How Do I Build a Great Product Strategy?

In this episode we talk about product strategy. How do you make sure your product wins in the market? How do you make key product decisions, and how do you manage mistakes?  We are here to help! In this episode we answer questions including:

• What do you do when big feature releases fail to move the needle?
• How do you balance different requests from different customers?
• What's the best way to communicate product roadmaps?

All of these questions were submitted by listeners just like you. You can submit questions for us to answer on our website TheStartupHelpdesk.com or on X/Twitter @thestartuphd - we'd love to hear from you!

Your hosts:

• Sean Byrnes: General Partner, Near Horizon www.nearhorizon.vc
• Ash Rust: Managing Partner, Sterling Road www.sterlingroad.com
• Nic Meliones: CEO, Navi www.heynavi.com

Reminder: this is not legal advice or investment advice.

Q1: What do you do when big feature releases fail to move the needle?

Utility drives adoption, not novelty. If a release flops, you likely prioritized "pixie dust" (like bolting on AI simply to be trendy) over solving a "hair on fire" problem.

Focus on Pain, Not Trends: New technology is a tool, not a strategy. A feature only matters if it delivers a 10x improvement on a core, high-pain customer job. If it's a "nice-to-have," it will be "rarely-used."

The Iteration Mandate: Don’t be afraid to ship imperfect work, but be terrified of stagnating. You cannot expect your first implementation to be the winning one. You iterate to find the 10x value; you don't start with it.

Q2: How do you balance different requests from different customers?

Diverging requests are a warning sign of a "Verticalization Challenge." You cannot build two businesses at once. If you try to serve every request, you multiply complexity and halve your focus. The result is a B+ product, and B+ products do not win categories.

To win, you must be the best in the world for a specific customer profile before you can be good for everyone.

The 60-Day Focus Framework:

1. Select: Pick the profile with the best blend of pain, willingness to pay, and market size.
2. Sprint: Ignore all other segments and focus on that profile exclusively for 60 days.
3. Validate: If you don't see breakout momentum, pivot to the next profile.

Q3: What's the best way to communicate product roadmaps?

Trust is the currency of product management. You earn it by balancing two distinct timelines:

Sell the Dream (Long-term): Customers treat their purchase as an investment in the future. Share your vision and intent to get them excited about where the ship is going.

Deliver the Reality (Short-term): Ruthlessly over-deliver on the next 60-90 days.

The Trust Equation: When you provide undeniable proof of execution in the short term, you earn the right to be ambiguous about the long term. If you miss short-term dates, your long-term vision looks like a hallucination. Give them proof so they can believe in the dream.