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Today's Episode
Shipping features has never been cheaper.
Which means shipping the wrong ones has never been more expensive.
Most teams have cranked output up 10x, even 100x. Very few can tell you if any of it moved a customer or the business.
So I brought in Tim Herbig. He was a PM for eight years before becoming an adviser, coach, and the author of Real Progress. He's worked with hundreds of PMs on making their product strategy actually make an impact.
I've been reading his Product Practice newsletter for years. It's one of the few I never skip.
In today's episode, Tim walks through:
The one test every strategy has to pass
The stupidity flip, to check if you've actually made a choice
Audience trees, worked through a full marketplace case study
Which differentiators still hold when everyone has the same AI models
The metrics that tell you whether your strategy worked
If you own strategy for your product area, this is the one to watch before your next planning cycle.
10 Key Takeaways
1. Cheap features make wrong bets expensive - AI made shipping fast, so picking the wrong feature now costs more, not less. You still have to get people to use everything you ship. The real question is whether any of that output moved customers and the business.
2. A strategy is only real if it helps you say no - Deck, one-pager or framework, the test is the same. If it doesn't help teams say no to opportunities, it isn't a strategy. A healthy one has most of your team's energy going to work connected to it.
3. Every strategy answers the same core questions - A narrative for why you should act now. A playing field for who you serve and who else competes for them. Winning moves for how you deliver value and differentiate. Canvases and templates are just windows into that messy work, so start with the questions.
4. AI is a resource, not a value proposition - Everyone has access to the same frontier models, so you can't compete on the technology alone. Use AI to amplify the reason customers already choose you. Brand and data are the moats that remain.
5. Run the stupidity flip - Borrowed from Roger Martin. Flip a strategic choice and check whether the opposite is obviously stupid. If it is, you haven't made a real choice. Flip individual components like audience or value prop, not the whole statement.
6. Strategy doesn't have to cover everything - Focusing on paid users doesn't mean turning off the product for free users. The segment choice just has to fit the narrative behind it. Every component has to reinforce the others.
7. Build an audience tree - Land somewhere between too broad and comically narrow. Slice by region, buyer type and value until you can say no. Tim's fictional marketplace lands on repeat buyers of cars worth more than 100K in Germany, and AI speeds up sizing whether that market is big enough.
8. Differentiate on what takes longest to build - Run your winning moves through Hamilton Helmer's 7 Powers. Brand and network effects hold up, while process power and AI features get copied. No one buys a car from you because your marketplace has AI search.
9. Measure behavior change, not tokens - First say in plain English what you'll do differently next quarter, then how you'll know it worked. Tokens used is a value exchange for the model provider, not your customers. Ask whose behavior has to change, and by how much.
10. Tie metrics to your specific choices - Generic KPIs like revenue are too noisy and too slow to tell you if a strategy worked. Pick metrics tied to the exact segment and value prop you chose. Then map every roadmap item back to those metrics.
🎁 Win a copy of Real Progress
As a lil treat, I'm giving away 5 copies of Tim's book, Real Progress, in just 3 steps:
1. Subscribe on YouTube and comment on the episode
2. Follow the show on Apple or Spotify
3. DM me a screenshot of both on LinkedIn
The first 5 people get a FREE copy!
Where to find Tim Herbig
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/herbigt/
Website: https://herbig.co/
Where to find Aakash
Twitter: https://www.x.com/aakashg0
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aagupta/
Newsletter: https://www.news.aakashg.com
Check out the conversation on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify.
If you want to advertise, email productgrowthppp[at]gmail[dot]com.