Diagnosing the Business Challenges Behind a Product You Love

Choose a product you love. Then step into the shoes of the company that builds it: what are the biggest pain points the company has with this product? ```hint Follow the money and the dependencies Many of a company's problems never appear on screen: how the product earns money, what each user costs to serve, which partners or platforms it relies on, and who could take its users. Check each of those before turning to user complaints. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - By the company's pain points, do you mean business problems such as growth, costs, competition and regulation, or should user frustrations count too? - Should I stop at identifying the pain points, or also say which one I would tackle first and how? - Can I choose any product, including one from a competitor of the company I am interviewing with? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A short, credible reason the product is a favorite, and a clear account of how its business works: who pays, for what, and what it costs to deliver - Company pain points across revenue, costs, dependence on partners or platforms, competition and trust, each backed by something visible from outside - Where user problems turn into business problems, such as frustration that drives churn - A ranking of the pain points by impact, with the reason the top one matters most - A direction for addressing the top pain point and how the company would know it was working ### Follow-up Questions - If you joined as this product's PM, which pain point would you work on first, and what would you ship in your first quarter? - Which of these pain points can the company never fully remove, and how should it live with it? - How would you check that your top pain point is real using only public information?