“All that you have is your soul”
“My PM will be my 120th employee”.
This is probably the most insightful piece I could grasp from very rare conversations with frontier AI startup leaders. I was a bit humbled at first, with, on one hand, the realization that this is absolutely fair, and on the other, that it might be the source of upcoming challenges.
For a frontier AI startup or adjacent tech, this makes total sense : the tech leads the way because what is at stake is convincing a developer community to use a model, researchers to join the company, investors to weigh in, getting attention through tech breakthroughs, and beat the competition that has followed the same tech-first path. I wish I had the data to prove it : it’s very probable that product and marketing people, (a broad group of people who care about the market and the end users), are coming in late in such companies. 120th, 80th, 10th positions, it will depend on the scale, the funding, how many technical people have been coming in first.
This is not to say that technical hires don’t care about what customers want, all the contrary. They want to talk to customers for feedback on their tech, what works and what doesn’t. I have been there so I include myself 100%. I vividly recall conversations in my previous company, with us (product, PMM, eng) asking customers as the single most important discussion item : “what do you think about our products”, with the clear intention to get product feedback, pure gold for any product people. Conversations with customers can be an illusion of customer centricity as what is really behind the intention is “how can I improve my product”.
So we have a clear chronological sequence : research -> engineering -> product management -> product marketing -> growth -> customers. Leading to a situation often referred to as “a solution in search of a problem”. Interesting to note the word order by the way: product -> market -> fit or product -> marketing -> management. This can create tensions :
Broken dialogue : Product is obsessed with product, customers are obsessed with their business problems. There is no real conversation
Blurred perspectives : The focus on products and features is a focus on the how instead of the why. The conversation cannot reach consensus or real pain points because it is centered on “details” that blur the perspective
Product Market fit : Companies struggle with product market fit as they focus on a product fit to a market, not a market fit to a product. Once again, a solution in search of a problem.
I don’t have a playbook to solve for that but two convictions where product marketing can add considerable value on the product and market sides :
Let the artist's souls speak : Artists can be one-way speakers to the world. Even better, they should be. That’s exactly why we love them. We don’t want them to comply with the “market needs” for fear of losing their soul and our ability to grow ours. Tech leaders share with artists a strong vision (are they seeing something that others don’t?) and this vision is what makes differentiation possible in the market. The role of the product marketer is to amplify the singularity of the vision, not minimize it, or average it to comply with market dynamics or the dominant language. The use of language generative AI could be forbidden because genuine words, as the utmost and sincere expression of a singular vision, must be preserved? Let’s agree with Tracy Chapman that “All that you have is your soul”.
Listen without preconceived ideas to market needs : this is much more standard product skills but not so easy to implement : ask open questions, don’t infer solutions, don’t jump to immediate fixes, search the root of the customer frustration and think systematically about how to alleviate pain points. Side note : funny how Narra is a direct continuation of this observation : putting customers back at the center of the game by observing them as the protagonists of fictional corporate stories.
Yes product marketing managers can be considered as matchmakers, reconciling a tech vision and a market aspiration.