should we launch a new product.

Interviewing for a new product role can be challenging. It can be even more challenging when you haven’t run into some of the ad-hoc strategy/execution scenarios that are typically asked in product manager interviews. I found a YouTube channel created by Diego Granados with a lot of free content related to product manager interviews. One video in particular, Product Execution Interview - Should we launch a new product?, had a fantastic framework that helped me answer these types of questions. Below are my notes/talk track I created from the video which gave me much greater confidence when answering product strategy/execution scenarios.

Should Airbnb go into the furniture market?

I would start with a 5 question framework, assuming if we can answer them, we should have enough details to build out a case for building or not building the specific product/service.

1. What is the problem? Is there a particular problem we are trying to solve?
2. Why are we trying to solve this problem?
3. Why are we solving this problem now?
4. What are the risks and how might we mitigate them?
5. What is our market strategy?

#1 What is the problem?

You can ask the interviewer to identify a specific problem or goal for building this new product. If there isn’t a specific problem, come up with one and ask the interviewer if that works.

In the example, we have a specific problem.

Furniture is not suitable for hosting multiple guests one after another and the current furniture is getting damaged.

Always try to confirm with the interviewer with questions like “Does that sound like a good problem to get us started?” before you move onto the next step.

#2 Why are we trying to solve this problem?

Typically you would look at a few things to see if the problem is worth solving. I like to look at 4 different data points to see if there are any indicators to determine if this is a problem worth solving.

1. Signals from the Product: Look at reviews about furniture to see if we could do a sentiment analysis.
2. Customer Data: Look at support tickets to see if there is any explicit feedback related to furniture.
3. User Research: I would conduct interviews/survey the customers with questions specific to furniture.
4. Market Research: Is our competition doing anything in this space? Are there any other furniture providers that target this problem? How do our competitors tackle this challenge?

Remember these 4 key items. They played a big role in helping me answer most strategy related interview questions.

#3 Is this problem worth solving now?

If we determine we have a problem worth solving, we need to find out if this problem worth solving now? We already have a lot on our plate (3,6,12 month roadmap) and is this worth planning or shifting our priorities? To do this I would look at 3 different things:

1. ROI: How much revenue would this generate? How would we measure it (sales, feedback)?
2. Impact:: Run an analysis to determine if this new product will impact other parts of our business or services?
3. Investment: Talk with design, engineering, and other stakeholders (manufacturers too) to understand the time and resources we need to invest to get the product/service up and running.

These 3 elements should help us give us enough information to make a decision on whether or not we should build this product now.

#4 What are the risks? How do we mitigate them?

Now that we have more information on the problem and whether or not we should build this new product, we should think about the risks and possible ways of mitigating them. We can talk further with design, engineering, and other stakeholders to get a better understanding of the risks involved.

With this example, we may not have the necessary experience in designing/manufacturing/delivery of furniture, and building that capacity would be costly and time-consuming. One way to mitigate that risk is to find a vendor/partner that has these capabilities and learn from them and plan out our own capacity.

#5 What is our go-to-market strategy (GTM)?

The last thing I would want to think about is the go-to-market strategy. We would flesh out a full strategy later on, but we should think about if there is a specific user segment we want to target such as power users, location, types of homes, etc.

Keeping it simple, we could communicate the new product with our customers through sales communication, email campaigns, or digital advertising.

Summary

The questions and details in this framework contain a lot of the information interviewers are looking for when asking strategy/execution questions. There is no “right” answer, but having a polished framework like this shows you can strategically build a customer-centric business case, support your ideas with data, and grasp the potential impact before pursuing or not pursuing a product/feature idea.