As a product manager under pressure to deliver product-market fit yesterday, I want to understand what PMF actually means in practice, beyond the buzzwords, so I can separate myth from method and focus on proving real value to customers and stakeholders.
What does product-market fit actually look like in the real world?
Everyone’s heard it. A leader slaps the table and says, “Go get product market fit.” But what does that even mean?
In this episode, Ryan and Joe sit down with Shardul Mehta, founder of Street Smart Product Manager, to unpack one of the most overused yet misunderstood phrases in product management. They dig into what PMF actually looks like in practice, how to validate real problems worth solving, and why it’s not a one-time milestone but an ongoing process of alignment.
Shardul brings three decades of experience across startups, enterprises, and everything in between. He shares grounded, no-fluff advice for PMs trying to prove traction without falling for vanity metrics or corporate buzzwords.
If you’ve ever been told to “get PMF” without an explanation, join us on the porch for a discussion about what product market fit really means, how to recognize it when you see it, and how to build it without the buzzwords.
Follow Shardul at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shardulmehta/
Subscribe to Shardul's Newsletter at: https://streetsmartproductmanager.com/
Intro: The Product Porch Opens
[00:00] Porch banter and setup – Ryan and Joe introduce Shardul Mehta and tee up the topic of PMF.
[00:01:30] Meet Shardul Mehta – Shardul’s background, career highlights, and his “Product Jedi” reputation set the stage.
Chapter 1: The Myth of Product Market Fit
[00:03:00] Defining the problem – Shardul explains why “go get PMF” is one of the least helpful phrases in product.
[00:05:15] The illusion of metrics – Why chasing a single magic number never proves real market traction.
[00:07:00] PMF as alignment – Reframes PMF as a continuous process, not a one-time milestone.
Chapter 2: Testing for Real Demand
[00:10:30] Validation over vision – How to replace assumptions with small, testable experiments.
[00:13:45] The demo test – Why showing a clickable prototype can reveal whether customers actually understand and want it.
[00:16:00] The only real proof – Early commitments, prepayments, or budget allocation beat any engagement metric.
Chapter 3: The Leadership Disconnect
[00:19:30] The PMF pressure cooker – Leaders demand traction without defining what it means.
[00:22:00] Bridging the gap – How PMs can align stakeholders by translating validation into business outcomes.
[00:25:30] Documenting assumptions – Using hypothesis-driven roadmaps to protect PMs from arbitrary goals.
Chapter 4: Internal PMF and the Non-SaaS World
[00:29:00] Inside the enterprise – How to measure “fit” when your customers are internal teams.
[00:32:15] Currency beyond dollars – Using adoption, efficiency, and reallocated budget as signs of success.
Chapter 5: Lessons from the Street Smart Product Manager
[00:36:00] Shardul’s Street Smart rules – Simplicity, storytelling, and listening to signals over vanity metrics.
[00:38:45] Improv and product – How improv training sharpens curiosity, communication, and decision-making in product work.
Outro: Wrapping Up the Porch Talk
[00:42:00] Final reflections – Why PMF is a journey of constant learning and recalibration.
[00:43:30] Porch close – Ryan and Joe reflect on takeaways and invite listeners to subscribe and share their own PMF stories.
Todd Blaquiere (00:00):
Hey, thanks for listening. Please subscribe to our newsletter@theproductporsche.com for notifications on the latest episodes and exclusive content.
Shardul Mehta (00:07):
Because when we start saying, gosh, if we hit this magic milestone, if we take it from six points to 34 points, boom, we've got product market fit folks. Every business I've either done on my own or been a part of, I've never found that magic measurement or point in time.
Ryan Cantwell (00:27):
Welcome to the Product Porch with Joe Ghali, Todd Blaquiere, [00:00:30] and me Ryan Cantwell. Today on the product Porch, we're joined by Shardul Mehta (https://www.linkedin.com/in/shardulmehta/) to talk about one of the most overused yet least understood phrases in product, product market fit. Now, settle in folks, because on the product porch, every topic is a product topic. I tell you that this is my favorite time of year. So as you know, I'm in Pittsburgh. It starts getting cool at night and the days are perfect, but 75 degrees and sunny. And I [00:01:00] got to tell you, even yard work, I enjoy this time of year.
Joe Ghali (01:05):
It's going to be 87 here in Milwaukee this weekend.
