Build What Matters

Delivering Key Outcomes with Vision-Led Product Management

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Lead with a customer-centric product vision.

Rapid iteration, A/B testing, and growth hacking—these buzzwords have everyone’s attention in product management today. But while they dominate the current discussion, something even more significant has been lost in their limelight: long-term value creation for the customer.

Product advisors Rajesh Nerlikar and Ben Foster believe that consistently delivering meaningful outcomes requires a deep understanding of your customer’s definition of success. Combine a bold customer-centric vision with a practical execution strategy, and you have a recipe that reveals product development priorities and the pathway to innovation.

In Build What Matters, Rajesh and Ben introduce you to their methodology for becoming a product driven company. Through their tested strategies and stories of success, you’ll learn how Vision-Led Product Management helps you achieve company objectives by meeting both current and future customer needs.

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Contents

Part 1. Making Product Management Work

Given our experience having worked with over 60 companies in 6 years, we've identified the top 10 dysfunctions in product management and present the Vision-Led Product Management framework as a solution.

Part 2. Creating a Product Vision and Strategy

We present three key concepts: 1) Identifying metrics that matter 2) Creating a customer journey vision and 3) Working backwards from that vision to create a product strategy that spans multiple years.

Part 3. Bringing Vision-Led Product Management to Your Company

Now we get tactical and show you how to build a roadmap that balances strategic work towards your vision, iterative changes for optimization, and product operations. We also dive into creating the right processes, the right team and the right culture to roll out Vision-Led Product Management at your organization.

Who This Is For

Startup Founders & CEOs

Understand what it means to be product driven and how it impacts growth.

Build What Matters provides a playbook to have the right foundational elements in place to establish a strong product vision to accelerate your business growth.

Product Execs & CTOs

Establish a product vision and strategic plan to grow your product portfolio.

Your company looks to you to own and document the product vision and strategy, plus have an operational plan to deliver. Our Vision-Led Product Management framework guides you through this.

Product Team Leads

Proactively own your product vision.

Successful product team leads are proactive and show ownership of their product. We show you how to choose KPIs, craft a customer journey vision and document a strategy that your company supports.

Entire Product Teams

Ensure everyone is headed in the same direction.

Product teams need to collaborate to enable alignment. We provide you with the resources to drive alignment discussions and expand your product culture to be product driven.

Individual Product Managers

Identify solutions for the 10 common product dysfunctions.

Even under the best conditions, product teams struggle with 10 common dysfunctions. Learn how to identify them and solve them.

Investors & Accelerators

Know what you are getting out of product teams.

One of the most important characteristics of a great investment opportunity is product orientation from the founding team. We help identify how to assess if teams are set up for product success.

See What Other Product Leaders Are Saying

"Ben and Rajesh's book reminds product teams what is most important - the customer - and that enabling technology is there to solve problems for our customers in ways that are just now possible."

Marty Cagan

Founder of Silicon Valley Product Group and Author of Inspired

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"Putting your customer at the center of your product vision is essential for any company to succeed today. Build What Matters outlines how to do just that, priming your company for growth."

Melissa Perri

Author of Escaping the Build Trap and CEO of Produx Labs

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"Build What Matters thoughtfully explains what it means to be a product-driven company. It presents a clear process for leading with a customer-centric vision, making it a must-read for current and aspiring product leaders."

Gibson Biddle

Former Vice President at Netflix

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"Build What Matters is packed full of hard-won, tactical advice based on the authors' real experience. It's likely o become one of the most dog-eared and well-worn references on even the most experienced PM's bookshelf. "

Fareed Mosavet

EIR at Reforge, former product leader at Slack, Instacart, RunKeeper, and Zynga

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"Ben Foster and Rajesh Nerlikar have written the bible of customer-centric product management."

Jeffrey Rayport

Board Member at several technology companies and Professor at Harvard Business School

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Meet The Authors

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Ben Foster

Co-Founder and Principal Advisor / Coach

Featured as a speaker at top industry events and on numerous podcasts, Ben has more than 20 years of product management experience. He is chief product officer at WHOOP and was formerly a senior product manager at eBay, vice president of product at Opower, and chief product officer at GoCanvas.

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Rajesh Nerlikar

Co-Founder and Chief Product Advisor / Coach

Rajesh has more than 15 years of product management experience. Prior to becoming chief product advisor at Prodify, he was a technology consultant at Accenture, an entrepreneur, a product manager at Opower, a senior product manager at HelloWallet, and a director of product at Morningstar. He is also currently serving as vice president of product at Savonix, a Prodify client.

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