Part 2: Bet sizing, B2B strategy and PM in the AI era

Module 2 · Sun 19 Jul

Strategy = resource allocation. Where do you put your money and people? The 70-20-10 rule: 70% core product, 20% expansion ideas, 10% moonshots. Startups focus on proof and learning; big companies balance all three.

• Classify ideas: big bets, pilots, optimisation bets, or avoid - by confidence and upside.
• The PM is the gatekeeper: kill, hold or double down based on evidence and usage, not sunk cost.
• B2B: start as a point solution, grow into a platform, and raise switching costs. Slack spread bottom-up (land and expand); Zoom also sold to enterprise buyers.

Common B2B mistakes: scaling too early, serving everyone, chasing local metrics, burning cash on discounts. AI is shifting PM work from coordination to judgment, taste and prototyping. The dark mode example: find the real need behind a feature request before saying yes.

Two more class ideas: execution realism - predict what will actually get built, since scope quietly explodes; and Airbnb's 11-star experience - imagine an absurdly perfect experience, then work backwards to the product steps (Steve Jobs and the iPhone were the other example of bold intuition).

Class interview case - Spotify Podcasts: answer with wedge + moat + trade-off + success metric + guardrail metric, and look for a growth loop. The Blinkit exercise asked: who's the target, why do they start, and what gets stronger over time?