Ryan Cantwell (01:08):
Does it ever get that hot in Milwaukee?
Joe Ghali (01:11):
People like to think that our neighbor is Santa Claus or that we live in Igloos, but it gets really hot here in Wisconsin just to see that. And Pittsburgh is really not that far away from us, Ryan,
Shardul Mehta (01:22):
12 days of sunlight or 12 days of sunny weather. Exactly.
Ryan Cantwell (01:26):
Yeah. So Joe, thank you. We've got a new voice [00:01:30] on the porch with us today. Joining us today, we have Shardo, Metta, and Shardo comes to us with a lot of experience to bring some interesting perspectives for what we want to talk about today. So you are a 30 plus year, and I might add a Silicon Valley product executive, so you kind of fit our mold nicely, but you're an entrepreneur, a writer, a speaker. You're a four-time [00:02:00] founder, including a founder of product camp dc. You have held many leadership positions. You've been VC backed, PE owned, and gone, the gambit from small businesses to family businesses to even Fortune 100 enterprises. But I think most importantly and most interesting to me, you have a label applied to you that I quite like that is the one of Product Jedi.
Joe Ghali (02:27):
It should be noted to our audience that [00:02:30] he showed up in this black cloak for the call thinking it was going to be video, and then it was greatly disappointing. We've told him it was just audio, so just imagine the cloak over the head.
Ryan Cantwell (02:42):
No, he is a light side
Shardul Mehta (02:43):
Practitioner. I went it on record, particularly to Todd, who was avoided meeting me that I had to turn off my lightsaber since when I learned this was just audio. So that was enormously disappointing, I've got to say. But that said, thank you. [00:03:00] I'm thrilled to be here. Really enjoy the podcast guys, and I'm so happy to be here. One point of clarification, though, I don't want to mislead anyone. I've worked in VC-backed and owned companies. None of the companies that I started or venture funded well except for one, was venture funded, but none of the other ones were like Silicon Valley VC money or bought by a private equity. But I've worked in several of those companies
Ryan Cantwell (03:28):
And you have [00:03:30] your website, the street smart product manager that is adding thought to the product management community. And I really like that name Street Smart Product Manager because so many people I interact with in the product community, it seems like they accidentally find their way into product management and then learn by doing. And I'm curious, could you just give us a little bit of background of what led you to the street Smart product manager community?
Shardul Mehta (03:55):
It was for two reasons. One is from my roots. I grew up half of my life in [00:04:00] Mumbai or Bombay. It was as it used to be called many decades ago. And when you live and grow up in a big city, you've got to be street smart. So that was a part of it, and it's just part of my personality, my upbringing. But the other side of it is basically what you alluded to, Ryan, which was when I was trying to figure out what is this thing, product management, what are best practices? How do you make this work? And I was searching for trainings or guidance [00:04:30] or anything I could find books. Most of that stuff was frankly coming out of Silicon Valley and it was articulated as this is the right way. And it's hard to argue with results and success. Well, here's a billion dollar company, they must know it must be the right way. And I would apply it and then I would find, yeah, it doesn't always work like that. Reality is very different. It's very contextual, depends on a lot of different factors, and so you have to develop [00:05:00] some street smarts
Ryan Cantwell (05:01):
To
Shardul Mehta (05:01):
Be able to make it work. I think there are certainly, and I talk a lot about this in my newsletter, there are certain principles and foundations that are important, but we got to get past all the buzzwordy stuff, the framework as PMs, we love frameworks. For some reason we go nuts over that. Maybe it's consulting roots, I don't know what it is, but when you really get down to it, it comes down to, look, we're in business [00:05:30] as far as a commercial enterprise goes, which is to make money, and it's all about that. But in addition to which the reality of a product manager is we don't have people reporting to us. So that whole classic influence without authority,
Todd Blaquiere (05:47):
And
Shardul Mehta (05:47):
That's where the rub comes. How do I influence up the chain, down the chain, across the chain? And that can be really, really messy and involves human beings and that's where process and frameworks and all that start falling [00:06:00] apart and you kind of have to use a bit of street
Joe Ghali (06:02):
Smart. I think you're giving us a good transition here. You mentioned frameworks and fancy buzzwords. One of those overused terms is something we're going to talk about today, and that's product market fits. It's kind of like a product market fit is tossed around like glitter in product circles. It sounds fancy, but most people can't define it.
