Leah's ProducTea

Leah's Product & Growth team Guide - by Leah Tharin

Modern SaaS organizations require a transition from traditional cross-functional teams to a more integrated, flexible structure that eliminates the service center mentality. Traditional models often fail because they detach Engineering Managers from business context and degrade data scientists into query monkeys. A new iteration of cross-functional teams places Engineering Managers directly within teams, limiting their scope to three or four engineers to ensure they maintain technical contribution and business alignment. Product Managers in this model must expand their skill sets to include business casing, altitude mapping, and direct data querying using SQL. Altitude maps serve as a critical translation layer between high-level leadership strategy and tactical product execution, focusing on how specific team activities influence revenue-driving metrics like activation or retention. Growth teams specifically target metrics like free-to-pro conversion and the Aha moment, while core product teams focus on reactivation and quality. This structure demands smaller, more senior teams where PMs and designers handle their own qualitative and quantitative research rather than outsourcing it to centralized departments. While this shift may require a higher ratio of PMs and designers to engineers, it increases overall efficiency by ensuring every line of code is backed by validated business context and a clear go-to-market plan. Centralized specialists like UX researchers or data scientists should be reserved for large-scale, cross-team initiatives rather than day-to-day tactical support. Ultimately, success relies on creating focus and urgency through proactive reporting and well-defined OKRs rather than constant firefighting.

AI's "Just Ship it." problem - by Leah Tharin

AI productivity gains in software development and product management are often overstated because they primarily address simple tasks while failing to solve complex system integration. A Stanford study of 100,000 developers reveals that as codebase size and complexity increase, productivity gains from AI drop from 60 percent to as low as 5 percent. Most professional codebases fall in the middle, seeing roughly 20 percent improvement. This creates a strategic trap for leadership who may prematurely reduce headcount based on inflated expectations. The core issue is that AI increases rework. While teams can ship more code, the resulting output often requires human intervention that AI cannot handle alone. This leads to the spaghetti effect: throwing more ideas at the wall faster without expanding the market or the audience. In a high growth environment like Smallpdf, the bottleneck was never shipping speed but waiting for statistical significance in experiments. AI does not accelerate the time required to reach statistical significance because that depends on user volume, not processing speed. True shipping consists of three distinct phases: ideation, development, and validation. AI tools currently only accelerate the development phase. They do not generate better ideas or validate product market fit. For scaled companies, skipping validation is dangerous because 75 percent of ideas typically fail to deliver impact or may even harm the user experience. Building commercially viable products remains a challenge of identifying the right ideas and distribution channels. Talking to customers and building the right product for the correct market remains the primary driver of success.

7 fails of roadmap-making - by Leah Tharin

Product roadmaps serve as the critical link between high level company strategy and quarterly execution. However, many leaders fail by treating them as fixed delivery schedules rather than strategic guides. A primary error is over investing in detailed effort estimations for long term projects. Hofstadter's Law suggests projects always take longer than expected, making granular estimates for anything beyond a few months unreliable for strategic planning. Effective roadmaps must prioritize future market conditions over current operations. While quarterly planning handles the present, the roadmap should connect today's actions to a long term vision. Similarly, reacting too heavily to competitors leads to passive strategy. Leaders often overestimate competitor competence, resulting in the blind leading the blind. Instead, focus on proprietary market insights that are not publicly accessible. The structure of a roadmap should shift based on time horizons. In the short term, focusing on specific outputs like feature launches is acceptable. For the medium term, the focus must shift to user outcomes. In the long term, only high level product or business outcomes, such as retention or LTV, should guide the strategy. This framework is particularly effective for B2B SaaS companies in the 10 million to 100 million ARR range. Communication and actionability are the final hurdles. Roadmaps must be documented in simple, shareable formats to prevent organizational misalignment. Publicly sharing roadmaps is generally discouraged as it removes the flexibility to pivot based on data. If sales teams require roadmap details for enterprise contracts, these should be limited to the very short term. Ultimately, the value of roadmapping lies in the process of surfacing conflicting expectations and synchronizing stakeholders.

Why you should make your AI product harder to use: The Egg Effect

The Egg Effect originates from 1950s cake mix manufacturers who discovered that requiring users to add a fresh egg increased sales by providing a sense of achievement. This behavioral principle suggests that people value products more when they contribute to the creation process. In modern AI development, the trend toward total automation often ignores this psychological need for investment. When a product promises a result from a single prompt, users frequently lack trust in the output and feel no ownership over the result. Behavioral scientists Michael Norton, Daniel Mochon, and Dan Ariely demonstrated this through the IKEA Effect. In experiments with origami and Legos, builders valued their own amateur creations nearly five times more than those made by others. They even valued their own work almost as much as expert-made versions. This psychological investment is directly applicable to AI. A study in Germany found that users valued AI-generated images significantly more when they could iterate on style and composition. This active refinement led to higher satisfaction and a greater willingness to use the images in professional contexts. Most AI companies currently move in the wrong direction by promising magical solutions with minimal human input. This approach ignores the fact that meaningful outcomes require meaningful input. We instinctively distrust services like matchmakers or financial advisors who do not ask for our preferences. AI is no different. Users who invest effort in training or directing a system are more likely to trust the results. Successful companies like Salesforce, Function of Beauty, and Glean leverage this by incorporating intentional friction. Salesforce requires customization during setup. Function of Beauty uses hair quizzes to justify premium pricing. Glean allows enterprise clients to train the system on their own data, which builds trust through participation. For AI product leaders, the goal is to identify the sweet spot where user input feels like valuable expertise rather than a burdensome chore. By giving users eggs to crack, teams can drive higher adoption and perceived value.

Leah's Leadership Guide - Part 1: Storytelling

Leadership is the art of creating alignment and inspiring people to move in a specific direction. Storytelling acts as the marketing department for a leader's ideas. Even the best strategic concepts fail if the leader cannot communicate why they matter. To maximize the impact of storytelling, leaders must navigate three specific hurdles: language, credibility, and bandwidth. Language is about more than just vocabulary; it involves matching the complexity of the message to the audience's seniority and familiarity with the topic. Leaders consistently overestimate how much their teams understand about high-level strategy. Using abbreviations like SQL or PQL often creates unnecessary cognitive load and alienates listeners who are not immersed in those terms daily. Effective leaders ground themselves before meetings to consider the audience's current context and what they need to hear before they can truly listen. Credibility represents the actual product. If the message feels dishonest or overly polished, especially during crises like reorganizations, the audience will immediately disengage. Leaders should get to the point fast and avoid dressing up bad news. Instead of long introductions, start with a simple, challengeable statement that summarizes the core logic. Building a case requires being selective with arguments and proactively addressing weak points or it depends scenarios rather than being an uncritical fan of one's own ideas. Bandwidth is the limited capacity of an audience to retain information. Most leaders waste this bandwidth on self-centered introductions and credentials that the audience does not yet care about. To be effective, cut the fluff and focus on the value delivered. Simplification is a rigorous process of reducing convoluted concepts into visual aids or concise summaries. Reinforcing the same three key points at the beginning, middle, and end of a presentation ensures the most critical information actually sticks.

Why more and more companies are killing their classical Homepage

Traditional SaaS homepages act as friction-heavy business cards that delay value delivery. The industry is shifting toward ungated experiences where users interact with the product or a demo before providing an email address. This approach splits the freemium model into two stages: an initial ungated sandbox and a subsequent gated registration. Smallpdf serves as a primary example, allowing users to process files immediately while reserving higher limits and storage for registered accounts. Interactive demos offer a similar path for complex or sales-led products. By moving the email request from the start of the demo to a point after the user has explored a few screens, companies build buy-in. While this reduces the total number of emails captured, it significantly improves lead quality. High-intent prospects continue through the friction, while those who realize the product is a poor fit drop off early, saving sales resources. The most radical application is replacing the homepage entirely with the product. Google pioneered this with its search bar, and Rows.com has implemented Instant Rows to compete with Excel and Google Sheets. Rows found that their best predictor of activation was connecting an integration. By letting users use the spreadsheet immediately in a sandbox, they tripled their signup conversion rate from 9 percent to 27 percent. Furthermore, these sandbox-converted users showed 30 percent higher activation rates than other channels. Determining if an ungated homepage fits a specific product requires evaluating market size and prior user knowledge. Products with large potential audiences and high category familiarity, like spreadsheets or CRMs, are prime candidates. The loginless formula suggests this works best when the product provides value in a single-player mode and follows a freemium business model that does not require monetizing every visitor.

Five non obvious skills for product & growth managers in 2024

As AI automates technical and operational tasks in 2024, the value of a Product Manager shifts toward strategic synthesis and high stakes communication. The first essential skill is summarization. Effective leaders must create self sustaining artifacts that align teams without requiring a narrator. This involves using structured templates to force clarity and capture distributed attention in an era of information overload. The second skill is managing up, where reliability serves as the primary currency. Operators must avoid overpromising, own failures proactively, and push back when resources are insufficient to ensure leadership has an accurate view of reality. Third, PMs must develop deep cross functional literacy in Sales and Marketing. Rather than dismissing these silos, Growth leaders should use product usage data to enable Sales teams and optimize onboarding for Marketing leads. This is particularly vital for executing Product led Sales in B2B environments. Fourth, leaders must maintain intellectual humility by questioning their basics. Seniority often creates a trap where PMs stop learning from peers or observing different workflows. Continuous upskilling is necessary as AI introduces new sub disciplines. Finally, teams should be run via outcomes instead of rigid agile processes. Moving away from the Scrum ceremony circus and point estimations allows for faster adaptation. High performing teams prioritize meaningful outcomes over framework compliance, often utilizing light requirements that fit on a single outcome driven page. The trend for 2024 favors fewer but more senior individuals who can master these timeless soft skills and strategic functions.

