Feb 23, 2026
After more than 10 years of building online products as a product person, here's what I've learned:
Everyone is making guesses. The CEO is making guesses about the vision and strategy. Salespeople are guessing what people want. Investors are making guesses about scale. You guess how big an impact it will have and what should be built next.
TAM models, the ICE frameworkA lightweight way to compare product ideas using Impact, Confidence and Effort.Learn more, roadmaps and Product discoveryThe work used to understand a problem, test assumptions and reduce uncertainty before making a larger product investment.Learn more sprints all sound sophisticated, but they're still just a bet.
Your mentor doesn't know if your feature will improve retention. The 'expert' on LinkedIn can't tell you if your market is big enough. You don't know if this sprint will make customers behave differently.
The only way is to keep shipping and keep the build cost low.
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I'm a father of 3 from Sydney, a product and technology leader. I write about leadership, product management, technology and the messy reality of making work work.
I'm currently building and experimenting with a mildly alarming number of things. I also work as a fractional product leader, stepping in where the founder or CEO is still carrying product decisions on their own, and offer 1:1 product leadership coaching for senior PMs and emerging product leaders. I founded SoundingBoard, practical peer exchange for product people. Connect via LinkedIn, or follow me on X.
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