Shardul Mehta (06:27):
Yeah,
Joe Ghali (06:28):
But what does it really mean? What does [00:06:30] PMF mean to you?
Shardul Mehta (06:32):
I don't want to spoil the rest of our podcast here, but I don't know. I'm still trying to figure it out. So if somebody figures it out, then that's great. I mean, I think it's a very interesting concept. I get the intent behind it. Hey, we've come to this place where we can tell our product is successful. Customers are buying it, revenue is coming in, customers [00:07:00] like it, they keep buying it over and over. We're seeing the growth. The thing though is that I think what we get lost in, at least certainly in the PM community, but maybe even among startup founders, is they're looking for some magic metric. Gosh, if we hit this magic milestone or here's the one number to rule them all. And if we hit that, if we take it from six points to 34 points or whatever, boom, we've got product market fit folks, we're good. We've achieved it. And I don't know every [00:07:30] business I've either done on my own or been a part of, I've never found that magic measurement or point in time where we're like, yep, we got it. So it feels more like a, I don't know what the right word is, a philosophical
(07:46):
Thing more than something that's actually measurable. And as a result, and this is the really important part, especially for product managers, is because we are trying to craft our strategy, our tactics, our actions based on something [00:08:00] material. And that's where things become difficult because when we start saying, we got to achieve product market fit, or my favorite is leadership comes to you and says, go figure out product market fit for this thing, what does that mean? So we start looking for that magic bullet, but we never get there.
Ryan Cantwell (08:17):
Magic bullet, you said the words that I was going to use where it's this framework or concept of product market fit is just spouted off as, oh, just [00:08:30] go do it. Just go do it. Go get product market fit. And all it does
Shardul Mehta (08:35):
Is cost. You go to Walmart and just buy it off the shelf
Ryan Cantwell (08:39):
And then there's no time spent on trying to understand what does that really mean?
Joe Ghali (08:47):
Can I take a step back? Philosophically, product market fit is three questions, right? It answers, is it valuable, is it viable, is it feasible? If you can say yes to those three, then [00:09:00] you've achieved product market fit or Amit, I think Todd even uses the term instead of is it valuable? Is it desirable?
Ryan Cantwell (09:05):
Desirable?
Joe Ghali (09:06):
But in the pure academic sense of the term product market fit, it's really those three questions. That's kind of what the idea of product market fit is, right?
Shardul Mehta (09:19):
Yeah. I mean I think there's a couple of important things that I think you said there, Joe, which is even those words you used, viable, [00:09:30] feasible. What was the other value? What was that one? Desirable. Desirable or desirable? Again, I could pressure test, what does that mean, right? Yeah. So the word that you use academic, so it's a great academic thought experiment or exercise. But the other thing that got my attention that I think you hit the bullseye was especially emerging, newer product managers. Emerging product managers, this is where we do them a disservice because they start getting distracted and now they're looking for definition [00:10:00] a metric. And I think at least what I like to talk about is to say, let's get past all that stuff. So when I say I'm still trying to search for the answer of what product market fit, I'm actually not because I'm really more focused on what's really, really important and the things that we really want to be able to measure, especially for an early product, it's not proven yet.
(10:26):
Well what does that mean? Well, does it have strong demand? [00:10:30] Are people buying the product? When we say that, now that's measurable with a number of ways. Is the messaging and positioning correct? Are we tapping into a real problem for which people are willing to pay money? Is our pricing correct? So that's all on the product side. And then we get into the go-to-market side, which is do we have the right sales funnel, sales process, distribution, there's a whole bunch of things related to that. Those things are measurable. It's not easy, it [00:11:00] takes time. But those are measurable. And that's then when we start seeing those numbers and those metrics and those signals, that's when we start getting a better sense of, yeah, you know what? Our product is getting traction in the marketplace. We achieving this magical product market fits. I would encourage, especially newer PMs, don't get distracted with trying to figure out product market fit. Go try and figure out how do we make this product [00:11:30] actually successful in the marketplace with our target customers? And that's also, by the way, there's an important thing there I should add, which is have we even figured out the right set of target customers?
Joe Ghali (11:38):
So Ryan, why do you think it matters so much for companies?
