Every PM gets told to “build a differentiated product.” It's the most common advice in product, and one of the least useful. It sounds strategic, but it usually collapses into vague backlog debates, competitor feature matching, or branding exercises that never reach the product itself. The harder truth is that differentiation isn't one thing. It's […]
In 2012, I watched a brilliant team with a technically superior social product get dismantled by Facebook. Their product was faster, cleaner, and more privacy-conscious. They still lost because users did not buy “better tech.” They bought familiarity, identity, network effects, and a product that felt meaningfully different in their lives. That lesson has stayed […]