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Behind every great product there is someone—usually someone behind the scenes, working tirelessly—who led the product team to combine technology and design to solve real customer problems in a way that met the needs of the business.
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The reality of startup life is that you’re in a race to achieve product/market fit before you run out of money. Nothing else much matters until you can come up with a strong product that meets the needs of an initial market.
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Strong tech-product companies know they need to ensure consistent product innovation. This means constantly creating new value for their customers and for their business.
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The first truth is that at least half of our ideas are just not going to work
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The MVP should be a prototype, not a product. Building an actual product-quality deliverable to learn, even if that deliverable has minimal functionality, leads to substantial waste of time and money, which of course is the antithesis of Lean.
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One of the prerequisites for consistent innovation is a team that has had a chance to learn the space, technologies, and customer pain. This doesn’t happen if the members of the team are constantly shifting.
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Most products are not inspiring, and life is too short for bad products.
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User researchers can help you find the right type of users, craft the right types of tests, and learn the most from each user or customer interaction.
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One of the big challenges of growth is knowing how the whole product hangs together.
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Developing great people requires a different set of skills than developing great products.
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The hallmark of a great CTO is a commitment to continually strive for technology as a strategic enabler for the business and the products.
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Modern product marketing managers represent the market to the product team—the positioning, the messaging, and a winning go-to-market plan.
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In strong teams today, the design informs the functionality at least as much as the functionality drives the design.
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Discovery is about learning, and the learning must be shared learning.
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Holistic view leadership roles—head of product, head of design, and head of technology—are very valuable individually, but in combination, their real power is seen.
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The honest truth is that the product manager needs to be among the strongest talent in the company.
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Holistic user experience design considers all the touch points and interactions a customer has with your company and product over time.
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The primary job of leadership in any technology organization is to recruit, to develop, and to retain strong talent.
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Strong technology people are drawn to an inspiring vision—they want to work on something meaningful.
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Be stubborn on vision but flexible on the details. This Jeff Bezos line is very important.
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Citation: Cagan, M. (2017). INSPIRED: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love. Wiley.
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