Ryan Cantwell (11:43):
Oh gosh, I think it matters or it comes from a place more often than not, where a company has been burned in the past, where they've picked a development project, they've brought it to life, they've put it in the world, and all of a sudden it didn't meet expectations [00:12:00] commercially, maybe a leader in the organization starts to ask questions around what could we do differently next time they see the three words strung together, product market fit, and all of a sudden that's what they're going to do. We got it. I'm going to go tell my product managers, go get product market fit next time and that'll fix everything. And that's kind of that magic bullet, but that doesn't mean it's the wrong solution, it's just I think people don't know what to do with it as [00:12:30] it becomes something that's easy maybe to understand theoretically, but difficult to do practically.
Joe Ghali (12:36):
So do you think this is where people get it wrong, where they treat it as like a binary finish line, like, Hey, we found it.
Shardul Mehta (12:45):
Yeah,
Joe Ghali (12:46):
I think that's the problem.
Shardul Mehta (12:47):
Yes, Joe, that's the question. Or I think you've hit it, and it's not just true for newer PMs, but leaders get caught up in this as well. It's a finish [00:13:00] line. If we just achieve product market fit, we're there. And I think as you said, markets change whether I'm pre-revenue with a product or we're now, hey, we've got 10 customers, but then the next thing is like, well, let's go from 10 to a hundred. Let's go from a hundred to a thousand, so on and so forth. Well, in the midst of doing that, guess what? No one's stagnant. Customer's, expectations change, markets change, realities change. So I don't know that [00:13:30] it's a finished milestone where we can all say, I dunno if your list, well, your listen may not be, I'm sort of clapping my hands or dusting off my hands, right?
Joe Ghali (13:39):
Yeah.
Shardul Mehta (13:40):
Alright, we're done. We can all go home now. Take a
Joe Ghali (13:43):
Mic drop.
Ryan Cantwell (13:44):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it was David Nash that introduced us to the concept of product market drift, where as soon as you think you have product market fit, it starts drifting away from
Shardul Mehta (13:55):
You. That's great. I like
Ryan Cantwell (13:56):
That. It's like an untethered boat. It's just blown in the wind [00:14:00] and I think that's true. It isn't a finish line. So where do you start? I almost would like to work through with you guys and Sure, I'd love to hear maybe some of your real experiences as you've kind of worked through some of these scenarios before. Let's talk about the beginning. Taking the first steps towards product market fit. Let's say we have an idea from the conception of that, what do we do first as product people?
Shardul Mehta (14:29):
So yeah, [00:14:30] every product starts with an idea. There's a concept. It may be well-formed, it may be ill-formed, whatever it is, your classic napkin idea. How did that idea come? We joke about the leader in the shower coming up with it, but frankly, and by the way, I've had those for real. I've been in the shower and I've had an knife product for real, but remember that was seeded by something, some experience then that I had, whether it was some actual market survey or research [00:15:00] or other insight, or maybe I just talked to one customer and I got excited. But I think Joe, I a hundred percent agree, you need to then go and kind of validate or invalidate. It's still a hypothesis and there's different ways of doing it. One of the approaches that I've taken, there's a guy named Ash Moria, he talks a lot of sensible good stuff.
(15:20):
He focuses more on entrepreneurs and founders and whatnot, but got a lot of good lessons for product managers. He calls it demo build sell. I think I got that right. [00:15:30] Or demo cell build, sorry, demo cell build and we've done that as well. So here's what I mean. So yeah, you need to do some upfront work in terms of making sure you've really thoroughly understood the problem in understanding the problem. It's not about, Hey, you asked for this feature. Tell me more. Describe it. Don't people, 99% of the time will talk in terms of solutions.
(15:50):
You've got to actually reverse engineer that and figure out, well, but what are you really trying to get at here? Talk to me about the last time you had this problem, all this sort of stuff. [00:16:00] But then one of the things we would do is we would quickly build some kind of a demo. Now today with ai, you can spin that up in no time, but it could even be like we've done a PowerPoint mockup. But the purpose of that at that stage was not even to validate the solution, it was actually to test our understanding of the problem. But people respond really strongly to visuals
(16:23):
So you can walk them through and say, so, and we are sort of playing it back to them. So we would actually oftentimes go back to the same customers, said, [00:16:30] Hey, really appreciate the insights you gave last time we talked. We want to come and present something to you and get more feedback. Now they think they're getting a solution proposal and they love it. Oh, I'm part of the development process we're actually doing is we're furthering our understanding of the problem. So they could throw up all over our prototype or whatever, and in that stage, that's okay. The purpose isn't to validate, gee, did we get the button colors and the flow? That's not it. It's to basically say, [00:17:00] Hey, can you let us know? Did we understand your problem correctly? The final product may or may not take this shape. If we're lucky we're on the right track. If not, we're going to dump this and produce a new prototype, but are we on the right track? And that's the real value to start getting the signal that that's the simplest, earliest place to start.
