The product feedback cycle
One of the things I’ve been noticing recently, and from personal experience, is how many different variations of the “product feedback cycle” there are. My co-founder Zach was the first to actually bring this up as an observation as to how we ran things at Invite vs. our competitors and other companies, and I think he’s right. What he means by this is simply, how long does it take and how many layers does feedback on the product go through before it gets to engineering.
There are a few options. First, you could have clients talk directly to engineers. While that in theory is the shortest path the feedback cycle could take, that’s typically not the best solution. Most engineering teams prefer to stay “heads down” and not be interrupted, and are also rarely involved in the client day-to-day, so context switching is hard for them. You should definitely have interaction there, but probably not all the time.
The other option, and probably most common, is to have someone or several folks dedicated to “product management.” That probably makes sense in larger organizations or as companies grow, as you may have multiple products or your professional CEO may be too busy worrying about shareholders and all that “strategic stuff.” However, I personally think that this is very dangerous for an early company, and I’d go so far as to say it’s a major red flag. Here’s an example of what you want to avoid:
As several smart VC’s and entrepreneurs have written about before, it’s a good sign and highly preferable if the founders focus and own the product process. Ideally they’re also able to “go deep” and be involved in the entire product management process, writing the specs for engineering teams, managing the priorities, etc… That’s how we ran things at Invite within our founding team, and we found a lot of success in that. In our opinion, the less time it takes for product feedback to get to engineering, and the lower the chance of the “game of telephone” to occur, the better.
In summary, I think the founders of a startup need to be very cognizant and controlling of the product management process, at least until you become a larger organization, and avoid the temptation to hire “someone dedicated to product.” In my experience, the more people/layers you add to the process and the further the founders step away from the product management the process, the worse the outcome. It always amazes me to see the opposite, as isn’t the product of the startup quite possibly the most important thing?
