How to Build a Great Product Strategy

A few years ago, I was asked in a product leadership interview,

“What’s your approach to product strategy?”

I froze.
I had frameworks in my head. I’d read about OKRs, North Star Metrics, Blue Ocean, Porter’s Five Forces. But somehow, I couldn’t string a real story together. Because here’s the thing: strategy sounds great on a slide, but in real life, it’s messy.

Let me walk you through how I finally learned what building a great product strategy really means—by not getting it right the first time.

The Time We Built Without a Strategy

At my last startup, we were building a B2B SaaS tool for remote teams. We had a killer MVP, early users loved us, and our small dev team could ship fast. Life was good… until it wasn’t.

Three months in, we had 14 “priorities.”
Our roadmap was a patchwork of customer requests, founder whims, and random “growth hacks.”
We were busy, but we weren’t moving.

Then our investor called.

“What’s your core bet? Where are you headed?”

And we didn’t have a clear answer.

Lesson #1: Strategy Is About Saying No

That experience taught me that a good product strategy isn’t just about what you’ll do—it’s what you’ll consciously choose not to do.

A product strategy is a set of intentional, informed bets. It should answer three big questions:

What problem are we solving?
Who are we solving it for?
How will we win—differently—than everyone else?

If your roadmap doesn’t reflect these answers, it’s not a strategy—it’s a to-do list.

Lesson #2: Strategy Starts with Deep Listening

After our wake-up call, we went back to basics.
We re-interviewed our best users—what problems did they care about most? What features were they actually using? What tools were we replacing?

We discovered a pattern:
Teams loved our async updates feature, not our meeting scheduling tools. They were overwhelmed with Zoom fatigue and Slack chaos. And we had a chance to be the “calm layer” over all that noise.

That insight became our new north star:
“We help remote teams communicate without chaos.”

We ruthlessly trimmed our roadmap, dropped the bells and whistles, and doubled down on async collaboration. That was our bet.

Lesson #3: A Strategy Needs Anchors—Not Just Ideas

Here’s the framework I now use when shaping product strategy:

🧭 Vision

Where are we headed in the long term? What does the world look like if we succeed?

🎯 Goals

What must be true in the next 12–18 months? Think measurable business and product outcomes (e.g., reduce churn by 20%, increase activation by 30%).

🌍 Target Segment

Which users are we focusing on now? Not every persona—just the one most aligned with our current growth path.

🧪 Differentiation

What do we do uniquely well? Not features—value. Why will users choose us over anyone else?

🛣️ Roadmap

What bets will we place to reach those goals? This is the last part—not the first.

If any of those pillars are fuzzy, the strategy falls apart under pressure.

Lesson #4: Strategy Is a Living Thing

The mistake many PMs make is treating strategy like a PowerPoint deck that lives in Notion and gathers dust. A good strategy is alive—it breathes with new data, shifts with user feedback, and flexes as the market changes.

At our startup, we reviewed our strategic bets quarterly. We had brutal retros:

Did the bet pay off?
Were we solving a real pain?
Did we ship with focus—or just fast?

Sometimes we pivoted. Sometimes we doubled down. That rhythm kept us grounded—and agile.

What Strategy Isn’t

Let’s also bust a few myths:

Strategy is not a vision board of big ideas.
Strategy is not a list of features sorted by upvotes.
Strategy is not a roadmap disguised with fancy icons.

Strategy is a story. A story about why you exist, who you serve, what you’re betting on—and how you’ll know if you’re winning.

If your whole team can’t tell that story back to you, it’s time to refine it.

Final Thoughts

When people ask me now, “How do you build product strategy?”
I smile and say:

“I listen more than I speak. I bet less than I want to. And I stay honest with myself when those bets don’t work.”

You don’t need a Harvard MBA to build great strategy. You just need the courage to commit—and the humility to change.

product.guru