Jason M. LemkinCEO, SaaStr · Co-Founder of SaaStr AI, SaaStr Fund, Adobe Sign

Why Founders Misunderstand the Role of VP of Product

24 Dec 2024 · 1 min

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0:49

Short conversation (two speakers) arguing founders commonly misunderstand the VP of Product role because most founders have never worked with a high-performing VP of Product. A great VP of Product is described as hands-on and customer-obsessed—able to spend ~50 hours/week with customers, workflows, integrations and APIs to configure/onboard and keep large customers happy. The speakers note that products typically become complicated even after about $4–5 million in revenue, which increases the need for an experienced VP of Product.

Chapters

Couple reasons I see the VP of product screwed up. One is old and one is newer.
The old reason is most people don't.
Know what a great VP of product is. Most founders have never worked with one.
It's the old thing.
That I've dusted off a bunch of times.
Today you.
Got to meet a great one. You got to know a great one. In most founders.
If they're in a.
Big company they worked with a junior product marketing manager, product person that was super junior.
But they never worked with.
A game changing VP of product that.
Can spend 50 hours a week with.
The customers.
With your workflow, with your.
Integration product, with your API, fixing things.
With your customers.
Figuring out configurations of.
Your products, figuring out onboarding, figuring out.
How to make those big customers happy, figuring out how to save.
Them like.
That is epic because our products typically even after 4 or 5 million revenue.
For most of us they.
Get complicated.