Ryan Cantwell (17:22):
Yes. So early in the conversation, you mentioned the magic metric, that thing to measure. How [00:17:30] do you know you have a problem that's worth solving? What are some metrics maybe you have used to measure that in your past?
Shardul Mehta (17:38):
The biggest one is can you get early customers to pay? Oh, interesting. Here's the thing, we can go and we can show mockups and demos, finished products, and I've done all of that. I've done PowerPoints to, we invested ashamed to say millions of dollars developing [00:18:00] a product over three or six months and it fell flat. Or maybe we got the head nod, this is great. I would absolutely use this. Yeah, a hundred percent. But when time comes, would you, would you actually pull out your wallet? Or even like, okay, even a, would you sign a letter of intent? Give me some currency, some indicator to tell me you are actually willing to pay that even [00:18:30] from customer one. Sometimes I tell entrepreneurs at PMs, get customer one.
(18:35):
Can you even get customer? Now that may not be indicator of a broader market opportunity, but if you get zero, you don't have a problem worth solving. So if you don't mind me stealing it, give me just 10 more seconds. There's a quick story I'd love to share, please. I love sharing, which is I live in a single family home twice a week. I've got to roll out my trash can to the curbside, and I hate doing it. I mean, I don't know, I just hate [00:19:00] doing that, but I'm the only one in the house. My wife won't do it. Our son never did it. Our daughter won't do it. I have to do it right, and I hate doing it. Now, if you came to me and said, Charul, I'm willing to do this for you. I'll come every Monday night and every Thursday night and I will open your garage, roll it out, and the next morning I'll come back and roll it back in after the garbage has been collected. Does that sound cool? I might be like, that's great, great. Pay me 50 bucks a week. And I'll be like, no, I'm not going to pay you. Well pay me 10 bucks a week. No, I'm not going to pay you. Well, [00:19:30] guess what? If you do it, you're doing charity work, but you don't have a business, you don't have a product.
(19:37):
So you've got to prove a customer is a customer because they are paying you for your solution.
Ryan Cantwell (19:48):
Yeah, head nods are not signals. Dollars are signals is what I'm hearing.
Shardul Mehta (19:55):
Yeah,
Ryan Cantwell (19:55):
Currency or euro or Perfect.
Joe Ghali (19:58):
Exactly. Okay. [00:20:00] So my world, I live in heavy internal product management, so my customers are, it's like finance, accounting, hr. Is there such a thing as product market fit? If you have an internal product,
Shardul Mehta (20:18):
Yeah. Again, this is where I sort of blanch at the whole terminology of it, but what you're getting at is a really important question, which is, okay, it's an internal product for internal users. How do you [00:20:30] know that it's working for them that they're going to buy into that solution,
Joe Ghali (20:37):
Especially when they're being forced to use it, especially when they don't have a choice?
Shardul Mehta (20:41):
Yeah. Well, actually that's a great clarification. So there are some instances where sometimes it's budget allocation. So as one example, we worked on a digital initiative and the way it was funded was it was other departments who were going to [00:21:00] use it allocating budget dollars. So if they were willing to, that's a form of currency, that means they bought into it. That's not always the case, but that's just one. The other one is it's not as much of a clear signal obviously, but the things that I go back to is, okay, well the company has decided to invest in this initiative for some reason, there's real people, real salaries, real money budget is being allocated [00:21:30] towards this thing for certain outcomes. There is an ROI metric of some kind directly or indirectly. There's actually two. One is internal for the company, but the other one is for those particular users, they may have, like you mentioned, finance.
(21:49):
They're trying to streamline their reconciliation. Let's say right now it's taking a super long time. They want to be able to streamline that. It takes us, we do end of month close. It [00:22:00] takes us three days to be able to do that. Boy, if we can get it down to three hours, wow. Oh my god, that's a win. And we can do the quick back of the envelope math on what that's worth. So that could be, let's say, okay, the way we're going to do this is we're going to do a beta or a pilot. Do we get that metric or close to that metric? And then if those customers are like, yeah, yeah, then that's signal to continue going on further,
Joe Ghali (22:30):
[00:22:30] What would be the next subsequent step to help you achieve towards understanding whether or not you've product market fit?
