3 Key Lessons From My First Product Role
My first product role shaped how I lead. I learned about true ownership, deep business impact, and competition that goes beyond features. Working with a visionary CEO in a product-led company taught me lessons that still guide me. PMs, are you embracing these to drive real impact?
Looking back, my first product role was an incredible learning experience. I had the privilege of joining the profession at a different time, and each product role was deeply strategic and business-oriented. There was no such thing as a junior product manager back then. If you were in product, you were senior, period. You had to understand the market, drive business impact, and navigate executive conversations with confidence.
Recently, I ran into the CEO of that company at a conference. As we caught up, it was important to me to thank him. Not just for the opportunity he gave me but for everything I learned from him and his team during my time there.
While I learned plenty from the role itself, some of the most important lessons came from watching how he built and ran the company. This CEO is a serial entrepreneur, and the company I joined was already his second successful venture. He managed to build a truly product-led company, with product management being a key role and the right product culture everywhere.
The three years I spent there, alongside the business outcomes that I helped to achieve, shaped the way I think about product leadership to this day. As the industry has evolved, some of these principles, which are at the core of product leadership, have been set aside by many companies in favor of other, more operation-focused practices.
In a way, everything that I do at Infinify — from this blog, through the CPO Bootcamp and Product Leadership Launchpad, and all the way to close guidance of select companies in shaping their strategy and building the right product culture — is meant to bring product leadership back to where it belongs, based on my own first experience in a world-class company almost 20 years ago.
So here are the key lessons that I learned and how you can apply them in your own role right away.
The CEO of the Product
These days, calling a product manager “the CEO of the product” is almost guaranteed to spark a debate. Many PMs push back, arguing that they lack the authority that a real CEO has. After all, a CEO can hire and fire, control budgets, and dictate company direction. A PM, on the other hand, often has to persuade, influence, and negotiate their way forward. So how can they be the CEO?
The problem isn’t the phrase itself-it’s the misunderstanding of what it really means. Being the CEO of the product is not about authority. It’s about ownership.
First, it means you care about results. Not just delivering features, but driving real business outcomes. A CEO is ultimately measured by the success of the company. Likewise, a great product manager measures their success not by how many things they ship, but by the impact those things create and the business success of the product.
Second, it means you take full responsibility for getting there-no matter what. If something is blocking progress, you don’t get to say, “Well, that’s not my problem.” The moment you accept that mindset, you’ve lost. Everything that affects the success of your product is your business. Whether it’s sales, marketing, support, or engineering-if something isn’t working, you step in, influence, push, and make it happen. You don’t need permission to lead.
A weak PM waits for others to solve problems. A strong PM takes ownership, even when they have no direct control. That’s what being the CEO of the product really means. It’s not about having authority-it’s about earning it through relentless accountability.
The Business Is Your Business
If you’re the CEO of the product, then the business is your business. It’s not enough to care about business outcomes in theory-you have to actively engage with the teams that make them happen. And no team is closer to the front lines of the business than sales.
Since you don’t manage sales, if you still want to make an impact, you must partner with them, and the best way to do it is to make yourself an asset to them.
It starts by truly understanding their world. Make yourself an expert not only in the product and its features but also in how it lives throughout its lifecycle and, specifically, how it works business-wise.
What does the sales process actually look like? Who do they meet? What makes them tick? What are the major objections prospects raise? What are salespeople struggling with? What role does the competition play? What does a “win” look like for them?
If you can’t answer these questions about your product, you are flying blind on what actually drives revenue, which means you’ll have a hard time driving real impact there.
But understanding is not enough. To partner with them, they need to see that you help them, and there’s much more to it than saying ‘yes’ to every customer request (which is a bad practice, of course).
What you want to do is add value in every interaction, either with them or with the customers they represent. Help them understand themselves and the customers better, gain clarity on the roadmap and market dynamics, deliver more value with the existing product, and raise customer’s confidence that we are going the right way.
And if you want to earn their trust, you have to trust them back. Salespeople know things you don’t — about customers, competition, and the psychological levers that make or break a deal. Work with them, learn from them, and make them your allies. Only then will you truly own the business side of your product.
Competition Is Bigger Than Features
I recently met an investor who had backed our top competitor back in the day. Both companies had massive success since our rivalry (the competitor was acquired by a larger company in a very impressive deal, and we IPO’d in about twice the valuation). It was nice to chat about these days in perspective and analyze what made each company succeed.
But back then, we couldn’t have had this friendly conversation. Our competition was fierce. Both companies had best-in-class products, a few levels above the other companies in the industry, and we were constantly going head-to-head. When we lost deals, it wasn’t because we had a bad product. And when we won, it wasn’t just because of what we built.
Many product managers make the mistake of seeing competition in a purely tactical way. They focus on a feature-by-feature comparison — who has what, what’s missing, what we can build next to “win.” But understanding competition is much bigger than that.
First, you need to identify your real competitors. They aren’t necessarily the companies listed in an industry report. They are the ones you actually go up against in the field-the ones your sales team keeps mentioning, the ones you lose deals to, and the ones your customers are evaluating alongside you. They don’t even have to be in your category. Many companies — especially startups that aim to invent new categories — compete against products from other categories or even homegrown solutions. The question that your customers are asking themselves in this case is not why they prefer you over your direct competitors but which approach to take in solving this problem.
Next, you have to understand why people choose them over you. It’s easy to assume it comes down to functionality-especially when your product is put through a proof of concept (POC), and every minor detail is scrutinized. But that’s only part of the story, even if they tell you that they chose them since they liked their UI better. People don’t buy features. They buy value, and they seek confidence, relationships, and alignment with their own goals.
I’ll never forget what one executive told us after choosing our product over the competition: “I didn’t pick you because of your product. I’m going to break your product. But when I do, I know you’ll fix it, and you’ll grow, and I’ll grow, and together, the sky’s the limit.”
To make a real impact as a product leader, you have to go beyond the product. Make yourself the CEO of the product, even if no one asks you to. Add value and drive business success in everything you do so the ripples created by your leadership reach everyone in the company.
