Most "product strategies" are vision statements with a slide deck. A real product strategy is a set of choices — about what you will and won't do — that are specific enough to create genuine trade-offs. Here's what that actually looks like in practice.
The clearest description of strategy I've encountered came from Roger Martin's "Playing to Win": strategy is an integrated cascade of choices about where to play and how to win. Not aspirations. Choices. And choices only count as choices if they exclude something. If your strategy is "do everything well," you don't have a strategy — you have a hope.
I've reviewed product strategies from dozens of companies at various stages. The most common failure mode: documents that sound strategic but don't make any actual choices. They commit to being "the best product in the market" without defining which market. They say they'll "focus on enterprise while not ignoring SMB." They promise to "prioritize retention without sacrificing growth." Every one of those statements is a failure to choose.
Real strategy is uncomfortable. It requires saying explicitly: we will do this, and not that. Serve these users, not those. Compete here, not there. The discomfort of those exclusions is the reason most strategies avoid them. And it's exactly why most strategies are useless in practice.
The Five Choices That Define a Product Strategy
When I help teams build product strategy, I organize it around five decisions. Each one is a real choice with real exclusions. If you can't make each of these choices clearly, you don't have a strategy yet — you have material to work with.
1. Who is the user you're optimizing for?
Not your entire user base. Not "everyone who might conceivably use our product." The specific user whose success you will prioritize when you have to make trade-offs. This is the hardest choice for most teams because it feels like abandoning users — but the alternative is building a mediocre product for everyone instead of a great product for someone.
Figma's early strategy was clear: designers. Not business users. Not non-technical stakeholders. Designers. Every decision was made through that lens. The collaboration features they built, the pricing model they chose, the integrations they prioritized — all of it optimized for designers. Other users could and did use Figma, but they weren't the primary optimization target. This clarity is a significant reason Figma took market share from Sketch and InVision.
2. What specific problem are you solving?
Not a general problem category — a specific one. "We help teams collaborate" is not a problem. "We eliminate the round-trip between designers and developers caused by handoff friction" is a problem. Specific enough that you can measure whether you're solving it. Narrow enough that you can actually be the best solution for it.
3. Where do you compete and where do you defer?
This is your market scope choice. Which customer segments, geographies, use cases, and price points are you actively pursuing? Which are you deliberately leaving to others — at least for now? This choice determines where you invest in sales, marketing, product, and support.
4. What is your moat — your source of sustainable advantage?
Why will users choose you over alternatives in two years? Not because your product is better today — because you're building something that compounds over time. Network effects. Data advantages. Switching costs that increase as users invest more. Brand that resonates deeply with a specific segment. If you can't describe your moat clearly, you're probably competing on features — which is a temporary and exhausting way to compete.
5. What capabilities do you need to build, and what must you do first?
Strategy is not just about what you'll do but in what order. The sequencing of capability building often determines whether a strategy succeeds or fails. A company that tries to serve enterprise before it has reliable security and compliance tooling will fail. A consumer product that scales marketing before it has retention will fail. What's the first domino? What has to be true before the rest of the strategy can work?
The Process: Building Strategy from Evidence
Strategy doesn't emerge from a two-day offsite with sticky notes. It emerges from rigorous thinking about reality — your users' reality, your competitive reality, and your organizational reality — combined with the courage to make genuine choices.
Start with honest diagnosis. Before strategizing about the future, be clear about the present. Who are your current highest-value users? What do they actually use the product for? Where does the product work beautifully and where does it break down? What competitive threats are real versus theoretical? Honest diagnosis of the current state is the foundation of useful strategy.
Identify the strategic question. Usually there's one key question that determines which direction makes sense: Should we go upmarket to enterprise or stay in SMB? Should we expand internationally now or consolidate domestically? Should we build adjacent features or deepen the core? Identifying the actual strategic question is half the work.
Generate options, evaluate them rigorously. For each direction, what would have to be true for this to be the right choice? What evidence do you have? What evidence would you need? Which option creates the most defensible position over three years?
Choose, document, and communicate. Make the choice. Write it down with the reasoning. Share it widely enough that the team can make daily decisions that are consistent with it. A strategy that lives only in the PM's head is not a strategy — it's a personal conviction.
When Strategy Goes Wrong
Strategy by consensus: When every stakeholder has veto power over every choice, you end up with a strategy that offends no one and excludes nothing. Good strategy requires someone with enough organizational credibility to make choices that some people won't like.
Strategy as aspiration: "We will be the leading platform for X." This is a destination, not a route. Strategy describes the choices you'll make to reach the destination, not just the destination itself.
Strategy as annual event: Strategy written once a year and not revisited until the next annual cycle is strategy divorced from reality. Markets move. The strategy should be a living document that gets updated when evidence suggests it should — not when the calendar says it should.
Working on product strategy?
I've helped founders and product leaders build strategies that make real choices and create real clarity. If you're at an inflection point and need to think through the strategic options, let's connect.
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