Important Questions for Product Teams from Peter Thiel

I recently finished reading Zero to One (yes, in 2024) by Peter Thiel. Even though the book was published 10 years ago, almost everything Thiel points out in his thoughts is still relevant today. And about the ethical and effective use of AI, about the constant struggle between developers and sales people, and so on.

My favorite is also there:

A bad plan is better than no plan

But most of all, so to speak, I was inspired by 7 questions that need to be asked to the product team. I won't go through all questions, but I will focus your attention on the following:

The Engineering Question: "Can you create breakthrough technology instead of incremental improvements?"

I love the phrase "we're not building a rocket here" when they tell me about some difficulties in development. Not in order to somehow reduce the role of development in the product, but in order to arouse interest in the construction of this very "rocket". It is worth recognizing that developers spend quite a lot of time solving problems that have either already been solved or were caused by our own code a year ago 🙃.

When we make a product, we must focus and improve exactly those parts of it that can now bring us a TOP 1 position in the market and/or dramatically improve the user experience. The developer plays one of the most important roles in this process, because who, if not the developer, knows what we are capable of now.

The Secret Question "Have you identified a unique opportunity that others don't see?"

It often seems to us that all the big and great ideas have already been invented and implemented a long time ago, but, nevertheless, we constantly come across something new and unusual on the market.

And at the same time, every day we are faced with the inconveniences of current solutions in various products, and an important part of our job is to notice these inconveniences, and then figure out how to make the product better.

Yes, it can be scary to go to market with some new and untested solution, but now we have so many opportunities to test hypotheses, build MVPs and test with real users.

It still turns out that you are either a leader or are constantly trying to catch up with him.