I am a person with a technical background, and I took the typical route through project management to get to leadership positions.  In my corporate career, I have been mostly in charge of developers and other managers.  My interactions with product managers was usually at arm’s length, split between protecting my developers from them and getting them to ‘play nice’.

In building a startup, I have begun to think INTENSELY about products… management, development, strategy, ideas.  To the point that I am beginning to self-identify as a ‘product guy’.  Because where products make companies, technology is a tool to get there.  I am also thinking intensely about customer development.  My wife is a marketing consultant, and one of the biggest problems her clients have had is that they haven’t taken the time to understand their customers.  They take a ‘shot in the dark’ and say something like ‘we are targeting moms’, then they hope for the best.