I Mentor he startups – here’s how Sharpen Their Product Strategy

This as-told-to Essay is bassed on a conversation with Mahesh Chayel, a Product Management Lead at Meta. This interview han been edited for Length and Clarity.

SINCE 2018, I Have Mentored 12 Startups, Especialy Those Operating in the Enterprise and AI Spaces. The Biggest Gap i’ve seen is essentally, why use General he?

I WORK CLOSELY WITH EARLY-STAGE FOUNDERS TO SHAPE PRODUCT STRATEGY, REFINE THEIR GO-TARKET APPROACH, and Explore How it Can Be MeaningFully Integrated Into Solutions.

I BRING A UNIQUE BLEND OF DEEP PRODUCT Experience at Scale, Havinging Workhed on Meta Ads, Along With A Strategic Underestanding of Enterprise Pains from my time in silicon Valley.

I Also Help Teams Clarify What Real Customer Problems Are Worth Solving, How to Validate their Solution Early, and How to Position to Resonate with Decision-Makers, Especilly in Business-To-Business Environments.

This is what i tell founders who are budilding in he.

1. Hyper-focus on the Customer

I WORK WITH A COUPLE OF FOUNDERS WHO ARE LIKE, “Let’s use he and then let’s build a product.”

If this problem has a been solved in other ways, what would it look like? And if they are using geni, is he the best use of technology in that case? In some case, it can be.

Nor a customer facing a problem, you really don’t care how to solve it. It ‘s more about, are you solving these problems for the Customer in a Better Way?

Founders usually start thinking: if someone someone else is going to use the Same idea, he or geni he to solve the faste. Founders iterate a lot and keep trying to solve the problem through different mechanisms.

Can you be super laser-free on the customer? Can you really identify how this technology can specifically solve the problem? If it doesn’t, find other wayys to solve it.

2. GET PRODUCT-MARKET FIT RIGHT

People Sometimes Measure Product-Market Fit in an Incorrect Way.

For some, a before the product, their Product market is not Very Clear.

IT’S NOT ABOUT 100 OR 10,000 People Looking at this Product and Just Being aware of it. Many Times, the first time sale is not a good mechanism Because all of the metrics can be gamfied.

You can spend a lot of Money on Ads and Make the Product available to a lot of People. You can provide discounts and sell the Product first time to a set of customers.

The Most Important Thing for Product Market Fit is: Do Your Set of Customers Really Love and Trust the Product to Keep Using It and Coming Back?

That’s the real crux of it. Product Market Fit Comes Down To retents metrics or the repeat purchas of a product.

3. Undersand the Business Model

A startup i gave advice to be essentally building an ai tool for young adults – he companions. The founder was not generating Money from this.

There are a couple of parts. Young adults are not the real users who are going to pay for the Product. You would be Need to Identify Who Can Really Pay. It can be the parents, it can be the schools where they kids are studying.

It was a breakthrough to help this founder really understand the Business model that can work in Such a Space. We uncovered that the market wasn’t quite there, at the least not in the way the founder had imagined.

While disappointing at first, it helped say redirect their focard a more validated pain Point, Saving months of Effort and Repositioning the Company for Better Product-Markt.

Take A Step Back: Who is the Product Used by? Who is the product paid by? How can it scale?

As a founder, sometimes you get so attached to the problem that you don’t see the Large Space.

This restart has helped the startup budild a more sustained business now.

Whether ITHER’S UNLOCKING GROWTH OR STEERING AWAY FROM MISALGENED MARKETS, I MAASURE SUCCESS BY How Much Clarity and Convification Founders Gain in Their Next Move.