how we've navigated product/market fit: Maven’s initial launch was wildly successful. We started a movement. The phrase we coined, “cohort-based course,” showed up in countless startup pitch decks. We were on a $4M GMV run rate in 3 months. It was intoxicating. After the launch energy faded, we faced reality. We had no product: we were hand-holding instructors behind the scenes. This resulted in a 73% instructor revenue retention rate, and many instructors were telling us we weren’t critical to their business. Today: It took 2 years, but we’re now at 120-140% instructor revenue retention. Our business is growing despite a tough market, and professionals are actually using (and loving) our product to speed up their careers. We made a few critical decisions that led to 3 big breakthroughs: Breakthrough #1: We started by looking at follower counts; now we focus on real professional expertise. Our first persona was creators with 100ks of followers, but Maven was often their 3rd or 4th priority. Simply put, they didn’t NEED us, but they were bringing in a ton of revenue. We shifted away from creators to experts, eventually losing 95% of our first $4M in course sales. This shift took 2 years, but it worked – Maven now has hundreds of “subject matter expert” instructors who have spent 10-15 years in their field. Today, Maven has its killer value proposition: we offer ambitious professionals access to the experienced operators to take their career to the next level. Lesson: Persona is key. Focusing on who really needs your product is more important than short-term traction. Sometimes the early signals are wrong, and you need to course correct. Breakthrough #2: We started as a platform; now Maven is a marketplace. When starting Maven, I envied the Substack business and modeled Maven off of it. Maven would provide software while the creator would bring the users. This was a failure of “business by analogy.” In the course world, instructors didn’t value software the way creators did in the newsletter world. They demanded we create a marketplace, and students were increasingly asking us why they couldn’t easily find great courses on Maven. I knew from my time at Udemy and Lyft how hard it is to build a two-sided marketplace, so I resisted this for 1.5 years of heavy internal debate. Eventually, we launched the Maven marketplace. Now, hundreds of thousands of students browse Maven’s courses to find something that can help them in their careers. 25%+ of all course sales come from Maven’s marketing, which has been critical to our instructors and students. Lesson: Find your own path. You can be inspired by other companies, but ultimately every market and situation is different. Be willing to change even the big things when your customer demands it. I reached LinkedIn's character limit so check the comments for the rest!

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