Product

An MVP is the smallest version of your product that delivers real value to early users and generates validated learning. The goal isn't a 'crappy first version' — it's the fastest path to proving whether customers will pay for your solution. 74% of startups fail because they build something nobody wants.

MVP Scope = Core Value Proposition − Everything Else

Your North Star Metric is the single number that best captures the core value your product delivers to customers. Airbnb's is 'Nights Booked.' Spotify's is 'Time Spent Listening.' When this metric goes up, everything else follows — revenue, retention, referrals. It aligns the entire company around one measurable goal.

Good North Star = Value Delivered × Frequency of Usage

A product roadmap is a strategic document that communicates the WHY and WHAT of your product direction over time — not just a feature list. The best roadmaps are organized by outcomes (problems to solve), not outputs (features to ship). Research shows that outcome-driven roadmaps lead to 30-40% higher feature adoption rates because teams focus on customer impact rather than shipping for shipping's sake.

Feature prioritization is the discipline of deciding WHAT to build and in WHAT ORDER using a repeatable, data-driven framework instead of gut feeling or whoever shouts loudest. The RICE framework scores each feature on Reach (how many users), Impact (how much it moves the needle, 0.25-3x), Confidence (how sure you are, 0-100%), and Effort (person-months). RICE Score = (Reach × Impact × Confidence) ÷ Effort. The ICE variant uses Impact, Confidence, and Ease (inverse of effort). Teams using structured prioritization ship 50% fewer 'wasted' features.

RICE Score = (Reach × Impact × Confidence) ÷ Effort

Product analytics is the practice of measuring HOW users interact with your product to make better decisions. The core metric is DAU/MAU ratio (Daily Active Users ÷ Monthly Active Users), which measures 'stickiness' — how often users return. A 50%+ DAU/MAU means users open your product 15+ days per month (Facebook-like engagement). Most B2B SaaS lives at 15-25% DAU/MAU. Product analytics turns guesses into data: instead of 'users like feature X,' you know '34% of users use feature X, and those users have 60% lower churn.'

Stickiness = DAU ÷ MAU × 100

User Research is the systematic investigation of your target audience's behaviors, needs, and motivations. It exists to invalidate your assumptions before you spend expensive engineering hours building a product nobody actually wants. True research focuses on what users *do*, not what they *say* they will do.

Technical debt is the accumulated cost of shortcuts, workarounds, and deferred maintenance in your codebase that make future changes slower and riskier. Like financial debt, tech debt accrues 'interest' — every feature takes longer to build because engineers must navigate around the accumulated mess. McKinsey estimates that tech debt consumes 20-40% of enterprise technology estate value. A team adding features to a clean codebase might ship in 2 days; the same feature in a high-debt codebase takes 2 weeks because of fragile dependencies, missing tests, and unclear abstractions. Tech debt isn't always bad — deliberate, strategic shortcuts can accelerate time-to-market if you plan to repay them.

Debt Interest Rate = Weekly Time Wasted ÷ Repayment Effort (hours)

Jobs-To-Be-Done is a framework that says customers don't buy products — they 'hire' products to do a job in their life. A customer doesn't buy a drill because they want a drill; they want a hole in the wall. They don't even want the hole — they want to hang a picture to make their home feel like theirs. Understanding the REAL job reveals competitors you never considered and opportunities you never imagined. McDonald's milkshakes compete with bananas and bagels (the 'morning commute companion' job), not just other milkshakes. Intercom adopted JTBD and restructured their entire product around customer jobs instead of features — driving a 3x improvement in activation rates.

The product lifecycle describes the four stages every product moves through: Introduction (prove it works), Growth (capture the market), Maturity (defend your position), and Decline (reinvent or sunset). Each stage demands a fundamentally different strategy. In Introduction, you optimize for learning speed. In Growth, you optimize for customer acquisition speed. In Maturity, you optimize for efficiency and retention. In Decline, you optimize for cash extraction or pivot. The average SaaS product reaches maturity in 7-10 years. Slack went from Introduction to Growth in under 2 years (the fastest in enterprise SaaS history), while Salesforce took 8 years to hit maturity.