"Why shoud I worry about what's happening in the economy?"

Product and growth leaders must actively monitor the global economy to inform planning, budgeting, and risk assessment. The market is driven by two primary emotions: fear, which signals a window for optimization and quality, and greed, which opens windows for innovation and big bets. For B2B SaaS, specific indicators like HubSpot's performance or the Fiserv SMB Index provide insight into Small and Medium Business health. A recession, defined as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth, typically impacts consumer markets first, followed by layoffs, and finally hits B2B SaaS through slowed acquisition and increased cancellations. Strategic planning requires understanding time horizons where Individual Contributors focus on quarters, Directors on years, and C-suite on two plus years. Leaders must build sustainable solutions for future markets, ensuring their products remain relevant through economic shifts. The current environment is complicated by AI commoditization and a trend toward flattening organizations by removing middle management. To survive, leaders must transition from focusing solely on customer problems to managing costs and risks alongside the CFO. This polyamorous relationship between product, research, and finance is essential for assessing investments against current volatility. Tactical responses include prioritizing customer success metrics, identifying early churn signals, and re-examining value propositions to emphasize immediate ROI. Pricing strategies should shift toward flexibility or usage-based models to avoid budget cuts. Roadmaps must be ruthlessly prioritized to eliminate nice to have features. Ultimately, professionals who master churn, retention, and fast value delivery will be more essential than those who merely ship features.

How to find your first ICP Guide

Identifying an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is the foundation of B2B SaaS growth, distinguishing high-value customers from the broader Total Addressable Market (TAM). An effective ICP defines firmographic, environmental, and behavioral attributes of accounts expected to provide the highest lifetime value and lowest churn. In Product-Led Growth (PLG) environments, behavioral data often outweighs firmographics initially, as the goal is to optimize for user onboarding and activation. Defining an ICP reduces costs across all business functions by focusing resources on customers with the highest willingness to pay and the greatest exchange of value. The identification process requires a triangulation of quantitative, qualitative, and market analysis. Quantitative analysis utilizes enriched CRM data from services like Clearbit, Zoominfo, or Clay to segment customers by size, revenue, and tech stack. Practitioners should analyze cohort conversion rates, retention, and usage patterns to identify which segments extract the most value. Key questions include: Who converts best through self-serve channels? Who sticks around for the long term? Who spends the most? Qualitative analysis layers on insights from user interviews and panel studies to understand specific use cases and Jobs to be Done (JTBD). This involves identifying users who would be highly disappointed if the product disappeared. Market analysis ensures the ICP aligns with industry trends and competitive dynamics, preventing a focus on stagnant or declining segments. Relying solely on existing customer data can be misleading if that segment is part of a dying industry. The case of PostHog illustrates the impact of a precise ICP. By focusing specifically on product engineers at startups with product-market fit, PostHog aligned its entire strategy: engineering-led culture, transparent usage-based pricing, and a developer-centric UI. This focus resulted in a step change in growth. An ICP is not static; it must evolve alongside market shifts and the product lifecycle. Neglecting this definition leads to wasted marketing spend, lower conversion rates, and increased churn.

Should you Product-led Growth? - by Leah Tharin

Product-led growth is a survival strategy rooted in the relationship between Lifetime Value (LTV) and the human activation energy required for onboarding. The framework identifies five distinct activation levers: High-Touch Sales, Interactive Demos, Trials, Freemiums, and Ungated Freemiums. High-touch sales are economically inefficient for simple use cases, leaving companies vulnerable to disruption. Conversely, self-serve models fail when products are too complex or require significant category education. The Dangerous Gap occurs when a product remains in a high-touch zone despite having an Ideal Customer Profile that could be served via trials or freemiums. This gap invites competitors to undercut incumbents by offering lower-friction entry points. HubSpot successfully navigated this by modularizing its product into specific Hubs, whereas Salesforce struggled due to interface complexity and a deeply entrenched sales-led organizational structure. Transitioning to PLG requires a two-stage process. First, companies must adjust compensation plans and reorganize product teams for outcome-driven development. Second, they must use trial data to structure effective freemium tiers that resonate with the collective needs of a team rather than just individuals. The Red Queen Effect warns that companies failing to innovate on friction reduction will eventually spend all resources merely maintaining market share before failing. Factors pushing products up the chart toward high-touch include bad UX, customer inertia, and poor communication of the ICP. Factors moving products toward high LTV include serving complex use cases or providing vertical, specialized solutions. Strategic choice in distribution is not just a tactic but a fundamental alignment with unit economics and market dynamics. If you push into self-serve without the right product interface, you wreck unit economics. If you fail to push when the market demands it, you get disrupted. This requires a phased approach that balances self-serve efficiency with the necessary human intervention for high-value enterprise accounts.

Working in a company that doesn't know their customers

Knowing an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is synonymous with understanding specific customer problems. Most companies operate without this clarity, leading to wasted capital and organizational friction. When leadership fails to define a specific destination, product teams fall into a cycle of building brilliant ideas that lack actual impact. This results in backlogs buried under shiny objects, dropping quality, and mounting tech debt. Process improvements like better backlog grooming or increased CEO involvement only mask the underlying issue. Impact cannot be measured without knowing exactly who the product is for. True focus requires the courage to cut good ideas that serve the wrong people. A well-defined ICP provides the organizational permission to disappoint anyone outside that profile. Many B2B businesses compromise their data validity by expanding survey reach to non-ideal respondents just to increase sample sizes. This softening of insights leads to generic products that lose their original differentiators. For example, a luggage brand targeting business travelers might add weight to improve durability for musicians, ultimately alienating their primary high-value segment. Sales-led organizations often use broad categories like small or medium businesses, but these are insufficient for product direction. Products cannot pivot their pitch like a salesperson can; they must work for all users simultaneously. Without specific industry and use-case focus, companies face four types of erosion. Marketing spend becomes inefficient due to generic messaging. Product-market fit declines as acquisition costs rise. Growth stalls because the organization adds headcount instead of focus. Finally, churn increases as competitors with sharper positioning serve the core audience better. Scaling a B2B SaaS business is impossible without an uncomfortably specific understanding of the customer.

The future of Growth & Product Management in 2025

The landscape of B2B SaaS growth and product management in 2025 centers on economic traceability and cross-functional fluency. Product managers must move beyond solving general customer problems to focusing exclusively on those with commercial traction. This shift requires outcome-driven roadmap design where features are prioritized based on customer economic outcomes rather than vanity metrics. AI literacy has evolved from a technical curiosity to a strategic necessity. Leaders must understand how AI increases internal efficiency and how it commoditizes previously unique product features, forcing a shift in long-term planning. A significant challenge remains the Gary Problem, which describes the friction between sales-led and product-led growth strategies in middle markets. To overcome this, PMs must bridge the language gap by articulating product impact in financial terms, specifically linking features to churn reduction or revenue growth. Implementing business case hygiene is critical to prevent feature creep and avoid endless validation cycles that lack quantitative backing. Because modern enterprise buyers now expect to test-drive products before engaging with sales, the product must be designed for immediate utility. Any requirement for a salesperson to explain basic product value is now viewed as a point of friction that loses customers. Career advancement for senior PMs involves becoming a cross-functional translator. This role entails converting technical constraints into business risks and turning sales feedback into quantitatively validated hypotheses. Leading through uncertainty requires prioritizing experiments that last weeks instead of quarters and building modular expertise. Success in this environment demands the ability to speak the languages of engineers, CFOs, and enterprise buyers simultaneously. Every product decision must connect to measurable business value through economic storytelling and impact pre-mortems that highlight the revenue risks of inaction.

Finding your Ideal Customer Profile in B2B: Interview Questions & Guide

Effective ICP research focuses on the human buyer rather than dry firmographics like ARR or employee count. Most companies fail by describing what a customer does instead of what they care about, leading to generic product and marketing strategies. To build a sharp profile, start by interviewing existing customers who have stayed for over 12 months and spend more than the average. High spend serves as a primary signal that the customer is extracting maximum value. The interview process should follow a structured path. Begin with learning patterns to identify where to place marketing messages, such as specific publications or social networks. Move into industry context to uncover broad challenges and regulatory objections. Understanding the individual's role within the organization is critical to distinguish between the economic buyer, the champion, and the influencer. Success metrics for these roles dictate how to frame the product's value proposition. Deep dives into goals and barriers reveal the emotional and technical stories that define the customer experience. Asking why specific goals matter helps align the product with the user's core objectives. Finally, mapping the buying process involves identifying the specific triggers that led to account creation and the friction points that almost prevented the purchase. This qualitative data allows teams to move beyond surface level statistics to understand the specific use cases and psychological drivers that make a customer ideal. By capturing these stories, growth leaders can optimize PLG motions and provide actionable insights for sales and marketing teams.

