Teresa Torres

Stop Brainstorming and Generate Better Ideas

On many teams, either a founder decides what to build or the product team does. This makes sense. In early stage companies, founders are often the product leader. The product leader should decide what should be built. Or should they? We often use the metaphor, the product leader as CEO

Are You Getting Your Growth Goals Right?

In Monday’s post, we outlined our success funnel, identified our points of leverage, and explored a few ways you can set and hit aggressive goals. Some of you, the lucky ones, might be asking yourself, what do you do when your success funnel is converting well? What types of

How to Set Goals That Drive Product Success

Goal setting is hard. And yet, so important. It’s one of the 8 critical decisions involved in building great products. If you get it right, you and your team can charge hard at the goal, ignoring everything else, to good result. If you get it wrong and you do

Improve These 8 Decisions and Build Great Products Faster

What color should this button be? We can only do x and y, but not z, before the deadline. Can we live with that? Sales requested a, b, and c. Which should we do? The CEO had a new idea and asked if it’s worth pursuing. As product builders,

The Habit of Feeling Super Human

It’s 3 weeks into the new year, how are your resolutions looking? Have you already fallen off the wagon? Are you starting to slip? Or are you still going strong? Do you have confidence you’ll keep it up all year? Most people don’t keep their New Year’

Why Most Product Teams Don't Define a Clear Vision

It wouldn’t surprise me if you read the last two posts (here and here) and thought this seems obvious. Of course, you should define a strong vision. Every company should have a clearly defined vision, mission, core values, and so on. Every company should know who they are and

What a Clear Product Vision Looks Like

On Thursday, we outlined the 9 components of a clear vision. Let’s put it into action and look at an example. A couple of years ago, I worked on a side project called GratiGrams. I had, and still have, a strong vision for it. Because it’s a personal

What You Should Clarify and Communicate as a Product Leader

On Monday, I outlined what I think are the three pillars of building great products: a clear vision, sound decision making, and developing the right team. Today, I want to take a closer look at what I mean by a clear vision. It’s easy for us to go about

The Three Pillars of Building Great Products

Do you know what it takes to build great products? Are you so confident in your approach that you know that your product will be a success? I’m not. I’m often filled with doubt. Even when things are going well, I wake up at night worried that it’

My Favorite Tools of the Trade

I used to be a productivity nerd. Until I realized that I was spending more time playing around with systems than I did actually doing work. This is pretty common. I’ve outgrown that stage. But I still love to hear about how other people work. And i’m always

A Hat Tip to Some Great Bloggers

Last year, Daniel Pink shared his favorite books, blogs, and resources in a New Year’s Day webinar. It was so good, I still remember most of the things he shared. I’m stealing the idea. Today, I’ll share some of my favorite blogs. And on Thursday, I’ll

My Top Reads from 2013

I try to read a book a week and I was right on target reading 50 books in 2013. These were the best of the crop. To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others If you have an aversion to sales, don’t think of a used-car

The Best of Product Talk in 2013

2013 was a great year for Product Talk. I published 52 posts (including this one), I met a number of readers at meet ups, the Startup Product Summit, and at ProductCampSF, and I met so many more of you virtually through office hours and email. I started this blog to

How To Develop Your Active Listening Skills

Have you ever found yourself disagreeing with someone about what was said? Perhaps you and one of your coworkers watched a user interview and you walked away with two different interpretations. Why does this happen? We’ve already been introduced to the ladder of inference when we discussed finding common

Wow, When Something Resonates ...

"Startups don’t die when they run out of money, they die when their founders let go. I ultimately stepped away from Sonar when I came to the conclusion that, despite all that we had invested, everyone stood a better chance starting anew. It’s difficult to accept, but

Do You Have What It Takes To Work On A Remote Team?

This post was written for Startup Edition in response to the question: How do you effectively work with remote teams? If you aren't already, it's only a matter of time before you'll be asked to consider working with a remote team. For most startups,

A Small Favor: Please Take The 2014 Product Talk Survey

Product Talk just passed it's second anniversary. As we prepare for 2014, I want to make sure that Product Talk continues to serve its audience. I'd love your help. Please take 5 minutes to fill out a quick survey. I truly appreciate it. Thanks, Teresa

How to Craft Your Personal Story to Land Your Next Product Job

You know that feeling you get when you come across a product that just works? Maybe you got it the first time you used Square. Or the first time Tripit saved you money on airfare. Or maybe it was watching Netflix on your Roku. I'm sure you know

3 Ways to Learn About a Company and Impress the Hiring Manager

In the last few posts, we talked about not sending your resume to anyone and everyone, and instead narrowing your market. Today, we'll look at how you can research your market and your specific target companies. Let's continue with our example. Suppose you defined your market

Why Defining Your Market is Essential to Finding a Product Job

You've already learned to stop sending your resume to everyone and anyone. Right? If you haven't already, stop and read, how not to find a product job. This post will build off of that one. We've learned the best way to find a job

How Not To Find a Product Job

Far and away the most common question I get is: * How do you find a product job? Before we tackle answering this question, let's look at what most of us do when we try to find a job. We start by working on our resume. We list out

Read Decisive and Make Better Product Decisions

Over the past 3 months, I've written a number of posts inspired by the book Decisive by Chip and Dan Heath. I'm a big fan of their work and so much of the research from Decisive is directly applicable to building great products. I highly recommend

Don't Make Snap Product Decisions

This post is part of a series about making better product decisions. Do you ever find yourself making snap decisions? An engineer asks you for more detail on how a feature should work. You hadn't considered that specific use case before. So you come up with a solution

Don't Overcommit to a Bad Idea

This post is part of a series about making better product decisions. At the World Domination Summit 2013, Jia Jiang gave an amazing talk about his experience following his dreams. When he was young, he saw Bill Gates speak, and he dreamed of starting a company someday. But like many

You Probably Suck at Estimating (And What You Can Do About It)

This post is part of a series about making better product decisions. You probably estimate every day. How long will it take to build a given feature? What impact will it have on your customer base? How will it impact business outcomes? It's too bad you probably aren&