Steve Kaufer ran TripAdvisor's product review personally. My first one: he asked which OTAs were the largest buyers on meta. I didn't know. "Aren't you supposed to know that?" I spent the rest of the meeting writing a HiveQL query from the back row. matthewmamet.com/product-review-meeting/

Private CRO luncheon in Boston last week. Consensus: traffic is dropping to agentic search now, not someday. Three things to do - qualify harder on the traffic you have, test by channel before page, keep human judgment in the loop. AI does not know why your last ten tests failed.

A friend who's CPO at a PE-backed ad tech company told me the standard his firm set: come back when everyone is a solid A. The B player is the dangerous one. Good enough that the case for action is never obvious. Not good enough that the team performs at the level you need.

You know it's bad for me when I'm turning to Claude to help me understand humans. I'm in it right now, folks - down deep in the rabbit hole.

The EverQuote expansion mistake was not moving too fast. It was launching multiple verticals simultaneously with no sequencing decision. Each one needed a supply-side flywheel built from scratch. Spreading that attention horizontally is a prioritization failure that looks like a portfolio strategy.

Etsy Q1 - active buyers grew sequentially for the first time in two years, GMS per buyer up for the first time since late 2022. They decided the acquisition problem was not the main problem and worked the existing base instead. Worth watching.

When the steam engine got more efficient, people thought coal demand would collapse. It tripled. As AI makes building easier, demand for the judgment of what to build - for whom, in what order - compounds. The PM job isn't shrinking. The ratio of judgment to execution is increasing.

A free leadership curriculum for girls. Famous founder. 300+ partner schools since 2023. No price barrier. Still fighting a last-mile distribution problem. National sign-off creates permission, not momentum. Distribution-market fit is a separate problem from product-market fit.

In 2009 I charged $800/day, four days a month per client, hard cap at four clients. No one called it fractional. What I understood then still holds: concentrated senior judgment has a carrying capacity. Spread it too thin and you're no longer doing what the model promises.

Six weeks in, I asked the team to walk me through why each roadmap item existed. Three people, twelve items, four explainable. The rest: "it came from sales," "leadership wanted it," "we've always done it." That is not a roadmap. That is a parking lot.

The underwater PM who becomes Dr. "No" isn't protecting the roadmap. They're protecting themselves. The business figures this out fast - stops engaging with product, goes directly to engineering. That's not a prioritization win. That's a credibility collapse.

Paid channel saturation doesn't announce itself. The signal isn't CPL - it's the ratio of new-to-repeat visitors in your converting cohort. When that flips, you're six weeks from CAC blowout. Most teams find out too late.

I am not like Claire Vo or Lenny Rachitsky. I'm a grey beard with a 2018 MacBook Pro I hadn't touched in a year, and none of their panache. I'm sharing my detailed step-by-step setup guide to OpenClaw for regular people: buff.ly/aUEo5Jc With apologies to Claire, Lenny, and the Cohen brothers.

Duolingo announced AI-first this week. Most companies using that phrase mean AI-cheaper. The actual question worth asking is what decision speed does this unlock. If the answer is we save money on content contractors, that's a margin story, not a product one.

Six years of product reviews at TripAdvisor. Rigorous process, clear owners, clean write-ups. We shipped a lot of things and made them matter. A review structured to produce approval is not the same thing as a review structured to produce the right bet.

The pattern I still see in the early days of many new engagements: everyone kinda knows what needs to be done. But that conviction to move fast, can be false confidence. Teams can slow down instead. Out of self-protection. Like when the body rejects the organ transplant.

I have started at nine or ten companies now. The first week pattern is always the same. The client shows you everything they're proud of. You make a mental list of what they didn't show you. Then you go find those. The entry mode that works isn't the one where you arrive with answers.

Quoted in PhocusWire today on agentic commerce and the trust gap in AI booking. Travel brands that lead with the technology story will miss the point. The trust problem in agentic transactions is not a payments problem. It is a consumer psychology problem. buff.ly/0nb4vAa

Agentic search doesn't route traffic to comparison marketplaces. It replaces them. Chegg: 956K searches/mo Apr 2022. Perplexity: 1. They crossed in March 2025. Five-year data study across edtech, automotive, and solar: buff.ly/4W62yk4

Cost per lead is the most seductive vanity metric in growth. 300 leads at $15 CPL with 2% conversion costs $750/customer. 50 leads at $80 CPL with 18% conversion costs $444. The cheaper channel is 70% more expensive. Build from the originated customer back.

In financial products, the most overlooked growth channel isn't a channel. It's sitting in a competitor's rejection file. At EverQuote, the customers carriers declined were still in market. They weren't lost. They were motivated buyers with nowhere else to go.

Meta cut 15,000 people and called it an AI-native transformation. The actual story: they built an org to win a bet that didn't land and held the headcount longer than the strategy required. AI is the narrative that makes the correction palatable.

Instacart just became Aldi's entire digital commerce platform. They stopped owning the customer and started selling infrastructure. 380+ retailers on Storefront Pro. Many marketplace teams debate this exact move for years. Instacart chose the layer most marketplaces miss.

The most expensive word in product strategy is "also." A founder turned down a nine-figure vertical because it made the company feel small. That is not a strategy problem. That is a fear problem. Specialization is a weapon most founders refuse to use.

Every company I walk into has someone who costs too much, does too little, and reports to someone who will never fire them. The protected person is never the real problem. The signal their protection sends is.

I've argued high traffic acquisition spend for years. Finally did the math. 5 marketplaces. 5 years of SEC filings. High S&M spend doesn't predict growth. Angi: $4.6B on marketing, revenue down 41%. DoorDash: cut S&M ratio in half, orders tripled. matthewmamet.com/blog/paid-ac...