Shardul Mehta (22:38):
So after doing our prototype demos and all of that, we got a list of people who were accounts that were interested, and then once we got them to basically send the equivalent of letters of intent, even it was just an email by the way, to our CEO saying, I'm bought into this product, which was great, which was a great way by the way, to get the budget approval. Then we had to deliver [00:23:00] and we set expectations. Hey, we are delivering to you a beta version. There's work to do. We set expectations. Hey, it's not going to have all 20 features, but it's going to have maybe the first seven most important features that we agree on that you've told us, and we'll bring you along the way as we'll. Keep doing updates, especially that's the whole classic technology adoption curve. If you can find those innovator, early adopter customers, they're very willing to go along with you on that journey.
(23:29):
It's [00:23:30] also, by the way, corollary a great way to segment the market in terms of if I'm going after this broader market, who are those early adopters versus the broad market? Oftentimes what we get caught up in is we're trying to solve day one for the broad market, and that's a really high expensive bar to go for day one. So this actually allows you to take both a more strategic [00:24:00] approach, a more measured approach, and again, it can vary business to business, but in some cases you are actually bringing revenue in, or if it's a short of revenue, very early clear signals from the market that yeah, you are either on the right track or you know what we've hit stop. This is just either it's not a product that's going to sell, or Ryan, I think you talked about this earlier at some point we've got early traction [00:24:30] with early adopters, but it's just never going to scale. We get to that point where we want to scale, it's not going to scale because it's just not a broader market opportunity. So then we have to decide does it just become a small play or do we just abandon the product?
Ryan Cantwell (24:41):
Yeah, and I think what you're talking about here is a common trap that I've seen people fall into s shadu where they look at that target, they want to go slay the dragon, the big market where everybody lives and they lose sight of [00:25:00] how do I get traction in small pieces and build up to that exactly to make me more successful or even allow me to make better decisions. Because it's like if I was at New York City, I got in a boat and I said, I am going to shove off once and try to hit a specific city on the west coast of Africa, and if I do that once early on, I'm going [00:25:30] to miss because I might be a little off at the beginning, but I'm going to be way
Shardul Mehta (25:34):
Off
Ryan Cantwell (25:34):
At the end where if I'm able to take small steps and look to see, okay, am I in the right spot? Are there people starting to use my part of giving me feedback that I can learn from or react to? I can make course corrections along the
Shardul Mehta (25:51):
Way. Yeah, think big, act small,
Ryan Cantwell (25:53):
Think big, act small,
Shardul Mehta (25:54):
Think big, act small. And that's really important what you're saying is because [00:26:00] by the time you get to the broader market, they're expecting a fully complete reliable product,
(26:07):
But it takes a lot to get there. Whether you're building a small little app or an enterprise grade platform, whatever it is, you need those early signals which come from the market, from those early customers to tell you, you are on the right track or you're not. And that is not just, and this is really important for product managers also, and it's not just features. It is [00:26:30] your pricing. It is how you are messaging and communicating to the market. It is your sales model. The sales model that might work for the smaller early market may not work when you get to scale at that point. Maybe you're looking at broader distribution or something. So you need to test and prove those things out step by step all along the way. So I love your analogy about if we're trying to whatever, swim or sail the ship all the way to west, I mean tankers do it now, but because [00:27:00] it's been proven out, but if we were doing it from day one, that's a really bold enterprise to do. The last thing we want to be is the Titanic, which hits an iceberg stupid. Seriously, right? I mean that was so tragic. So yeah, think
Joe Ghali (27:17):
Big axon. So all of us have worked for inpatient leaders.
Ryan Cantwell (27:23):
No, those don't exist,
Joe Ghali (27:24):
Joe. They don't exist. How do you overcome some of this impatience? How do you overcome some of the ego or [00:27:30] fear or pressure that comes from leadership?
