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Hey founding PMMs, you need to be your product’s #1 cheerleader
Because if you aren’t, how do you expect anyone else to be?
It’s easy to get deflated by all of the things your product isn’t.
It’s weaknesses, shortcomings — everything you wish you had, but don’t yet for whatever reason.
But it’s your job to be the optimist.
The one who can step back and say, there’s a lot here that people love.
April Dunford makes a great point that most companies underestimate their differentiation. They struggle to find things to base their positioning around because they don’t feel like they offer any unique value.
But as she points out → there are people that use and love your product today. There must be a reason for that, and hidden in there is something that differentiates you.
You can waste your time and energy focusing on the things your product DOESN’T do well, or you can focus on helping your marketing, sales, and customer teams explain the things that it DOES do well.
Your product team will also appreciate it. It’s easy to get demoralized when you’re slogging away on a product that everyone internally seems to complain about. If you can help everyone other team see the greatness in your product, that makes your product team look good. And they’ll love you for it.
It’s not to say you shouldn’t be realistic about your product’s shortcomings and enable your team around that. But there’s also a time and place for it.
If you can come into every meeting being the product optimist — you can change the whole vibe pretty quickly.
That’s the reputation you want.