The nasty side effects of bad PLG - by Leah Tharin

**Effective GTM strategies** for B2B SaaS require a hybrid approach that integrates **Product-Led Growth (PLG)** with **Sales-Led Growth (SLG)**. While PLG is often romanticized as a low-cost acquisition engine, relying on it exclusively can artificially cap a company's **share of wallet**. A high-performing PLG motion operates through two primary levers: **expansion through customer growth** and **sales assistance**. By acquiring small clients in large numbers and scaling with them as they grow, companies like **HubSpot** capture enterprise value over time. This is often more effective than attempting to switch established enterprise accounts from competitors. PLG products generally offer superior user experiences because they are transparently punished by the market if they fail to deliver immediate value. In contrast, pure SLG companies often prioritize features based on qualitative sales feedback, which can lead to bloated, difficult-to-use software like **Salesforce**. However, PLG has inherent limitations regarding financial risk and customer insight. **Credit card processing fees** of 2.5% to 3% erode margins on large contracts, and monthly subscription models increase revenue volatility. Scaling beyond the **$10 million to $15 million ARR threshold** almost always requires a dedicated sales team to manage enterprise complexity and relationship building. A significant risk in pure PLG models is the **intent gap**. Quantitative data tracks what users do but fails to explain why they do it. Understanding customer motivation requires direct human interaction. Organizations must use sales conversations to form qualitative hypotheses and then validate those findings against quantitative product data. Effective operators avoid the trap of using PLG as an excuse to stop talking to customers, a mistake exemplified by **Airtable's** recent strategic shifts. Instead, they layer in sales teams once the initial distribution model is proven, ensuring the product remains easy to use while the sales motion handles the intricacies of B2B buying cycles.

The 250k per Employee cultural KPI causing layoffs in tech

The SaaS landscape has shifted from 5,000 companies in 2020 to 15,000 in 2025, with 72% now adopting Product-Led Growth (PLG). This saturation forces investors to prioritize efficiency metrics, specifically Revenue per Full-Time Equivalent (FTE). The current market benchmark sits at $250,000 per employee. Companies falling below this threshold face aggressive pressure to automate or downsize, often citing AI transformation as a strategic cover. PLG businesses present a unique challenge for traditional investor control. Unlike sales-led models where revenue scales linearly with headcount, PLG motions are less transparent. Effective PLG requires separating value creation (AHA moments) from value capture (monetization). It also demands prioritizing revenue over internal tracking processes. For example, removing gated content increases reach even if it complicates attribution. To maintain job security and team stability, product and growth leaders must adopt a commercial mindset. This involves abandoning low-yield ideas, setting strict time limits on research to ensure shipping, and framing all product improvements in terms of revenue uplift rather than vanity metrics. Success is defined by generating maximum value with minimal investment.

I slacked off. Here's what it cost me. - by Leah Tharin

Maintaining a consistent presence in demand generation channels is a prerequisite for sustaining a personal brand and high-ticket consulting pipeline. Leah Tharin highlights how a temporary reduction in content frequency on LinkedIn and Substack led to a significant decline in paid subscribers and overall traction. This period of reduced activity was caused by the intense demands of an interim leadership role at GotPhoto, where the focus shifted to product-led transformation and team management. Tharin notes that for B2B practitioners, the clients must come first, but neglecting personal demand generation creates a delayed crisis. Because the sales cycle for high-end consulting often spans six to ten months, the negative effects of a content lull are not immediate. This delay makes inconsistency a slow-acting poison that only reveals its full damage when the pipeline eventually dries up. A key observation from this experience is that the relationship between effort and impact is non-linear. Reducing content output by 50 percent can result in a 90 percent loss in total impact. This occurs because regular content creates a habit for the audience. When a creator fails to deliver at the expected time, they break that habit and lose their position as a top of mind resource. In an increasingly crowded market, the cost of regaining this lost momentum is significantly higher than the cost of maintaining it. Tharin recommends a strategy of extreme focus, suggesting that practitioners should master one channel before diversifying. To protect against future lapses, creators should build a content backlog to ensure consistency during periods of high workload or personal stress. Ultimately, the goal is to prioritize end-of-funnel conversions over vanity metrics while recognizing that steady, long-term output outperforms sporadic bursts of high-intensity activity.

The reckoning of the cringe lunatic economy

The cringe lunatic economy identifies a specific subgroup of creators who have professionalized the acquisition of reach without an underlying product. These individuals treat the LinkedIn algorithm as a game to be won, selling courses on how to gain followers as their primary revenue stream. This creates a multi-level marketing dynamic where the proof of expertise is the revenue generated from teaching the same reach-building tactics to others. A critical technical limitation of this approach is the non-transferable nature of reach. The LinkedIn algorithm prioritizes engagement ratios within specific topics. If a creator builds an audience around general reach tactics, that authority does not transfer to specialized fields like flight simulators or product-led growth. This creates a trap for aspiring solopreneurs who focus on distribution before they have a product or a specialized skill to sell. The cringe element stems from the systematic dehumanization of social interaction to satisfy the algorithm. Tactics include comment porn, fake collaborations, and engagement pods where creators upvote content they do not value to receive reciprocal engagement. This behavior is driven by the false promise that a specific follower count will automatically lead to a successful career. For legitimate practitioners, reach should function as a distribution layer for a core business. Sustainable success comes from inbound leads generated by creating actual value within companies. Marketing and reach should represent a small fraction of the total business activity. The core advice is to learn copywriting from copywriters and marketing from marketers who have a track record of selling real products, rather than from gurus who only sell the concept of popularity. True value creation relies on hard work and honest expertise rather than algorithm tricks.

Leah's Leadership Guide - Part 5: Experimentation Culture

Experimentation culture requires a fundamental shift where learning replaces winning as the primary objective. In B2B SaaS, over 60 percent of experiments typically fail. Leaders must normalize this reality to prevent teams from defaulting to safe, low-impact changes. Success should be defined through three criteria: it must be explicit, shared early before results arrive, and based on well-defined expectations. This approach ensures that even if an experiment outcome is negative, the team achieves success by validating or invalidating a specific hypothesis. Psychological safety is the foundation of this culture. Leaders build it by modeling their own failures and celebrating well-executed initiatives at the moment of launch rather than waiting for the data. To manage risk without killing ambition, teams should adopt a 70/20/10 portfolio model: 70 percent safe bets, 20 percent incremental improvements, and 10 percent moonshots. High-risk initiatives often have success rates as low as 10 to 20 percent, but their outsized impact justifies the effort. Operationalizing this requires a blameless, data-focused post-mortem process and a centralized learning repository. This repository should document the hypothesis tested, why it mattered, the root cause of failure, and one actionable insight. Maintaining this knowledge base involves regular spring cleaning to archive data older than 12 months or unused assets. Ultimately, the goal is to create a decision flowchart that dictates when to pivot, persist, or kill a project based on pre-set threshold metrics, such as killing an initiative if it remains unvalidated after three sprints.

Quo Vadis, SaaS & PMs? - by Leah Tharin - Leah’s ProducTea

The SaaS landscape is undergoing a seismic shift driven by AI and changing buyer behaviors. While AI makes building software cheaper and faster, it simultaneously complicates demand generation. Traditional acquisition channels like SEO are declining as users pivot to LLMs and human recommendations. Even the recent surge in B2B influencer marketing faces a trust crisis due to AI-generated content and monetization-driven bias. This environment creates a clump risk where companies over-rely on single, failing channels. The Product Management profession is reacting through radical specialization. The era of the generalist PM is ending, replaced by four distinct roles: Growth PMs focused on quantitative optimization, AI TPMs managing technical model integration, Product Marketing Managers bridging the gap to market, and Integration PMs who embed products into existing customer workflows. Organizational structures must also adapt. Large product teams are increasingly viewed as dysfunctional; the new optimal size is five to six people. Growth strategy is evolving from pure Product-Led Growth into Product-Led Sales. This hybrid approach prioritizes cost-efficient trust-building and deep integration into the Ideal Customer Profile's daily operations. Success in 2025 requires moving away from shitty features toward flow optimizations and specialized GTM motions that solve for retention and high-value acquisition. Ultimately, the ratio of Growth teams to classical Product teams will shrink. Companies must focus on the most cost-efficient ways to generate real trust with long-term customers. This involves talking to the best customers to identify churn triggers and specializing in their specific operational needs. The future belongs to smaller, specialized companies with higher revenue per employee and a tighter integration between product and market dynamics.

Leah's Leadership Guide - Part 3: Communicate, often

Effective leadership relies on creating and maintaining alignment, which requires communicating more frequently than feels comfortable. Human cognition is naturally forgetful. The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve demonstrates that memory loss is exponential immediately after learning. To combat this, leaders should employ the SIR system: Spacing, Interleaving, and Retrieval. Spacing involves repeating information over time to increase the chances of retention. Interleaving requires presenting the same core message in different formats or contexts, such as using various visuals or rephrasing strategy. This forces the audience to reprocess the information actively to connect the different versions. Retrieval is the most effective method for long term retention, involving active recall. In practice, this means asking team members to repeat back their takeaways from a conversation without looking at notes. This forces the brain to reconstruct the information from first principles, which is more difficult but significantly more effective for creating lasting memory. A common failure in scaling organizations is relying on the 'telephone game,' where strategy is filtered through multiple layers of management. This process inevitably loses accuracy and nuance. To ensure designers and engineers remain business savvy, leaders must communicate strategic decisions directly to the entire team rather than just their immediate reports. Direct communication also allows for immediate feedback and questioning of underlying assumptions. Alignment is not a one-time task but a consistent requirement because misalignment is the natural state over time. Leaders must assume that even clear messages will deteriorate and require proactive reinforcement through varied and frequent touchpoints. Consistency is the primary factor in determining whether leadership is effective.

