Frank Tisellano

As much as I believe in making the back of the cabinet as beautiful as the front, I’ve seen many product managers, especially new ones (including a starry-eyed, 23-year-old Frank) value beautiful design in their products for the wrong reasons or at the wrong times. Here’s how I think about integrating design improvements into my products while maintaining focus on delivering for the business.

Thanks to Sean Murphy and Theresa Shafer for inviting me to speak on the Cynical PM FrameworkThe Cynical PM Framework, a business-first approach to productAs PMs, of course we have a responsibility to our users — but we’re primarily responsible for advancing the goals of our business. In this post, I posit a simple framework for identifying the different strategic roles your product might play and how to prioritize, position, and measure success once you’ve identified that role.. Had a blast sharing and discussing it live for the first time. Fantastic insights from Sean & co, and great questions from the whole Lean Culture crew.

Video and transcript inside.

Many thanks to JJ Rorie for inviting yours truly to Product Voices, her excellent product management podcast. We discuss how PMs can have more impact by increasing their focus on the commercial side of the job, including some techniques you can use to improve your business focus.

Find it wherever you listen to podcasts, including Apple and Spotify, or listen directly on the Product Voices Website.

TL;DR

• Value will overwhelmingly accrue to incumbents
• Generative models (LLMs, imagery, video, etc.) will be deeply integrated into platforms (OS, browser, major social platforms)
• Foundation models will be used to train highly specialized models in various domains, while "orchestrator" models seamlessly route queries to specialized models
• Apple will drive mass consumer adoption of ML

Average PMs discover customer problems and create elegant solutions to those problems with software. Building products is what they’re best at.

Great PMs recognize that building a good product is table stakes and that the way to truly differentiate themselves is by taking a strategic approach to how customers or users find and adopt their products. Read on to find out how.

Inspired by some of my favorite blogs, and in search of my next funemployment project, I’ve decided to experiment with enabling comments on this site. After exploring a number of off-the-shelf options, I decided to build a Ruby on Rails/JavaScript-based system that meets my unique requirements for privacy and user experience.

Check out how it works (and leave a comment!)

I wrote some Python! Take a ride with me as I recount my experience writing a plugin for Lektor that dynamically generates link preview images. Super gratifying to build something fun (and a little bit novel, if I do say so myself) for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.

As PMs, of course we have a responsibility to our users — but we’re primarily responsible for advancing the goals of our business. In this post, I posit a simple framework for identifying the different strategic roles your product might play and how to prioritize, position, and measure success once you’ve identified that role.

There’s a first time for everything. First kiss. First heartbreak. First job. First kid. First home. This morning, I experienced my first layoff. I was one of the 12,000 folks let go by Google.