Ryan Cantwell (27:33):
The first thing I want to acknowledge here is that how real that pressure is for product managers. Totally. It is intense, especially when you know that the only way to be successful is to be deliberate, do research, learn things when in direct conflict with that is an organization looking at you to say, we need to make a decision so we can move quickly. So it's finding that balance. [00:28:00] So how we deal with it, I think it ties into some of this conversation here is what is the least amount I can learn today to allow me to take the next step in that journey? Or what signal could I get that that prevents me from just making too risky an assumption? Quite frankly,
Shardul Mehta (28:20):
It's a really great question. It's very real. It gets to feelings and emotions and pressures and stress, which strangely [00:28:30] doesn't get acknowledged. I think as much in the product management community more should be talked about it. There's also reality to acknowledge that part of it comes because leaders are under tremendous pressure. So I'm not trying to make an excuse, but having been sitting in that chair, there is a tremendous amount of pressure to show traction and success and look, just to be blunt, whatever the product manager is dealing with, scale it up by 10 or a hundred and that's what the leader is dealing [00:29:00] with. Oh yeah. And as you go higher, if you're a chief product officer, and I know many of them, burnout is a real concern among that community. Okay, so you are trying to show very large scale impact. There's a tremendous amount of pressure from you, from the CEO, founder, other executives, the board investors, whatever, and you just want wins. I think though there is a responsibility that said among leaders to be candid [00:29:30] with PMs. So I'd love to see leaders do this and say, just be honest and tell them where is the pressure coming from?
(29:39):
Because even as leaders, sometimes we acknowledge that, you know what? We should do the due diligence, we should do more research,
(29:45):
But I don't got time. There is no time to do that. And maybe rationally it doesn't make sense, but you know what? Here's the reality. We've got an earnings call coming up and the ceo, O and cfo, our last two learning calls were disaster. [00:30:00] The CEO is breathing down and we can't have another one. I've got to announce something big, so go get me something. So he goes, and then he talks to the head of product and the CTO and says, guys, and now there's pressure. And so then we come as leaders and we're like, guys, we got to deliver something this quarter. I know it's disruptive, the roadmap, but here's the thing. I think leaders, I know there are certain things sometimes you just cannot share. You just can't. But [00:30:30] to the extent you can be honest, most PMs I've found, if you're just level with them and you're honest, then just tell them.
(30:38):
The other things that you can do is there's a lot of stuff you can do retroactively and after the fact. But here's the thing that a lot of PMs and product leaders don't do, is then go and assess did we get the outcomes we wanted? Then what you do is you obviously you want to be politically savvy, right? It's not to go back and say, see, I told you so guys, that's going to be a career limiting move. [00:31:00] What you do is that you present the results. Also, you do keep it in your back pocket because the next time this comes up, you can say, Hey guys, listen, I think we really should de-risk this thing. Sometimes it's just using the right set of keywords instead of saying discovery. Yesterday I was talking to a product leader, he's trying to advocate for discovery. They're like, what the hell are you talking about? And then he started using the language and he said, when we did project X, we didn't quite [00:31:30] get the outcomes. It turned out to be really risky because well, we shortchange. If we had known customer perception ahead of time, we could have de-risked it. I would advocate now for project why we do that. Oh yeah. You know what? Yeah, that's right. That's smart. We should do that.
Joe Ghali (31:46):
Okay, you're starting to see traction. You're making some positive steps. Maybe somebody is making an investment. How do you keep building in the right direction? How do you ensure you're [00:32:00] steering the ship in the right way using Ryan's analogy, because you're going to have all these outside forces that are going to try to pull from you. How do you keep moving in that positive right direction?
Shardul Mehta (32:11):
I was once coaching a product manager and she said, my job is to make sure that the scheduling for our, this was in health tech. The scheduling is seamless for our providers and we have some metrics to time. So I said, okay, great. That's great. Why is that important? And then she went into like, well, providers want to be able to schedule [00:32:30] quickly. I'm like, yay, but why is that important for the business? So he's like, I don't know. I said, okay, if you go to finance, that number, that metric is tied to some financial gain
Joe Ghali (32:43):
Business outcome,
Shardul Mehta (32:44):
And that may be dotted line, but you need to understand that. So when we talk about, Hey, the next step is we need to boost engagement or DAU or M-A-U-N-P-S, whatever that, and again, it's subject to that particular product, the stages, but it's got to then tie [00:33:00] to what is that next milestone. Another one could be that the company or the product is in a stage where we're going to take a short-term hit on margin and profitability because growth, pure growth is what matters. This was certainly pre COVID where a lot of companies were at, so we are willing to, we want to just get as many customers as we can, even if we're taking a short-term profitability [00:33:30] or it could be no, now we're at a point where we've got to make this profitable. So maybe the next milestone is not just in terms of maybe building features to get more customers, but also we got to get scalability.