Leah's Leadership Guide - Part 2: Thorough Market Knowledge

Market knowledge serves as the essential substance behind leadership storytelling and credibility. True expertise requires deconstructing the market into focused knowledge and separating fact from the illusion of knowledge. A common pitfall is the quantitative illusion, where leaders rely solely on usage data while missing the qualitative differentiators that explain why customers choose a product. Conversely, the qualitative illusion occurs when leaders over-rely on product sense without verifying assumptions through data. For innovative bets where data is scarce, leaders should utilize Painted Door or Wizard of Oz tests and define clear stoppage signals before overcommitting resources. The leadership illusion is a particularly dangerous trap where executives stop personally interacting with Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) or querying data. Direct contact with the market cannot be outsourced because context is frequently lost in translation. Tactical mastery involves reading competitor quarterly reports, analyzing job advertisements for strategic shifts, and engaging with non-customers to avoid echo chambers. To maintain accuracy, leaders must practice economic fact-checking by prioritizing the verification of upstream assumptions. If the foundational ICP or market size assumptions are flawed, all downstream execution is compromised. Adopting a superforecasting mindset is critical, which involves breaking down complex problems into manageable parts, using probabilistic thinking with Bayesian updating, and actively seeking diverse perspectives to challenge internal biases.

Leah's 2026 PM Career Guide - V1 - by Leah Tharin

The traditional product management career loop of optimizing funnels and shipping incremental wins is becoming obsolete as AI commoditizes execution. While skills like writing PRDs, maintaining sprint hygiene, and funnel teardowns were once differentiators, they are now considered baseline competencies. The core challenge for PMs in 2026 is that product-market fit moves faster than ever. AI cycles compress the time an AHA moment stays magical, meaning teams often optimize journeys that are already the wrong ones. Success now depends on four compounding skills that sit above execution. Sequence ownership involves determining which steps belong in a user journey and having the courage to reorder or remove them. Sideways alignment requires holding marketing, sales, and product together in a single narrative, a task AI cannot perform because it lacks the human stakes necessary to reconcile competing interests. The ability to kill features that are optimizing well but leading to the wrong destination is a critical signal of seniority. Finally, pattern recognition allows PMs to identify when metrics are being abused or providing a false sense of success. The market now selects for a dual-capacity bar. Leaders want PMs who can hit a metric while simultaneously questioning its validity. This shift requires a move from step-thinking to journey-thinking. Tactical development of these skills involves sitting in non-product functions like sales and customer success, exposing oneself to unscripted customer feedback, and setting explicit kill criteria before starting any project. Career materials must reflect this evolution. CVs should transition from metric-only logs to decision-based narratives that highlight cross-functional impact and instances where work was stopped for strategic reasons. In interviews, candidates must lead with the business meaning of their work rather than team output. Demonstrating the ability to interrogate a company's North Star metric live in the room is the most effective way to signal readiness for this new era of product leadership.

Leah's Leadership Guide - Part 4: Grow - by Leah Tharin

Leadership is fundamentally about creating alignment and inspiring movement, which requires more than just communication; it demands leading by example through visible personal growth. A critical challenge for senior leaders is the feedback vacuum that occurs as titles increase. Data shows that less than 30 percent of employees feel they have an open culture of challenging each other, primarily due to fear of repercussions or the belief that their opinions do not matter. When leaders stop receiving negative feedback, their egos can grow unchecked, leading to ineffective, authoritarian decision-making. To combat this, leaders must actively build trust by growing in front of their teams. This involves being highly specific when admitting mistakes or changing opinions, rather than using fake modesty. Leaders should be upfront about areas where they lack competence and actively bring in experts rather than pretending to have all the answers. In collaborative settings, it is vital to ask questions and listen to team opinions before revealing your own perspective. This prevents the team from simply aligning with the leader's power. Furthermore, leaders must never take credit for their team's work, as their success is already inherent in their title. Tone management is also essential. Being too aggressive or combative can stifle culture, while being too nice devalues praise. The most effective approach is being specific with feedback, which proves active listening and validates the importance of the contributor's input. Maintaining a continuous stream of uncomfortable feedback through anonymous surveys or peer advisors is necessary to maintain an accurate self-perception. Ultimately, growth is the ability to accept shortcomings and act on them publicly to foster a culture of autonomy and buy-in.

Is PLG the death of Sales? - by Leah Tharin

Sales is not facing obsolescence but a fundamental transformation driven by the rise of product-led growth (PLG). The traditional Always Be Closing mentality, which prioritized immediate transactions over long-term customer health, is being replaced by a model centered on retention and sustainable monetization. Modern sales teams must move beyond the vacuum cleaner salesman archetype to become data-driven practitioners who leverage buyer personas and Ideal Customer Profiles (ICP) to target the right users. A critical failure in legacy sales models is the lack of focus on whether the customer actually uses the product. When sales efforts are disconnected from product usage, the customer never receives an honest representation of value, leading to poor retention. To counter this, companies are adopting a hybrid strategy that blends PLG with traditional sales. This approach ensures that the product and sales teams complement each other rather than operating in silos. The product serves as the primary driver of value, while sales professionals act as consultants who help users navigate complex organizational needs or advanced features. The shift involves moving from quick wins to long-term relationships. Sales numbers are trending down globally, making it essential for organizations to implement strategies that empower teams through product-led insights. This evolution requires a focus on the 5 Ps: Paddle, PLG, Packaging, Pricing, and Payment. By integrating these elements, sales becomes a value-add function that sustains monetization throughout the customer lifecycle. The goal is to provide value first, allowing the product to demonstrate its worth before or alongside human-led sales interventions. This transition requires executives to mature their thinking regarding team roles, moving away from siloed departments toward a collaborative, revenue-focused organization where every touchpoint is informed by product data and user behavior.

Freebie Fiasco: Why Freemium Might Wreck Your Revenue

Implementing a freemium model in B2B SaaS often fails when treated as a simple pricing change rather than a fundamental go-to-market shift. The case of Equals demonstrates how a sudden move to freemium can damage revenue if the product and organization are not prepared for self-serve dynamics. Successful freemium execution requires a deep understanding of when the model fits the audience. It is particularly effective for new audiences but risky when applied to existing sales-led customers who may simply trade down. A critical error in many PLG transitions is the attempt to eliminate all friction. While high friction reduces engagement, strategic friction serves as a vital qualification tool. Requiring credit cards or specific company data during onboarding allows teams to filter for the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and tailor the user experience. Without this data, companies fly blind and lose the ability to differentiate between low-value users and high-potential accounts. Transitioning to a self-serve motion necessitates permanent resource allocation to onboarding and activation. Many companies use sales teams as a crutch to overcome product complexity. When moving to freemium, these product gaps become visible because Gary the sales guy is no longer there to hand-hold the user. This shift often requires significant product changes to ensure users can reach the aha moment without assistance. Market maturity also dictates the appropriate sales touch. As a market becomes more educated and solutions become less novel, customers increasingly prefer self-serve options. This evolution is visible in industries ranging from automotive to software. Ultimately, the goal is not necessarily freemium itself but a self-serve motion that leverages quantitative user data alongside qualitative sales insights to drive expansion.

(3) The new kid on the Block: Interactive Demos

B2B buyer behavior in 2023 shows a significant shift, with over half of global buyers changing suppliers within 18 months. While pricing and bundling drive some churn, a substantial portion of customer loss stems from poor online experiences and difficulty finding products. Interactive demos offer a tactical solution for companies, particularly those transitioning from sales-led models to product-led growth. These demos provide a simulated product experience tailored to specific audience types, mimicking complex functionality without requiring a full setup or data integration. Unlike freemium or trial models, interactive demos do not necessarily aim for immediate self-serve conversion. Instead, their primary purpose is to respect the prospect's time and demonstrate core value quickly. This allows potential customers to compare products and reach an aha moment before committing to a sales call. For sales-led organizations, this transition requires relinquishing some control. Sales reps often fear losing the ability to guide the narrative, but manual demos do not scale and often alienate buyers who are not yet ready for a human interaction. By providing a self-serve evaluation path, companies can capture prospects who would otherwise abandon the site when faced with a forced sales contact. Effective implementation requires treating the interactive demo as a standalone product rather than a marketing asset. This involves maintaining a dedicated backlog, iterating based on data-driven feedback, and accounting for maintenance costs on the balance sheet. Key success factors include simplicity, minimizing time to value, and using specialized tooling that allows for rapid updates without technical debt. Metrics should focus on conversion rates from demo to sales call, time spent per segment, and internal sharing within target accounts. High-performing companies like Zendesk and Drift use multi-role demos to guide different user types toward relevant experiences. Ultimately, interactive demos serve as a strategic tool to disqualify bad matches early and accelerate high-intent leads through the sales funnel.