Revenue per user went from $3 to $17 at a large edtech company in 18 months. The leader asked one question first: "Match the pace or set the pace?" 95% said set it. She launched five products and shifted to platform selling. Ask before you push.

Having to use ChatGPT because Claude is down yet again.

A client's "content affiliates" are actually SEM lead-gen operations bidding against the company on its own keywords. Saw the exact pattern at EverQuote. SEM affiliates sell you back your own customers. SEO affiliates build trust. Know which you have.

A strategy only exists when it excludes something. "We serve enterprise and SMB across North America with a best-in-class experience" is not a strategy. It is a market with adjectives. Any competitor could sign that document. matthewmamet.com/blog/product-strategy/

Solar takes 12 weeks to close. $40K and analysis paralysis. The instinct is to optimize the funnel. Wrong problem. Look at what Airbnb did - they built a guarantee that absorbed risk for both sides. Build the trust infrastructure first. The conversion follows.

An anti-pattern I see is when product leaders product leaders walk in trying to prove they’re the smartest. With a client I’m starting with now, I’m doing the opposite. Rolling over and showing my belly. Learned this at Pearson. Trust isn’t earned by being right. It’s earned by being useful first.

A DTC healthcare startup I advise asked how to fix their culture. I told them to stop trying. The canvas is already painted. The better move: bloom where you’re planted. Accept the tempo and do your best work inside the constraints. You don’t have to love the water. Just learn to swim in it.

🚀 Biggest unlock in my workflow? AI isn’t replacing me - it’s amplifying what I’m already good at. 🤖 ChatGPT drafts strategy docs ✍️ ⏳ Automation buys back HOURS 🗂️ Cleaner outputs AI doesn't make you sharper. It lets sharp people move faster. buff.ly/Per64Uf

"Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success." - Henry Ford

Founders, listen up 👂 No hack replaces strong product leaders. You can command & control, layer in process, hand it to “proxies” - but you’ll just end up with zombie teams 🧟‍♂️🌪️ Invest in real leadership or watch your best people walk. 🚪✨ buff.ly/vueV0R0

The best pros I know have coaches. Not because they’re “broken" - but because seeing yourself clearly is a cheat code 🤯. Game change = awareness 🚀 You’d hire a trainer at the gym… Why go solo when it comes to your growth? 🏋️‍♂️💡 buff.ly/ybB4aNd

Global search volume for "Please unblock challenges.cloudflare.com to proceed." spiking. 😆

Most founders wait for funding before launching. 🚫💸 Flip it: Get scrappy, talk to customers now, ship the value fast. 🏃‍♂️⚡ Constraints force clarity. Revenue > round. Your startup can start TODAY - permission not required.🔥🛠️ buff.ly/dvL9UIl

Most teams start their experimentation journey with tools-not people or process. Andy Boyd and I dig into what happens when you flip that order: how to build the systems, incentives, and mindset that make experimentation a habit, not a project. buff.ly/rg1qNIW

"Stay away from those people who try to disparage your ambitions. Small minds will always do that, but great minds will giv eyou a feeling that you can become great too." - Mark Twain

Ever notice it’s way cheaper to buy an AC than to fix one? 😲 Tech makes stuff cheap (thanks, Jevons 📉), but labor still isn't getting automated (hello, Baumol 💰). The weirder our tech gets, the pricier human work becomes. 🤖➡️👷‍♂️🔥 buff.ly/UH6s8zX

Want more resources from your execs? 🤝🔑 Don’t just “manage up.” Match their intensity. Make their top goals your goals. Resources flow to people leaders trust - and who help them win.📈🚀 Be that person. Your future self will thank you. 🙏🧠 buff.ly/svzsP4z

Everyone blames busted deadlines on “engineering.” 😑 But 9/10 it’s messy people stuff: unclear decisions, buried objections, silent tension. 🔄🧩 Tech solves fast. Teams align slow. Want things to finally launch? Less JIRA tweaking - more real talk up front. ⚡🤝 buff.ly/2gSxdOF

Noticed this? When talking big tech jumps (internet, now AI), the loudest crew always says: 💢 “Cool, but we’re not changing.” 👋 That’s your disruptor bogey. Bet smart = surf early or get bashed up later. 🚀 Lean in before your users bolt for something better.

Stop patching timezone woes with “just more meetings.” 🛑 Sharpest remote PM teams crush it by rotating product rituals and making trigger-clear, async info jumps the non-negotiable squad norm. 🪄🌏 Better flow ➡️ Less panic ➡️ Less Friction More 👉 buff.ly/koXmuZr

Over half of U.S. jobs are now rated “AI Disruption 5+” by NSF’s new report. ⚠️🤖 But for every job lost, AI is creating path-breaking new roles too. 📈 🚀 The only real job-killer? Standing still. Full report 👉 buff.ly/ws68D1U

"More is lost by indecision than wrong decision." - Marcus Tulius Cicero

No-code tools used to sound like a hack. 🚀 Now they’re rocket fuel for MVPs. ⚡️ You don’t need to be a coder to launch something legit. 💡 Less overthinking, more shipping. 🛠️ Build, learn, repeat. That’s the real growth loop. 🔥 buff.ly/gtfrQpJ

Just read @a16z’s convo w/ Steven Sinofsky on legitimacy in tech - brilliant history lesson. 1️⃣ Legitimacy’s always social, not technical. 2️⃣ Power users drive adoption (then & now). 3️⃣ Once you’re legit, you’re selling a future, not a feature. buff.ly/HXDY0Am