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Product Thinking
Episode 139: Why Startups Fail and How You Can Avoid That with Tom Eisenmann, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School
Oct 4, 2023
Tom Eisenmann, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, joins Melissa Perri to discuss his book 'Why Startups Fail.' They explore different types of startup failures, strategies for avoiding them, and the challenges faced by startups during scaling. The conversation also covers the tension between building and customer discovery, as well as reasons for startup failure like false start and bad bedfellows. The episode provides valuable insights for navigating the landscape of product management in startups.
57:29
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Quick takeaways
- Hiring a product manager at the right stage of a startup's growth is crucial to avoid slowing down progress and facing resistance from engineers, and there are different scenarios and challenges for hiring at different stages.
- Founders who struggle to let go of product tinkering and CTOs lacking experience in platform architecture can impede a startup's scaling process, emphasizing the need for navigating transitions, potentially hiring a new CEO, and strong number twos as effective partners for founders.
Deep dives
Timing and skill profiles for hiring a product manager
Hiring a product manager should be done neither too soon nor too late. Premature hiring can lead to the wrong person slowing down the startup's progress and facing resistance from engineers. Waiting too long can make the founder the bottleneck, hindering growth. There are three scenarios for hiring a product manager: post-product market fit for a full stack PM, early stages for an executor PM, and very early stages for a full stack PM to help shape the product's vision. Each scenario has its own challenges and potential failures.
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