 Hi everyone, my name is Vijay and thank you so much for joining today. I'll be touching upon and talking about product strategy and product opportunity today. And I know this is pretty much a topic that aspiring PM or if you're already a PM, you'll know about it. And I want to kind of create a lot of mental models to kind of move past and identify the product strategies and kind of building the roadmaps. So with that, let me dive in. Okay, before that, let me quickly introduce myself. I did my undergrad in India in chemical engineering, and I've worked with a few startups in India, primarily zero to one startups in the space of real estate, logistics and hospitality. And post my masters, I joined Amazon as a senior product manager, and I currently work in the catalog team of Amazon. Okay. Yeah, so product strategy and why does this actually by this term I could start as it is this is an element of our management first place as it is more of a consulting term. I believe product strategy is a key to a bunch of factors and and this is pretty much the first starting point when you are trying when you're trying to build product roadmap when you're trying to kind of incrementally understand what the features that you want to build already trying to scope out, you know, the overall strategy of the company in terms of which direction that you are take. And then we look at, we look at, you know, where does product strategy help you, you know, it helps you to kind of identity for you as a team or as a firm to kind of really identify and kind of try or really die in that scheme of things. And there are a bunch of examples that we have seen, where, you know, products that are companies that have moved fast, I didn't forget opportunities, have tapes so far in the market. There's still some of the problems with customers. And we know a bunch of them, you know, that did die down because of solid product strategy. This also helps you to have a very, very laser sharp focus on customer value, because, you know, if, you know, day to day activities of PMs, you know, handling the business reviews, the weekly business reviews, managing the stakeholders globally, in addition to that, if I do solve, you know, identify the customer value, it's easy to get distracted. This would help you hinge upon or be super focused on the value that actually matters. Yeah, and third piece around is the product roadmap. So product roadmap is a better function of our strategy. So it's pretty much an output of the strategy to give it. And the moment that you identify the strategy, you'll have a solid roadmap that will help you to kind of have the entire life cycle, the life cycle built upon. And for me, the most important piece around product strategy is the fourth part, which is identifying the product opportunities. Essentially, you know, it's extremely exactly the same in terms of the different pieces that we put together. And identifying the product opportunity is also very critical when you're trying to kind of go after multiple points in line out there. If you're an entrepreneur with limited resources, you know, there are 10 problems that you think you can solve in that market. But what's the one problem that really matters to you? And that you can solve with a given, you know, small set of resources, create a value and then, you know, kind of scale it and move forward. How do you kind of identify that specific one opportunity or those 10 opportunities? And this is not something new. And this is something that makes a great startup. And this is the same for the team, do the same for the firms. So I don't think a product opportunity is very critical and crucial, and we'll touch upon more of our time today in identifying those. So how do you define, you know, a product opportunity? You know, let alone identifying them. So you define a product opportunity, which essentially sets an intersection of these three pieces. You'd always start from the customer. You'd identify, you know, what are the unmet needs of the customers? And, you know, how can you identify? How can you essentially solve those problems? And when you mean you can solve the problems, you know, can your team or company have the capability to infra to solve those problems? And can you build a product that decides the solution to solve the problem? You can't ask a wireless technology company to go and build an operations network altogether. Because both of them are definitely obviously solving problems. But then they are, you know, not really, you know, kind of relative to do that right away. So for me, the product opportunity is an intersection of these three pieces. You identified a customer problem that you think that need is unmet. And you think, you know, your team as well is capable to do that. And you can launch a technical solution or rather a solution, a product solution to solve that. Yeah, so this is an interesting example. I've actually stumbled upon this from my professor. And this would give you a mental model around, you know, what is the opportunity. So if you look at the laptop of a tablet pocket or rather laptop slash tablet pocket, it cannot start all with the Apple when they will launch the iPads. And these tablets and she are great for the media. But then, you know, they start off with, you know, videos and, you know, super good for gaming, but