I'm going full-time advising. - by Leah Tharin

Leah Tharin, formerly the Head of Product at Jua.ai, details her strategic transition into full-time advising beginning in November 2023. This move marks a shift from a dedicated operator role to a broader consulting focus centered on Product-Led Growth (PLG), Product-Led Sales (PLS), and SaaS growth strategy. Tharin describes her tenure at Jua.ai as intense and high-velocity, where traditional 30, 60, and 90 day plans were compressed into 3, 6, and 9 day execution cycles to capitalize on market momentum. Despite the success and talent density at the firm, she faced a growing conflict between her internal responsibilities and an increasing volume of external advising requests. The decision to pivot was driven by two primary factors: the rising opportunity cost of turning away potential clients and a divergence in strategic focus. As Jua.ai narrowed its positioning toward AI-driven energy trading weather forecasts, Tharin realized the company's trajectory was moving away from her personal brand and expertise in SaaS and PLG distribution. By choosing to go full-time into advising, she aims to concentrate on creating high-quality, operational content that connects product development directly to revenue. She acknowledges the inherent risks of being subject to market whims as an independent advisor but emphasizes the value of pattern matching across a diverse client base. This pattern matching allows her to synthesize insights from multiple B2B SaaS environments, providing clients with a broader perspective than a single operator role typically affords. The transition involves a three-month handover period to find a successor at Jua.ai, ensuring the stability of the team she helped build. Her focus remains on providing realistic, actionable insights for product distribution without the typical industry hype.

Normalize Individual contributor Leadership

Corporate culture incorrectly equates seniority with people management. This linear path forces talented individual contributors into managerial roles where their skills do not translate. The result is poor management and organizational friction. Leadership and management are distinct functions. Leadership is social influence to achieve goals. Management is staffing and training. High level individual contributors can be leaders without direct reports. In Product and Growth, the lack of IC career progression prevents experts from doubling down on their strengths. Engineering has successfully addressed this through Staff and Principal roles. Product organizations must adopt similar tracks to retain talent. Financial data from third party salary bands like Radford shows that 90th percentile IC salaries often exceed 50th percentile Director or VP pay. This debunks the myth that management is the only way to increase compensation. The shift toward product-led growth makes IC leadership even more critical. Retention is driven by detail-specific integrations and deep customer closeness. These insights are found at the operative level. Giving managers the ultimate decision power when they have the least context is a strategic disadvantage. Companies should define clear roles for Staff or Principal PMs who drive vision, strategy, and category design while remaining operatively involved. A Group PM or Director focuses on hiring, coaching, and cross-team synchronization. In contrast, a Staff or Principal PM drives product vision and acts as a company-level expert in a specific skill area. They remain operatively involved in creating and maintaining product work. Founders should draft role descriptions that ensure pay parity between these tracks. Individual contributors hitting a career wall should proactively suggest these roles by providing tailored job descriptions and tying them to operative goals that move the needle for the business. Normalizing these paths is a competitive advantage in a market where retention and customer closeness are paramount.

50'000 Followers! How to Product & Growth Consultant 101

Leah Tharin outlines the operational mechanics of a high-end B2B SaaS consulting business, distinguishing between interim, fractional, and advisory engagements. Interim roles are full-time, time-bound positions focused on bridging leadership gaps and preparing for a permanent successor. Advisory roles are strategic retainers involving weekly calls, hiring support, and high-leverage networking. Tharin explicitly avoids fractional roles, citing the risk of full-time stress for part-time pay. Her business model targets B2B scaleups with over $10M in annual revenue, moving away from early-stage startups where impact is less scalable. Demand generation is strictly inbound, driven by consistent content creation on LinkedIn and Substack. This product-led approach to consulting builds trust through free value before monetization. Key operational tactics include maintaining flexible contracts, charging premium rates to filter for high-value clients, and providing direct, unvarnished feedback to CEOs. She emphasizes that successful consulting requires deep pattern recognition in GTM motions rather than just industry-specific knowledge. The transition to solopreneurship is framed as a long-term play involving consistent brand building and the use of free mentorship to validate expertise and overcome impostor syndrome.

The skill that gets you fired or promoted: managing up

Reliability is the foundational skill that determines career trajectory, often outweighing technical quality. The core of managing up is ensuring that managers and peers are never surprised by a missed deadline. When a commitment is missed without prior warning, it forces the manager into a difficult position with their own superiors, effectively making them look unreliable. This erosion of trust is a primary reason for termination, regardless of the individual's talent level. Managers fundamentally dislike chasing their reports for updates, as this behavior indicates a lack of confidence in the execution process. The trouble funnel framework provides a tactical approach to maintaining reliability by managing the stages of a commitment before it results in a crisis. It begins with being highly selective about the number of promises made. Not all promises are equal; identifying which commitments carry the most weight or have deadlines that will be communicated further up the chain is essential for strategic alignment. Practitioners must account for the reality that tasks almost always take longer than estimated, necessitating significant buffers in every project timeline. Effective management requires preventing important tasks from becoming urgent through proactive prioritization. Tools like a daily cannot fail list help keep long term projects visible even when they are not yet pressing. Regular, open communication with peers and managers acts as a failsafe to catch overlooked requirements or shifting priorities. If a failure occurs, honest crisis management is the only viable path. Taking accountability and providing a new, realistic timeline immediately is superior to making excuses or attempting to hide the delay. Ultimately, managing up is about protecting the reputation of your manager by being a dependable link in the organizational chain. This reliability creates the professional space necessary for promotion and increased responsibility.

(3) Leah's Product Market Fit Guide 2.0 - by Leah Tharin

Product-market fit (PMF) is the fundamental requirement for sustainable growth, representing the point where a product satisfies a large enough market to prevent acquisition costs from being overtaken by churn. In product-led organizations, PMF and distribution are inseparable. This concept of product-led market fit suggests that distribution strategy must be developed in parallel with the product rather than as a consecutive step. Finding PMF often takes 18 months or longer and requires a deep understanding of specific Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) rather than treating the entire user base as a monolith. PMF is measured through indicators like the Sean Ellis test, which looks for a 40% 'very disappointed' threshold if the product were removed, and stable long-term retention curves. Quantitative tools for validation include using paid ads to test value propositions and the Customer Effort Score (CES) to identify feature-level friction. Qualitative insights are gathered through Switch Interviewing, which analyzes past buying decisions to uncover the passive and active search phases of the customer journey. The Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI) framework connects these data points by mapping user needs based on importance and current satisfaction levels to identify underserved opportunity gaps. Scaling after PMF requires crossing the chasm from early adopters, who actively seek innovation, to the early majority, who prioritize stability and unit economics. Premature scaling without an efficient retention motion leads to the leaky bucket problem, where hiring and marketing spend artificially shorten the runway for an inefficient business model.

(3) The PLG for Sales-Led Guide - by Leah Tharin

Product-led growth (PLG) serves as a distribution model where the product itself drives acquisition, activation, and retention. For sales-led organizations, transitioning to PLG is often a strategic move to capture downmarket segments with lower lifetime value (LTV) that are too expensive for traditional sales pipelines. This guide outlines a de-risked five-step framework: inventory, redefine, focus, measure, and implement. The core of this transition is Product-Led Sales (PLS), a subfunction of PLG that uses product engagement data to qualify leads. PLS bridges the gap between high-volume, low-LTV self-serve users and low-volume, high-LTV enterprise accounts. By identifying Product-Qualified Accounts (PQA) and Product-Qualified Leads (PQL), companies can reduce Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and shorten deal cycles. Qualification relies on specific customer success signals: Setup, Aha, Eureka, and Habit moments. For example, Slack’s 2000-message threshold serves as a habit signal. Organizational structure must shift toward autonomous, impact-guided Growth teams. These teams, typically 4 to 7 people, should be cross-functional and focus on value-creation metrics rather than just value-capture metrics like revenue. Outcome-driven goal setting is essential; teams should be measured on their ability to move specific success signals for targeted Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs). Common pitfalls include scaling sales resources too quickly before the PLS pipeline is mature and failing to adjust sales incentivization. Traditional commission structures often encourage overselling, which can lead to churn. Instead, incentives should align with long-term customer success and expansion revenue. Effective measurement requires robust product analytics tools like Mixpanel or Amplitude to track user behavior and attribute revenue correctly across self-serve and sales-assisted motions. Ultimately, PLG in a sales-led context is about shifting control from process to quality, allowing users to experience value before human intervention.

(3) Leah's Product-led Growth Guide 3.0 - by Leah Tharin

Product-led growth (PLG) centers the product as the primary driver of acquisition, expansion, and retention. It operates on a "Show, Don't tell" philosophy, prioritizing value realization before any human interaction or payment. This distribution model is particularly effective for commoditized SaaS markets where low friction acts as a competitive moat. Unlike traditional marketing-led models that rely on long-winded explanations, PLG allows users to experience solution fit directly through trials, freemiums, or reverse trials. The guide distinguishes between value creation metrics, such as usage, setup moments, and habit formation, and value capture metrics like revenue and churn. While leadership often focuses on capture, operational teams should target outcomes like the "Aha Moment" or "Eureka Moment" to drive long-term retention. This requires a shift from output-based goals, like shipping features, to outcome-based goals that improve user success. Organizational structure must evolve from top-down or matrix models to cross-functional, supportive teams. These teams leverage usage data to optimize growth loops rather than linear funnels. In B2B contexts, the rise of the self-service buyer means over 50% of prospects prefer purchasing without sales interaction. However, Product-Led Sales (PLS) bridges this gap by using product-qualified leads (PQLs) to identify high-intent accounts. Sales teams then intervene later in the journey with higher context, leading to better close rates and increased lifetime value. The transition to PLG requires a cultural shift where the product itself is responsible for driving sustainable growth by reducing friction and fostering user advocacy.

