10-Step Success

In this article, we describe the 10 fundamental steps to becoming successful as a product manager and business owner. Anyone can do it, just follow the path.

Back in the day, one of the founders of A16Z published a post called "Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager" that helped people understand the difference between the two. It primarily focused on talking to customers, delivering weekly reports on time, and essentially just doing the table stakes of the job. There's an update at the top of the post that says it's out of date as it was written over 15 years ago.

But, the world has changed. Historical table stakes are no longer today's table stakes. Being different, unique, and better is table stakes. The Internet is the most competitive marketplace on the planet, for attention, for coins, for doing business.

So what does a good Product person look like today? To us, it looks more like a founder than a product manager:

1. Empathize. Understand core human needs, their psychology, and purchasing behavior.
2. Create. Invent something new that improves an existing customer solution by 10x.
3. Brand. Wrap it in a compelling brand with strong values and a culture aligned to both.
4. Message. Develop powerful messaging that describes the core truth of the product, brand, values, and culture.
5. Distribute. Push that messaging and product through existing distribution channels where your target customer is already paying attention and buying.
6. Help. Help, don't sell, customers move from the old world to your new world solution.
7. Iterate. Continue iterating weekly to improve all areas of the business at a steeper slope than competitors.
8. Grow. Drive increases in revenue and profits, or run at break-even to invest what you would have paid in taxes back into the business's growth engine (i.e., keep improving what customers love).
9. Repeat. Invent something new and do it all over again.
10. Manage. Don't run out of money.

Anyone can use this framework to develop their own business from scratch or improve an existing business.

--Sean