Ryan Cantwell (33:43):
If I were to describe product market fit as a feeling, it's not nirvana of we did it product market fit. No. It's just this progression of little peace and little piece, and I'm seeing this signal here and another little signal [00:34:00] here, and I keep going down the paths that look brightest to me.
Shardul Mehta (34:06):
Joe, you like using baseball analogy, so I'll use a football one. American football. Yes. It's sort of like we started the game in our first drive, we scored a touchdown and we are super pumped. Oh my God, we got a touchdown. That is awesome. We are rocking, and then you realize there's still 55 more minutes to play.
Ryan Cantwell (34:26):
Yeah, we're not done.
Shardul Mehta (34:28):
The coaches are like, guys, great [00:34:30] job. Great start. We still got the rest of the game to play. We're not done yet. Exactly. It's like that point of where we're making, it's not this magical end state. You're absolutely right, Ryan. It's iterative it ongoing. What we do though will depend upon the particular stage that we're at and what our next set of goals are. That makes sense for that product and that business and that market.
Ryan Cantwell (34:57):
Yeah. This has been really enlightening for me, fellas, [00:35:00] as we talk about product market fit and how it's this nebulous thing, but what are you taking away from this discussion? I'm curious to hear from you. Sure. You're a guest. I'd love to start with
Shardul Mehta (35:10):
You being savvy about your assumptions. I think there's an excellent takeaway there where even if you're under the gun, under pressure to shortcut, make a list of your assumptions at least you may not have had a chance to experiment, validate, and prove them out, but going in, okay, well, we're going to have to do this anyways [00:35:30] because pressure from above or whatever, but I've documented what our assumptions are, and then I think also some of the strategies we talked about, Joe raised this excellent point about we love to talk about mechanics and tasks and tactics and all of that, but this whole side of the mental side, the emotional side, which is incredibly important. The reality is product managers do face that, but I thought we talked about [00:36:00] some ways in which to be able to deal with those situations without completely burning out.
Joe Ghali (36:06):
I mean, I guess the takeaway I would have is that's kind of simple. It's don't chase buzzwords, chase signals. You're looking at adoption, you're looking at retention, you're looking at engagement. You're looking at advocacy. I mean, at the end of the day, if you're solving real problems, you're listening, you're iterating and you're measuring, which is really critical. [00:36:30] You don't need a fancy label to tell. You've done it. You don't need a badge. You just need to keep doing it. That means you're doing a really good job.
Ryan Cantwell (36:38):
Yeah. I think the big thing for me, we didn't really talk about it much, but it's the realization through this conversation that product market fit enables you to say yes, but even more so. It enables you to say, no, this isn't the right place to go. There's two sides to the equation, and [00:37:00] don't fall into the trap of falling in love with an idea and then trying to shoehorn it, saying, yeah, I think we've got product market fit here. That's not its purpose. Its purpose is actually to pressure test something, not to confirm what you think.
Shardul Mehta (37:18):
Yeah. Don't fall into the sunk cost fallacy, right? Well, we've already invested so much time, effort, money in it, so
Joe Ghali (37:24):
Now
Shardul Mehta (37:24):
We got to make it work. It's like, actually, no. If we're getting a signal it's not working, [00:37:30] let's abandon it now and reapply those resources to something more profitable or valuable. Exactly. Better. We find that out sooner than way later. Yeah, a
Ryan Cantwell (37:43):
Hundred percent. Yeah. Well, fellas, I got to tell you, this has been so much fun talking about product market fit, one of the big philosophies out there, but Shardul, thanks for joining us on the porch. Thank you. We'll have to have you back sometime. Yeah, this was a lot of fun. It was great. I appreciate it, guys. Thanks. Yeah. Have a great [00:38:00] night, fellas.
Todd Blaquiere (38:01):
Thank you for joining us on the Product Porch. We release new episodes every two weeks. You can also find us on LinkedIn for more content. We offer a special thank you to AJ and Jack Blockier for the music. The views and opinions expressed by the hosts of this podcast are their own and do not represent, nor necessarily reflect those of their employer.