Leah’s curated list of Knowledge

Leah Tharin’s curated knowledge base serves as a tactical roadmap for mastering product leadership and growth. The collection organizes high-impact resources into specific subskills: Product Execution, Strategy, Customer Insight, and Influencing People. It highlights essential frameworks such as Superhuman’s engine for finding Product-Market Fit and the Jobs to be Done (JTBD) methodology popularized by Clayton Christensen and Alan Klement. For execution, it points to Running Lean and Sprint as primary guides for vetting ideas and prototyping. The list also addresses the cultural side of product work, recommending Radical Candor for feedback and The Build Trap to help leaders move away from feature-focused output toward outcome-driven strategy. Technical proficiency is supported through resources like LearnSql.com, while strategic foresight is covered via Philip Tetlock’s work on super forecasting. The repository emphasizes the importance of time management for product leaders through Four Thousand Weeks, advocating for intentional failure on secondary tasks to focus on what truly matters. It bridges the gap between individual contribution and leadership by including Radical Focus, which provides a framework for implementing OKRs to drive outcome-based results. For those in the discovery phase, Teresa Torres’s Continuous Discovery Habits offers a research framework that prioritizes testing assumptions over ideas, while Amy Jo Kim’s Game Thinking explores the paradox of innovation where mainstream audiences are not the initial target. The collection also delves into the risks of technological shifts with The Innovator’s Dilemma, explaining why established firms often fail to capture new waves of innovation. By integrating data-driven approaches from Lean Analytics with the human-centric feedback loops of Radical Candor, Tharin provides a holistic curriculum for building and scaling tech products that customers love. This constantly updated list functions as a theoretical foundation for practitioners looking to scale both their products and their organizational influence.

Social Media Gossip in Product & Reality - by Leah Tharin

Social media platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter prioritize engagement efficiency over technical nuance. This leads to the viral spread of oversimplified narratives that misinterpret complex business decisions. A primary example is the claim that Airbnb eliminated the product management function. In reality, CEO Brian Chesky described a shift toward a more directive, integrated model similar to Apple where the CEO maintains high involvement in every release. This is a specific organizational choice rather than an industry wide trend. The organization is built to execute the CEO's specific vision, which is a departure from the decentralized empowered team model often preached in product circles. Another example involves the competition between Slack and Microsoft Teams. While charts showing Teams overtaking Slack in daily active users went viral, they often ignored the role of Microsoft's massive enterprise distribution power. Microsoft's success in that market was driven by its ability to push products through existing channels rather than purely superior product design. This highlights a critical business lesson: distribution often beats product. A successful business motion is about efficiency, and you cannot infer that efficiency from a graph that only looks at daily active users. These narratives become dangerous when executives adopt them as guiding visions without understanding the underlying context. Practitioners must distinguish between a company's success and the specific tactics they use. Just because a company is performing well does not mean every internal process is a best practice worth replicating. The it depends nature of product work is often lost in favor of one liners that promise simple results. Maintaining a high quality information diet requires seeking out in depth analysis and being skeptical of controversial statements designed for algorithmic traction. This gossip culture mirrors lifestyle magazines, offering simple answers to complex problems that do not exist in reality.

Leah's Business Case Guide V1 - by Leah Tharin

Business casing is fundamentally an exercise in risk management rather than just opportunity evaluation. As shipping software becomes easier, the primary differentiator for product teams shifts from speed to the ability to identify and build the correct features. A great business case focuses on reducing risks through honest examination, maintaining simplicity to ensure organizational alignment, and placing opportunities within the specific business context. It must actively fight confirmation bias, which often leads teams to inflate metrics like ARR to meet arbitrary company thresholds. The process involves four stages: drafting core assumptions, breaking down value drivers, evaluating confidence and impact, and connecting findings to value capture. Using a hypothetical document collaboration feature, the guide illustrates how to break down channels like conversion, network effects, and retention. Conversion analysis looks at SEO impact, trial transitions, and LTV improvements. Network effects focus on external user invitations, while retention examines the survival rate of existing customers. A color coded system (Red, Yellow, Green) helps visualize certainty levels for each assumption. Impact is measured as the delta between the current state and the proposed innovation, while confidence is derived from domain closeness and similar feature proof. Qualitative interviews are noted as less reliable than past behavior or prototyping because users often struggle to predict their own future actions. Effort estimation should distinguish between simple expensive tasks and complex cheap ones. Complexity increases significantly when a team builds something for the first time or requires heavy cross team collaboration. To mitigate high risk assumptions that drive the majority of a case, teams should use painted door tests or MVPs to gather real world data before committing to long development cycles. The final proposal should be a concise summary that compares the opportunity against other strategic initiatives, focusing on the minimum viable signal required to continue investment.

113: Vincent Pierri - How to deal with Stage Fright before important talks

112: Anna-Karina Schmitt - Resilience Strategies from a World-Record Athlete and former CS Leader

111: Anthony Pierri - How to make Elevator Pitches for B2B Products

110: Scott Brinker - Brand, AI, and the Uncomfortable Future of Marketing

109: Larry Robinson - How Instincts Outsmart Data in Product Leadership

Larry Robinson, CPO of Bright Plan and Salesforce veteran, outlines a framework for integrating intuition with analytics in high-stakes product environments. He challenges the modern obsession with data-only decision making; he argues that soft skills like storytelling and gut instinct often lead to better outcomes in hiring and innovation. Robinson advocates for thin-slicing in recruitment, using presentation-based interviews to identify top talent quickly. He asserts that hiring processes involving more than three interviews are often a form of organizational cowardice. Regarding product development, he distinguishes prototypes from MVPs by their goal: prototypes must spark an immediate emotional reaction. If a prototype fails to excite a customer within five minutes, it should be discarded regardless of what the spreadsheets suggest. His approach to innovation focuses on selling category leadership rather than incremental feature sets. He also promotes a simplified approach to budgeting that prioritizes speed and clarity over complex financial modeling.

108: Etie Hertz - Why customer empathy is now the moat

107: Andres Glusman: Why Your A/B Tests Are Lying (and How to Fix Them)

106: Evie Brockwell - Burnout, Boundaries & Breaking the Hustle Cycle

105: Melissa Perri - Why "AI" is a terrible strategist

104: John Cutler - How to Turn Team Chaos into Strategy

103: CJ Gustafson - The Silent Recession: Why Product Leaders Need CFOs Now

102: John Zeratsky - Fake Products, Real Feedback: Sprinting to Validation

101: Srikrishnan Ganesan: “MVPs Are Dead” & Other SaaS Heresies

Growth & Product Management in 2025 - Leah Tharin, MTPCon 2025

100: Matt Le May - The Product Manager’s Guide to Driving Business Impact

99: Mackenzie Hughes & Tara Goldman: From Jira Junkies to Profit Prophets

Mackenzie Hughes and Tara Goldman address the systemic disconnect between product development and business impact. Many product managers function as Jira junkies, focusing on shipping features rather than generating profit. This gap often stems from an inability to quantify how specific roadmap items drive revenue or mitigate granular churn. The discussion emphasizes that product leaders must adopt a commercial mindset, ensuring that every product bet is designed to return three to five times its cost. A common pitfall identified is metric overload, where tracking dozens of KPIs leads to organizational paralysis. Instead, teams should align around a single, high-leverage metric that drives the entire business forward. The conversation also explores the evolving role of product leadership in the age of AI. As the technical act of shipping code becomes commoditized, the primary differentiator for successful companies will shift from engineering output to go-to-market excellence and strategic business acumen. This requires a return to rigorous experimentation and a move away from incentivizing output over outcomes.

98: Ross Pomerantz - Cold Calls, CRMs, and Comedy Gold: Corporate Bro’s Unfiltered SaaS Diaries

97: Adam Fishman - Killing Projects for a Living: Mozilla’s Stage-Gating Secrets

96: Lidia Oshlyansky - 3 Skills That Outlast Any Tech Shift

95: Tal Raviv - AI for PMs: Stop Overthinking, Start Tinkering

Tal Raviv argues that product management has become less enjoyable due to increased pressure and fewer PMs per team. He positions hands-on AI experimentation as the primary solution to this burnout. Instead of fearing replacement, PMs should treat AI as a strategic thought partner for streamlining discovery and go-to-market workflows. Key applications include summarizing user research transcripts and identifying insights while staying grounded in raw data to preserve product intuition. AI also facilitates cross-functional alignment by surfacing conflicts in unstructured data across departments. Practical examples include building custom assistants for SQL queries and API documentation. Raviv emphasizes that there are no magic spells for prompting; success comes from small, iterative experiments. A survey of thousands of PMs identifies ChatGPT and Claude as the dominant tools, with Whisper, Perplexity, Notion AI, and Slack AI serving as critical secondary resources. The future of the role depends on mastering these contextual tools to manage company-specific knowledge.

