Most early stage startups don’t hire for product management.  Usually, the founders have a very strong product vision that they need extra engineering hands to help them bring to reality.  As a result, the team has a tendency to be engineering driven.  This by itself is not a bad thing.  We just need to look at it in context.

Startups usually fail because they run out of money.  Startups usually run out of money because they are not making enough money.  Startups don’t make enough money when the people they are selling to are not interested in buying.  Oversimplification, yes, but I wanted to draw a very clear line between failure and ‘getting customers to pay.’

Getting customers to pay is a function of marketing, sales, and execution, and a good product manager is one part sales guy, one part marketing guy, one part user experience designer, and the rest is x factor.  Xfactor is the good stuff, or at least it can be for an early stage startup.

Xfactor is what can make product expertise extremely valuable at the early stage of a startup.  A good xfactor product guy can help you understand:

- The Market Opportunity

- The Market Size

- The Competitive Landscape

- The Pain and Willingness to Pay

In other words, the ‘WHY’.  Not just for your customers, but for your investors and other stakeholders as well.

You need someone who can weave the narrative and thicken the plot for your vision.  A good product guy can turn your short story into an epic; broad and deep, then evangelize and refine it on the fly.  A good product guy can turn the vision into passion and passion into awesome products.  A good product guy can turn the context of the vision into customer arousal.