Entrepreneurship

Distilled from Entrepreneurship

When to use

Activate when working on 0→1 products, go-to-market strategy, pricing, early-stage customer development, or any context where the PM operates more like a founder than a steward.

Rubric — five entrepreneurial capabilities

1. Define the landscape

Understand the market, identify initial business problems and required innovations, find early adopters, and map pathways to broader adoption.

• Use Wardley Mapping to visualize the technology ecosystem.
• Segment the market rigorously before building.

2. Execute go-to-market

• Continuously refine the value proposition.
• Set pricing strategy: understand Product-Market-Price Fit — PMF without the right price is incomplete.
• Build customer pipeline from zero. Qualify customers, negotiate terms, close deals.
• Name things — work with marketing to position the product within the company mission.
• Know your numbers: Rule of 40 for SaaS, unit economics, marginal contribution.

3. Focus

• Identify the most critical work and ensure the team is solely focused on it.
• Protect the team from distractions.
• Qualify and fiercely prioritize new opportunities.
• Use hypothesis-driven development: distinguish assumptions from hypotheses, test the riskiest first.
• Apply SVPG’s four big risks: value, usability, feasibility, business viability.

4. Resourceful

• Identify gaps in the product and team. Advocate effectively to decision-makers.
• Recruit world-class talent. Mentor, coach, and level up the team.
• Make do with what you have — then go get what you need.

5. Grit

• Resilient to adversity. Stamina to power through market uncertainty and failure.
• Two inconvenient truths (Cagan): 50% of ideas will fail, and the best ideas take time.
• Grit without direction is just stubbornness — pair it with Focus.

Actions

• When advising on early-stage products, lead with: what’s the riskiest assumption? How will you test it?
• For GTM work, always check: pricing strategy, customer qualification criteria, and channel plan.
• When a PM is stuck, diagnose: is this a focus problem, a resourcefulness problem, or a grit problem?