94: Julia Chatain - Misconceptions and How to Crush Them like a Scientist

93: Emily Kramer - The Death of Marketing Channels

92: Kris Rudeegraap - New Marketing Channels for 2025 and Product-Led Sales

91: Dave Kellogg - Organizational design: Signs of Health vs. Conflict

90: Harini Gokul - How to keep things "simple" at scale

89: David Yockelson - Revolutionizing Sales with Interactive Demos

88: Teresa Torres - Under the hood of Solopreneurship

87: Francesca Cortesi - From Market fit to IPO

87: Joan Palmiter Bajorek: Layoff Anxiety in Tech and Career Optionality

85: Wes Kao - Strategies for communicating with leaders

84: Kristi Faltorusso - Aligning Customer Success and Product Management

83: Tadas Labudis - Overcoming the fear of founder-led selling

82: Maranda Dziekonski - When selling never ends - CS in 2024 and beyond

81: Kyle Poyar - Rethinking pipeline responsibility and MQLs

80: Leah Tharin - The Art and Pain Of Public Speaking

Leah Tharin discusses the strategic evolution of public speaking and personal branding within the B2B SaaS and Product-Led Growth sectors. The conversation centers on how speaking serves as a critical tool for senior leaders to align cross-functional teams, specifically bridging the gap between sales, marketing, and product departments. Tharin introduces a communication framework based on three pillars: Language, Credibility, and Bandwidth. Language focuses on using simple terminology and establishing context immediately. Credibility requires leaders to be specific about mistakes and data sources rather than relying on vague corporate platitudes. Bandwidth addresses the limited information retention of audiences, suggesting that speakers often overestimate how much a crowd can process at once. Tharin shares her personal journey from an introverted UX researcher to a prominent industry voice, noting that her first public talk directly resulted in three consulting clients. She emphasizes that for tech leaders, the primary ROI of speaking is often business development and market authority rather than speaking fees. The discussion also covers the creation of Gary, a fictional B2B sales character used to highlight industry friction through humor. Regarding audience building, Tharin details her aggressive LinkedIn strategy, which involved posting twice daily for six months to build momentum. She warns that this level of consistency is painful and requires overcoming the fear of judgment from peers. The episode concludes with a reflection on the downsides of visibility, including parasocial relationships and the isolation that comes with rising recognition in a niche industry.

79: Erin Papworth: Transitioning a product upmarket from B2C to B2B

78: Radhika Dutt - The Power of Shared Vision

77: Amanda Daering - Effective Team Management Strategies, Leaders vs Managers

76: Malte Scholz: Product Management in 2024 and beyond

75: Kevan Lee & Shannon Deep - Understanding rand beyond visuals

74: Ami Vora - Unconventional Lessons in Senior Leadership

73: Austin Hay - BS Marketing, Dogfooding and the future of CRMs

72: Rand Fishkin - Why paid advertising sucks in 2024

The digital advertising ecosystem is increasingly exploitative, with major platforms optimizing for their own revenue rather than advertiser ROI. A significant portion of ad spend is wasted on users who would have converted organically, a phenomenon where platforms take credit for sales that were already inevitable. This attribution fraud is exacerbated by systems that hide organic results, force scrolling, and prioritize paid placements through lazy loading of organic content. The best marketing channels are frequently the most difficult to measure accurately. Marketers should stop over-relying on misleading digital metrics and instead adopt a testing methodology similar to traditional billboard advertising from the 1960s. This involves running localized campaigns in specific markets and measuring the resulting lift in total sales rather than clicking on individual tracking links. The rise of AI further complicates the landscape by changing how users interact with the web, making high quality audience research and organic initiatives more critical than ever. Success in this environment requires working with experts who prioritize qualitative insights over easily manipulated quantitative data.

71: John Cutler - How to structure a product organization

How I applied at Miro for a Director of Product Role

70: Pedro Goés - Building for enterprise customers in an oversaturated market

Pedro Góes, CEO of InEvent, details strategies for winning enterprise clients within the crowded event tech sector. He argues that in-person relationship building remains the most effective way to establish trust, outperforming pure self-serve or product-led models in high-stakes environments. A significant portion of the strategy involves professional certifications. These programs ensure users are deeply proficient in the platform, which serves as a primary driver for high retention rates. The conversation highlights the necessity of focusing on a narrow niche and specific product offerings to cut through market noise. Operational expansion into in-person support is presented as a key competitive advantage. Góes also compares the US and European markets, emphasizing that success requires adapting to different regulatory frameworks and business cultures. He notes that building a robust enterprise product is a long-term commitment, mentioning that InEvent has been in development for 12 years and continues to evolve.

69 - Janna Bastow - The challenges and opportunities AI brings to Product Management.

68: Vijay Iyengar: Unbundling PLG and why BI tools are not good for analysis

67: Laura Schaffer: Layering self-serve into a Sales-led gig at Amplitude

66: Henrique Cruz - AHA! How to define and reach User activation in PLG

Henrique Cruz, Head of Growth at Rows.com, details strategies for identifying and optimizing user activation within a Product-Led Growth (PLG) framework. A central theme is the distinction between vanity actions and true activation metrics that predict long-term retention. For Rows, data showed that importing a CSV file had zero correlation with week-one retention, whereas connecting an integration was a high-signal predictor of success. This insight shifted the focus from simple file uploads to deeper product utility. Activation is framed not as the end of onboarding but as a process that truly begins after the initial walkthrough. To define these metrics, teams should analyze the behavior of high-engagement users to identify specific actions that separate them from those who churn. Cruz advocates for a rigorous approach to churn analysis, including sending direct emails to lapsed users to uncover qualitative reasons for departure. The discussion also covers radical friction reduction, such as removing the traditional homepage to allow users to interact with the product immediately. This product-first entry point can significantly increase sign-up rates and provide immediate data for experimentation. Additionally, the strategy touches on branding and positioning, specifically how smaller PLG players can land and expand within enterprise environments by positioning themselves against established incumbents through superior user experience and specific high-value features like embeds.

65: Guillaume "G" Cabane - The Future of Marketing in an AI-Dominated Landscape

Guillaume Cabane argues that the traditional B2B marketing and sales landscape is undergoing a radical shift driven by AI automation. He predicts an 80 percent reduction in SDR and BDR roles within 18 months as AI-driven social engineering becomes indistinguishable from human outreach. This evolution creates a trust crisis where the core marketing lever of reciprocity, responding because a human spent effort, is being destroyed. As audiences become inoculated to high-quality automated copy, trust becomes the most valuable currency. This shift favors counter-cyclical strategies like peer-to-peer referral widgets and product-led growth motions where users experience value before paying. In constrained B2B markets with a finite number of accounts, Cabane advocates for moving away from passive lead tracking toward proactive market penetration metrics. This involves using a Customer Data Platform to aggregate intent signals across multiple buyers before they reach the CRM. By forecasting revenue per logo based on engagement and firmographics, teams can prioritize accounts with high buyer intent. Cabane also highlights the tension between marketing incentives and product reality. He notes that over-promising to increase top-of-funnel conversion often pushes friction further down the funnel, leading to immediate post-signup drop-off. Tactically, Cabane shares growth techniques such as using fake email forward injections to simulate human internal discussion and impersonating founders in post-churn outreach to gather high-fidelity feedback. He suggests that while automation can handle low-value touches, human intervention should be reserved for high-risk Enterprise scenarios or specific reciprocity-driven moments. He critiques standard metrics like NPS, suggesting they are better used as triggers for automated workflows. These workflows might include sending coupon codes for price-sensitive detractors or referral links for promoters. Ultimately, the future of marketing lies in navigating the spectrum between automation efficiency and the diminishing returns of simulated human interaction.

64: Kristen Berman - Behavioral science and product growth

63: Kyle Pursell - Paths into Growth with the Head of Growth Optimization at Shopify

62: Kieran Flanagan: The state of AI in 2024 in tech

Kieran Flanagan and Leah Tharin analyze the shift from superficial AI features to deep functional utility in B2B SaaS. A central theme is that AI performance is a direct reflection of the user's strategic depth. If a practitioner cannot define a strategy, the AI cannot generate one. The discussion introduces a 2x2 framework for evaluating AI tools based on differentiation and context. High-value tools reside in the high-context quadrant, where proprietary data creates high switching costs by fine-tuning models to individual user needs. In the Go-To-Market landscape, AI is cannibalizing informational search, which reduces traditional top-of-funnel traffic from Google. This shift forces companies to move from demand acquisition to demand conversion. The digitization of the Business Development Representative (BDR) role is a primary application, where agents handle research, prospecting, and meeting booking. Within the CRM, AI is evolving the system from a mere record of history to an active agent that ingests call data and populates custom fields without manual entry. For Product-Led Growth (PLG) companies, AI addresses the activation gap where 60% of users typically bounce. By acting as a scalable user success coach, AI agents can provide personalized guided tours and navigate software interfaces in real time, a task previously too expensive for human capital. While sales reps often resist real-time coaching because it disrupts their flow, they gravitate toward post-call intelligence that directly correlates with higher commissions. The long-term outlook suggests an agent layer will sit on top of the internet, handling procurement, demos, and summarization, fundamentally changing how B2B brands are built and perceived.

61: Dennis R. Mortensen - How to win with building for productivity

60: Andrew Ettinger - Community-led growth in enterprise sales

59: Dani Grant - In-person Community building in a PLG product at Jam.Dev

Jam.dev facilitates communication between product managers and engineers by streamlining the bug reporting and debugging process. With over 100,000 users and 2 million bugs fixed, the company demonstrates how Product-Led Growth (PLG) scales through high-utility tooling. Dani Grant emphasizes that for PLG companies, proximity to the user base is not optional but existential. A common pitfall for digital-first startups is the user disconnect, where teams lose sight of the humans behind the metrics. Jam.dev counters this by prioritizing in-person community building and sharing their building journey transparently. They treat marketing with the same rigor as engineering by applying an R&D framework to evaluate and measure the success of community initiatives. This approach allows them to gather high-fidelity information about their buyers and refine their Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Even when events do not yield immediate revenue, the qualitative insights gained regarding how small teams within large enterprises adopt the tool are invaluable for long-term GTM strategy. The core of their success lies in ensuring that every marketing effort is grounded in delivering actual value to the user base.