never a starting point for your being, being your office. You know, you can't work on it. You can't write a document on it. You don't really think of building a PPD on it. But that is a clear need. You know, you know, folks who are, you know, using both these devices, I really should need one. And that is a clear unmet need. So that's one kind of clear customer problem. And if Microsoft identified that and they have an ecosystem to build everything, and they've built an attachable one, which is pretty much like, you know, tablet to a kind of laptop. So this is one, one simple example of, you know, how do you find the product opportunity for any sort of set of market that you identify. Three aspects of product opportunities. Again, again, these only give you a mental model. In terms of, okay, what's the problem that I'm going to go after? Is the problem big enough? Is the problem sizable enough? And when I talk about the problem, who's facing the problem? And can I draw that persona? Because essentially, it's easy to say that, hey, I need to build something for myself. And, you know, what's that persona exactly looking like? I am a male of six years of, you know, I like doing something. And I'm kind of trying to draw down the end to end persona or probably the needs of that specific persona at any level, at a time level, is what's going to give you a lot more insight here on identifying, okay, where does the similar personality go? What's that specific cohort that you're talking about? And so when you're trying to find the problem and identify that specific persona, that's when you will depend on, you know, kind of fee or specific product that you can pay, that is, you know, kind of close to an opportunity. Okay, so there are two ways to, you know, kind of look at what it is. You'd also want to have a macro view. And you'd also want to have a micro view to identify these opportunities. The macro view essentially is to try to take a step back and look at the market, look at the competition, look at the, you know, kind of substitution and kind of really identify, you know, what categories and things actually make sense for you. You know, you don't really think about a product here. You really look at how is the biggest market here? Can you attend? You know, are there any, you know, product opportunities that you can look at? Do you even see the infra or any kind of feasibility or the financial feasibility of the bottleneck or as more of a driver rather than a bottleneck? So these would give you, you know, an ability to kind of move fast and kind of give you an ability to at least probably talk about a few ideas, because you don't want to build something just looking in a small cage thought process of a product and then realize that, hey, when I take this market to the market, I don't really, you know, have the infrastructure to build it. I don't have the infrastructure to scale it. So, so that's, that's around the macro view that I like to focus on. And then you also have to have a micro view around, you know, whatever in a specific part of me. And probably drill it down into atomic level into not just the first layer of the product needs, but to the end of the year to this specific specific, you know, personas. I can't, I can't stress this enough. I've seen this in the past. I see this currently in my day to day work, really identifying which set of customers are the ones that are the target audience to our specific product would help you kind of move really fast because end of the day, you can't force fit anything. And, and that's only going to kind of kill your time. You know, even even in the organizations where you're moving fast. I think this would be able to kind of draw down that piece and give a lot of clarity to you. And and kind of to the teams that are actually building that. And you keep on defining it. And, and, you know, you can only do a UX or a customer service. For example, when you keep refining the persona, keep diving deep into that specific opportunity. And with the lens of a macro view. So that's how I look at it when I can, you know, look for an opportunity to go to the macro view. Yeah, this is this is an interesting piece around I don't think opportunities need not necessarily start at the one end. It can also start at the other end. If you want to kind of say, I want to buy a file at the home, you know, there's a solution around it called a router. And but, you know, you would also figure out that, hey, it's a technology solution. You know, you can actually solve your balance of internet. You need not, you know, you know, really burned on a specific server, but you can actually spread that, you know, kind of traffic across. And if you want to kind of probably identify, hey, we don't want to go to which instrument you want to go to. You know, you have different solutions for that. You have different solutions for that. So I think the key piece of the messaging from this site is to be open on both ends, both in the spectrum, where the opportunities. Yeah. And you see multiple sources of product opportunities. And that's the beauty of, you know, kind of really realizing them and taking them and scaling them. And you can, you can actually identify, start by yourself. You know, you, if you say, face a specific name point, view the personal pay points at the end of the form