I had the honor of talking to some of the folks on the Eden team a little much earlier in the year about product building. I’ve been thinking a bit and decided to share slides from the talk alongside some of my thoughts on how I’ve thought about this — particularly at Helicarrier. I’m hoping it will be useful to some Product/Engineering/Growth people hustling at startups. PS: The Eden facility is an impressive work of operational excellence and they were gracious enough to feed me a nice plate of pasta and peppered Tilapia :)

Problems

Definitely the most important thing a product person — particularly at a startup — should focus on is Problems. We very easily fall for the temptation to be results and solutions-oriented and put solutions first. But this is obviously putting the cart before the horse. Deeply understanding the problem we are tasked with solving is the most important step in a product person’s endeavor.

Of course, the grand unified problem is that of finding problem-market fit. This is what we’re all on the hunt for, particularly in early stage startups. Two images come to mind: the first is Marc Andressen’s quote and the second is this.