58: Andy Johns - Stop. Burnout within High Performers

57: Erik Allebest - From 0 to 150 million ARR - The Chess.com story

56: Jason Fried - Motivation, forming habits and calendars

Leah Tharin - The Death of Classical Sales in B2B SaaS - SaaSiest Keynote

55: Mike Weir - Churn & Sales compensation to fight churn

Mike Weir, former CRO of G2, outlines a tactical framework for reducing churn and driving expansion revenue in B2B SaaS organizations. Central to this approach is a predictive churn model utilizing 14 highly correlated variables to identify at-risk customers, allowing Customer Success teams to prioritize intervention. The strategy emphasizes that expansion revenue serves as the most effective hedge against churn. Alignment across Sales, Customer Success, Product, and Marketing is critical, particularly within Product-Led Growth (PLG) structures. Product teams must provide actionable data to sales, while marketing should leverage third-party validated content, such as G2 reviews, to build trust during direct engagements. Compensation plans require a fundamental shift to reward specific behaviors that correlate with long-term revenue and retention, even if those actions do not result in an immediate transaction. Furthermore, founders are encouraged to remain deeply involved in the sales process for an extended period to solidify their understanding of the market and ensure product-market fit remains intact as the company scales.

54: Anthony Pierri - Positioning your B2B Startup through your Homepage

53: Adam Robinson - The power of LinkedIn for B2B from zero to one

52: Casey Hill - Organic Demand with Email, Newsletters and Podcasts

51: Julie Zhuo - Authentic Leadership

50: Jamie Gier - The good side of B2B Marketing

49: Peter Walker - Startup funding in 2024, the year of layoffs or recovery?

48: Eytan Bensoussan - How to get critical things done

47: Jeff Gothelf - Exploring OKRs, Humility, and the Real Value of Innovation in Business

46: Melissa Kwan - Bootstrap vs VC, Mastering the startup game

What is product-led growth / sales? - Productized 2023 Presentation Leah Tharin

44: Casey Winters - Thinking about your career like a long term investor.

45: Chris Tottman & Richard Blundell - focussing your business to success while dreaming big

43: John Cutler - Everything wrong with everything in business

42: Jason Fried - Finding yourself in business

41: Adam Fishman - How to get the yearly planning frustration under control

40: Andrew Davies - Monetization, Pricing & Growth straight from the CMO at Paddle

Andrew Davies, CMO at Paddle, provides data-driven insights into SaaS monetization, emphasizing that pricing remains an underserved growth lever. Paddle's research indicates that companies frequently updating their pricing models see an 82% improvement in Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) compared to those that leave pricing static. The discussion covers the methodology for determining willingness to pay and the importance of navigating market uncertainty. A significant portion of the strategy involves aligning internal incentives to support Product-Led Growth (PLG). Specifically, Paddle ensures that sales teams are not incentivized to force customers onto calls if a self-service path is available. This prevents friction in the user journey and maintains the efficiency of the PLG motion. The conversation also highlights the technical and strategic importance of regional optimization, including local payment methods, currency support, and regional acceptance rates. Finally, Davies notes a market shift away from the "VC funded or dead" mentality, suggesting a move toward more sustainable, efficient growth models where monetization is prioritized alongside acquisition and retention.

39: Brian Donohue - How to handle the untameable beast of AI products at Intercom

38: Mike Pilawski - Overcoming your doubts through first principle thinking

37: Carilu Dietrich - How to think in hypergrowth environments

36: David Yockelson - How to get plg RIGHT in B2B

35: Lloyed Lobo - From Grassroots to (Growth) Greatness through community channels

34: Benjamin Lamson - Selling things through a product lens and Jobs-to-be-done.

Tharin - Product-led Growth tf23

33: Alexa Grabell - VC backed accidental Product-led realities

32: Shanee Ben-Zur, How to Senior leadership from 1mio to 1billion

31: Dave Kellogg, deconstructing Conventional Wisdom in Marketing & Sales with a legend

30: Gaurav Vohra - Growth Leader, Startup Advisor, FoundingTeam "Superhuman"

29: Elena Verna - (How to) Growth Solopreneur

28: Kieran Flanagan: CMO@Zapier | ex SVP Marketing Hubspot | Sequoia Scout | Advisor

27: Teresa Torres and Hope Gurion, How to move teams and organizations to care about outcomes.

26: Ravi Mehta, Co-Founder Outpace, Ex-EIR Reforge, CPO@Tinder, Product@Facebook, Tripadvisor, Xbox

25: Sam Richard, Head of Growth ngrok, Self-serve, PLG Leader

"Work life balance"

24: Patrick Campbell, CSO Paddle, Founder Profitwell

23: Adam Fishman, Interim Executive, Reforge EIR, ex-Patreon

22: Tanja Lau, Founder Product Academy, Business Angel

21: Gagan Biyani, The future of learning and AI

20: Petra Wille, How to grow Strong Product People

19: Elena Verna, the product-led growth dimension of Leah & Elena (remastered episode) Part 2

18: Elena Verna, the personal side of Leah & Elena (remastered episode) Part 1

17: April Dunford, Positioning in growing tech companies

14: Ben Williams, The Product-Led Geek, PLG Advisor

15: Blake Bartlett, Partner @ Openview, Product-led VC

16: Yuriy Timen, Ex-Growth Grammarly, Advisor Airtable, Canva etc.

3 factors to get promoted in Product / Leadership

13: Kyle Poyar, Operating Partner @ Openview

Dear Agile, iterative feedback is not good enough anymore

10: Elena Verna, Growth Hobbyist - Head of Growth@Amplitude

11: Dave Boyce, Investor, Advisor and PLG Advocate

12: Wes Bush, CEO of Productled

9: David Pereira, Product Coach, Thought Provoker, "Untrapping Product Teams"

7: Scott Brinker, VP Platform Ecosystems, Editor chiefmartec.com

6: Jennifer Montague, VP Growth Onomondo

5: Matthew Skelton, Author of Team Topologies

Amplitude Product Report 2022 - Summary

4: Adam Fishman, Reforge Partner, Advisor, Boardmember

When would you choose product-led growth over sales led

3: Laura Erdem, Account Executive, Dreamdata.io

Innovation and finding product-market fit - 1.1 Strategy "Why"

Innovation and finding product-market fit - 1.6 Strategy "Bringing it together - 1 Pager"

Innovation and finding product-market fit - 1.5 Strategy "Vision, Ambition, Northstar"

Innovation and finding product-market fit - 1.4 Strategy "Internal Analysis"

Innovation and finding product-market fit - 1.3 Strategy "Market Analysis - Trends"

Innovation and finding product-market fit - 1.2 Strategy Form & Principles

Innovation and finding product-market fit - 1.0 Strategy Intro

How do you make an organization adaptible? Product Organization Basics

2: Matt Greenberg, CTO Reforge, ex-VPE Credit Karma

1: John Cutler, Product Evangelist and Coach, Amplitude

NPS is an awful, useless Metric for product teams.

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is often an ineffective metric for product teams because it relies on hypothetical questions about future behavior rather than actual user experiences. A high NPS doesn't provide actionable data for specific product improvements. Instead, product teams should prioritize the Customer Effort Score (CES), which measures how easy it was for a user to complete a specific task immediately after it occurs. This event-based approach offers higher predictability and more targeted insights at the feature level. Implementing CES effectively requires careful timing. It should be triggered right after a user successfully completes an action, such as a download or save, without interrupting their workflow. To avoid survey fatigue, frequency should be limited, typically to once every 30 days per user. Analysis of CES data allows teams to identify distinct user segments, such as those who find a tool effortless versus those who struggle, revealing patterns like the Middle-finger distribution (indifference) or polarized love/hate responses. While CES excels at feature-level feedback, it is not designed to measure brand advocacy. For tracking word of mouth, frameworks like the Word of Mouth Coefficient are superior to NPS. For product-led organizations, focusing on users who have reached a habit state is a more reliable indicator of value and monetization potential than high-level sentiment scores.

"Growth" - a 3 dimensional word salad - by Leah Tharin

The term growth is frequently misunderstood in the tech industry because it refers to three distinct concepts: a functional team, a company stage, and a business metric. As a function, growth teams are cross-functional units combining product and marketing competencies. Unlike traditional product teams, they manage the entire user journey including acquisition, retention, and monetization through hypothesis-driven experimentation. They are not merely acquisition engines but end-to-end operators. As a company stage, growth refers to the scaling phase that occurs only after achieving product-market fit. This stage is defined by the distribution model, typically product-led or sales-led, and requires strong retention as a prerequisite. Explosive growth at this stage is only valuable if the underlying business model is sustainable. As a business metric, growth rate measures the increase in revenue or size. However, growth rate is easily manipulated and provides little insight into business health on its own. In the current economic climate, Return on Invested Capital (ROIC) is a more critical metric. ROIC measures efficiency by showing how many dollars are returned for every dollar invested. Combining growth rate with ROIC provides a more accurate predictor of long-term value and indicates whether acquisition efforts are scaling sustainably.