🛠 The Secret Elon Musk Product Strategy: Product Person #48
hi, Anthony here! In this newsletter, I curate insights on how to build great products. You’ll improve your product skills with every issue. Let’s get to it. (Btw, my PM Discord group has 50+ members now. Come join!) The Secret Tesla Motors Master PlanInsight from the Tesla blog #1 and Melissa Perri! When we think of Elon Musk, the first thing that comes to mind is his wild Twitter game. But quietly (and sometimes loudly), both Tesla and SpaceX are poised to completely revamp their respective industries. Today, we’re diving into Elon’s 2006 blog post to talk about Product Strategy. In this issue, we’re diving into HOW Elon communicated his product strategy for Tesla and convinced a whole generation to support Tesla.
The VisionProduct strategies aren’t line-by-line plans. Plans almost always fail; no plan survives first contact with the enemy or in our case, reality. Rather the start of a product strategy should always be the high-level, ultimate view of where the company is going. For Tesla, it’s to:
It’s thinking in the long-term. It’s qualitative, any progress that helps us burn fewer hydrocarbons is a step in the right direction. And most importantly, it’s ambitious. Compare that against the more generic vision statements for other modern tech companies:
If we were to rewrite Airbnb’s mission statement -
The ChallengeThe challenge is the first business goal you have to achieve on the way to your longer-term vision. For Tesla, that was proving to the world that an all-electric car can be built and can compete at the same level as the world’s leading gasoline sports cares. When we build products, we have a threshold of knowledge. We cannot start on Day 1 and exactly plan to reach our vision. The challenge helps clarify what strategic objective for the team (and supporters) to align and focus on. The right challenge isn’t a definition of some product or feature to be built but rather a validation of a certain hypothesis. For Tesla, building the Roadster itself was less important than the validation that all-electric vehicles could measure up to the best of gasoline cars. If you were to build a podcasting startup, the challenge in your product strategy could be to achieve a similar CPM as display or video ads. Or if you’re building an enterprise B2B startup, it might be signing up your first large Fortune 500 company as a customer. The Target ConditionThe target condition is meant to break down the Challenge. In Tesla’s case, they’ve already proved the Challenge along one dimension, performance. However, along the dimension of price, the $89k price point of the Roadster prices is magnitudes higher than most family cars. The target condition provides a roadmap to solving that Challenge. Target conditions often focus on a different dimension of the Challenge. Let’s take the example of Uber: Challenge:
This might be caused by the fact that there are not enough cars to serve that city. And so the Target Condition is to:
Although a target condition shouldn’t be so simple that it be achieved tomorrow, it should provide a clear roadmap with inspiration for where the team should start looking. SummaryLet’s put it all together.
It’s hard to root against a company with a product strategy so clearly defined. And inspired by Tesla’s product strategy I’ve attempted to write one for The Product Person:
PM News #9By the way, I just released my interview with Rohini Pandhi (PM Lead @ Square) on PM News. There’s a lot of great highlights but just for you, here are a few snippets: 🛠 Rohini explains what she sees as some key differences between doing product at a startup vs doing product at a big company (2m 10s) (link). 💡 Rohini breaks down a few important concepts she’s learned about product in her career (2m 50s) (link). 🧠 Rohini talks about why you shouldn’t blindly implement other people’s product frameworks into your own product process. Develop your own product process using first principles thinking. (2m 34s) (link). End NoteThanks for enjoying The Product Person. I’d love it if you shared it with a friend or two. If this was shared to you, you can subscribe here. ❤️ Hit the heart button as well, it helps a lot. Have a great day, (P.S. Anything I can help you with? Just reply to this email, I’ll respond) One last thing, how did you like this post? Vote below! 😀 🙂 😐 😞If you liked this post from The Product Person, why not share it? |
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🛠 The Product Person #47 — 5 Mistakes To Avoid When Measuring Product Data
Wednesday, April 14, 2021
hi, Anthony here! In this newsletter, I curate insights on how to build great products. You'll improve your product skills with every issue. Let's get to it. 5 Mistakes To Avoid When Measuring
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Sunday, April 11, 2021
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The Product Person #46
Wednesday, April 7, 2021
hi, Anthony here! In this newsletter, I curate insights on how to build great products. You'll improve your product skills with every issue. Let's get to it. (Btw, I started a Discord group for
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Friday, March 26, 2021
hi, Anthony here! In this newsletter, I curate insights on how to build great products. You'll improve your product skills with every issue. Let's get to it. (Btw, today's issue is
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