This is probably the most overstated question in every product company. I receive this question all the time from founders, product managers, and marketers. — Unfortunately, there is no one answer to this question. It simply depends. It depends on your industry, your ecosystem, your risk appetite, and your customers. It depends on how well you’ve operationalized your product on the backend, and how prepared your team is in supporting your product in the market.

When is the right time to ship your product? — “Fail fast, and iterate.” — Eric Ries, The Lean Startup I generally agree with the fail fast philosophy, as many startups don’t have the capital to launch something “perfect.” If you wait until everything is buttoned up, you’re probably going to find yourself leapfrogged — or you will run out…

Many people don’t understand the core functions of a technology company, which makes it extremely difficult to understand how product marketing fits into the larger picture of getting these companies’ products to market. — Hiring for this role is difficult for many reasons because the position requires a diverse skill set and exposure to many technological situations that few people have. …

A lot of people often ask me how they should create a marketing plan. Yet before creating a plan, it’s important to first figure out which part of the marketing funnel you need to optimize towards by asking which stage most of your customers are in within the breakdown of the funnel. — In order to set the right marketing strategy, you must first identify which part of the marketing funnel you want to impact. Decide whether 1) you are looking to acquire new customers, or 2) move customers down the funnel to purchase, and advocacy.

Whether you’ve spent a year or two in product marketing or are completely new to the field, it’s important to establish that you enjoy products and are generally curious about them. — Recently, my mom sent me a box of childhood material, in an effort to clean out our family home, and I found a stash of letters that I wrote to a multitude of product companies from cosmetics, to food, to music and more. …

The need for product marketing hires has increased substantially in the last several years, and I believe it will continue to climb in the next decade of work. Technology companies continue to grow at accelerating speeds compared to other industries, and the S&P 500 is a great proxy of this testament. — Startups in both the business to business (B2B) space and business to consumer (B2C) space have realized the need for someone in the company to own packaging, positioning and go-to-market for both their company go-to-market plans as well as their product go-to-market plans. …

Not everyone is cut out to be a Product Marketer, and I would argue that the role is drastically different than any other role in a technology company simply because of how many different skill sets are required to be an effective Product Marketer. — While the industry continues to mold and shift the definition of product marketing, there are some skill sets that I’ve seen to be most important in my tenure. Most new product marketers and aspiring product marketers won’t have every single one of these skill sets, and that is okay. …

How will you measure your life? — I recently had a conversation with my dear friend who is a really well-known product manager in Silicon Valley. For the purposes of this post, I’m going to keep his name anonymous. We often talk about the complexities of working on products and how much emotional bandwidth it takes to manage cross-functional teams, manage a product roadmap, and a product launch. While Product Management is complex in different ways than Product Marketing, they are both heavily influential in the success or the…