that you don't want to solve for. You can also hear a lot of these opportunities coming in as anecdotes, coming as probably reviews coming in as insights from the customers directly from the customers. That's a beautiful talent to know and understand the anecdotes there. And similarly, you have analogies, public offerings, innovation fees. There are a bunch of ways for you to, you know, identify the opportunities. But then the challenge is always around the, you know, the 10 or 15 opportunities that I identify, which ones are the right ones to go after. Which is that one specific opportunity that fits in, checks in all the buckets. And, you know, I am the right person to solve it. And I know who's the right person I'm solving it for. Yeah, this is another piece where, you know, we would always look back from the customer. And not necessarily every single time in every single product, your, your feature is a proportionality to your value. Not every product feature will bring in a similar set of value. There are tons of hours that I know that, you know, an incremental feature has only, you know, kind of grown the company exponentially. But you'd rather not start there doing the start from, okay, what else can I solve on a customer? And can I, can that connect into an incremental feature rather than what new feature can I start? Will that solve my customer problem? So, so leadership focus only on product. Yeah, and focusing on the segment. You know, not always your personas are causality. And not always what customers think they need is always that I need. Yeah, that's a nuance in there. But ideally, you know, the key one kind of focus follows, you know, you work from the customer, and then you kind of, you know, figure out until then you're from there. Now, until identified, you know, you know, the various sources, you know, mental models to say, okay, which one is the right one to prioritize? How do you assess these opportunities? You know, there has to be a model where you say, okay, out of the 10, there's that one piece that matters to me, I am the right person to do it. I'm the right team to do it. I'll go after it. But what's that what's the purpose behind it? The purpose is three, four, right? Essentially, can you take that part to the market? Do you do you think that, you know, you can actually solve it for sale? And is it actually a real problem? And can you actually, you know, kind of do it as a company, as a team, as an individual? Does it does it fully with the capabilities and the differentiation piece that you bring in? Can you win if you take it to the market? And if you take it to the market, it's real. You can win, but is it worth it? You can identify a problem. Which something can win, but there is a marginal value that you can probably bring or generate for your customers and then for yourself. Does that matter? So these are the three different sort of, you know, ways to look at it. I think all three should make sense. And that kind of depends on different industries and different, you know, product segments to see, okay, I might not really kind of care about the monetary value. But, you know, what is the value added to the problem, the value to the customers that I'm solving. So these are the three ways that I can identify to figure out, hey, what's the opportunity to work, you know, if it was worth pursuing. So that I think, I think I like to probably take, you know, I'd like you to take these five questions back. You know, what exactly the problem will solve. And that kind of turned to the entire pain points and the needs. And whom are you solving this from? And how big is the market? This can tell you about the entire target market. And why are we suited? You as a team, you as an entrepreneur, you as a PM, you as an organization. Why are you suited to do this? And if you choose to, can you actually go back to a door? And I'll tell you about your differences, capabilities that you can bring on the table. And how can you get this to the market? You know, back, I think she also did tell you if it wasn't worth taking to the market. And once you know everything, how do you really measure the focus of those and keep the accurate. I mean, these are the five key, you know, kind of aspects that you'd like to kind of keep thinking about, I mean, to stumble upon these target opportunities. And honestly, I think when you're going to day to day life as a PM as well, it'll always be time box. It'll always be easier to get distracted with so many nuances that's what you're doing. Not necessarily we do think the big picture on how to actually move the needle for the company. So I think these are the mental models that will help you to quickly, you know, follow the path and then kind of have the road map built in. Because that's where, you know, you would have a lot more free alignment because not everything opportunity and strategy in the right way would be you'd probably find something else. And that's what some of their, you know, kind of prioritization might leave the entire downstream go for a task. So I think that's the reason I'm super big believer in having this one right. And then it'll kind of figuring out the downstream. Yeah, this is this is what I want to kind of talk about today. Thank you so much for joining in. And please feel free to drop in any questions or comments.