I’m sometimes pulled into difficult discussions with CEOs, where I’m trying to describe systematic product-side failures that directly conflict with how the CEO sees the world. Even after dozens of similar discussions, I have only moderate success. But it seems worth framing this leadership-level challenge from both sides.| Rich Mironov's Product Bytes
I'm still somewhat of a skeptic about "replace our developers and product managers with AI" discussions (see my AI-washing from 2023), but want to take the other side of the argument for a moment. And to start by thinking about bottlenecks (aka system constraints, longest tent poles, or rate-limiting steps)| Rich Mironov's Product Bytes
I'm still somewhat of a skeptic about "replace our developers and product managers with AI" discussions (see my AI-washing from 2023), but want to take the other side of the argument for a moment.| richmironov.substack.com
Most product companies have a few things in their roadmaps that are specifically for single customers – I call these sales one-offs. But it’s easy for B2B/enterprise companies to fall into a sales-led development model where the majority of work is for individual customers – starving the core product of| Rich Mironov's Product Bytes
There’s a pattern I sometimes see at software companies, particularly those targeting enterprises or on the long march moving their installed base from on-premise to SaaS. The go-to-market materials present a glowing picture of well-planned products, but underneath there’s a jumble of mismatched pieces and arcane product history| Rich Mironov's Product Bytes
(Or How Major Platform Migrations Really Happen) Many companies have replatforming efforts underway. Architectures get old, new kinds of partners or integrations emerge, hard-to-maintain monolithic code gets broken into microservices, acquisitions force integration of dissimilar systems, etc. This is an essential part of the software product business, but fraught with| Rich Mironov's Product Bytes
Post #1 noted that your development team will never, ever, ever be big enough to catch up with your dreams. – which led to The Law of Ruthless Prioritization. Here’s a second fundamental reality of software economics: All of the profits are in the nth copy or nth user. Building| Rich Mironov's Product Bytes
Almost every week, I have a conversation with executives at B2B software companies who don’t see a bright-line distinction between software license revenue and customization/implementation revenue. Or why this distinction is essential to their investors. But when I do product due diligence for SaaS-focused PE/VC firms, it's| Rich Mironov's Product Bytes
In the heat of an enterprise deal moment, it’s easy to think very short-term about the long-term costs of one-off specials and “small requirements.” There’s tremendous pressure to maximize the importance of a feature tweak to close this quarter’s big deal, and similar pressure to minimize both| Rich Mironov's Product Bytes
We’re in the Silly Season: companies of all sizes are doing annual planning — intending to lock down 12 months of iron-clad commitments, non-negotiable delivery dates, major organizational changes, and accurate predictions of revenue. In my experience, this is mostly ineffective if it’s done only once a year — especially| Rich Mironov's Product Bytes
Product and engineering leaders tend to be analytical, and we think of prioritization as an algorithmic problem. Unfortunately, other execs see a different kind of problem...| Rich Mironov's Product Bytes