Episode 756 | Why Great Product Management Is Critical for Your Startup

In episode 756, Rob Walling interviews Brendan Fortune, Director of Product Management at Customer.io, to explore the skills and frameworks for effective product management. Brendan shares his journey and discusses the importance of understanding customer behavior to drive product decisions. They delve into the concept of the flywheel and how it can be leveraged to enhance user success and optimize pricing strategies.

Topics we cover: 

• (2:46) – What does a product manager do?
• (10:36) – When should a SaaS company designate a full time product manager?
• (15:33) – Pricing and and creating a flywheel
• (22:41) – Deciding on your “fair” value metric
• (30:01) – Pricing experimentation in the early days

Links from the Show: 

• Applications for TinySeed Spring 2025 are Open!
• Invest in TinySeed
• Ask a product question on Startups For the Rest of Us
• Brendan Fortune | LinkedIn
• Customer.io
• Product Flywheel + Pricing + Org Strategy (Miro)
• Your Pricing is WRONG (even Sam Altman Made This Mistake)

If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!

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