Product Strategy
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What the next 100 posts are for
TL;DR A milestone tempts you to celebrate the number and then re-run the same streak. I did something else with the journal after post 100: I redefined what the next hundred are for. Three moves you can run on any recurring output you own, whether posts, releases, or weekly updates. Widen the surface past the
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I’m the founder. I have all the authority. It barely helped.
TL;DR: Product managers are told their core problem is ownership without authority: you own the outcome but don’t control the levers. I run a company, I have every lever and the final say on everything, and the outcomes I care about still don’t move on command. Authority buys the right to decide, not the ability
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I knew on day one. I just didn’t want to admit it.
TL;DR: Yesterday’s post diagnosed a hidden bottleneck: four co-packers stalled on a decision I’d parked, not a delay they owned, with a clean three-question check to find it. Here’s the honest follow-up. I didn’t need the diagnosis. I knew on day one that sourcing those three ingredients was mine to settle. The nine days of
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The bottleneck wasn’t the vendor. It was a decision I parked.
TL;DR: I spent nine days chasing four co-packers for a written quote; sure, they were the holdup. They were all stuck with the same condition: only three ingredients, and I could decide how to source them. The real bottleneck was a decision sitting in my own queue. When a dependency won’t move, run the Stall
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Your moat is the part you can’t demo
I built my product around a feature the market just commoditized. Here’s the test I use now to tell a moat from table stakes, before I fall for the next demo.
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Stop tuning the prompt. Your AI agent needs a contract.
I built an agent to run my content engine. The prompt took an afternoon. The contract is what made it safe to hand off real work.