The Biggest Mistake I Made as a Founder That Made Me a Better PM

The biggest product mistake I ever made wasn't a bad feature.

It wasn't poor execution.

It wasn't even a failed launch.

It was believing that I was the customer.

When I started my first startup, I built product based on two things:

• My own opinions.

• And what competitors were doing.

At the time, it felt logical. I was convinced I understood the problem. I used similar products myself. I could see what successful companies were building. So I made decisions based on instinct.

If I liked a feature, we built it. If competitors had it, we considered adding it.

What I didn't do enough of was talk to customers. Not because I didn't care about them. Because I genuinely believed I already understood them.

Looking back, that assumption was expensive. Customers often behaved differently than I expected. Problems I thought were important turned out to be irrelevant. Features I was excited about generated little interest. And some of the most valuable opportunities were things I would never have discovered on my own.

That experience completely changed the way I approach product management today.

Now, whenever I feel highly confident about what users want, I see it as a signal to become more curious, not less. Because confidence is not evidence.

The goal of product management is not to build products we would personally use.

It's to understand problems deeply enough to build products other people can't live without.

Customers don't care about our opinions. They care about whether we solve their problems.

The irony is that becoming a better product manager started when I stopped assuming I had the answers.

And started spending more time listening.