Last month, Hector Serrano from Wispr Flow put out a video that caught the attention of everybody on the internet.
https://x.com/hectorserrranoo/status/2108260769603486100?embedable=true
It wasn't a particularly intriguing topic either. It was about how Wispr Flow can create a win-win with creators in getting out their proposition. Why did it work? He knew exactly who he was speaking to, and he communicated what the value truly was for them, in a calm and composed manner.
And that becomes such a big deal when you look at the market. If you've used Wispr Flow, you'd imagine it's one of the most commoditizable products out there. It has limited virality and limited network effects. It's predominantly about the quality of the transcription, and with the imminent entry of the operating systems and the big labs, it's going to be part of their core feature set.
Clearly, the product needs to be great for it to win. But now, standing out is turning out to be a close contender, just to even be seen.
Similarly, Matt Palmer from Grok is another interesting case. His Grok Bot update videos keep breaking through to his target audience: the one from last week passed 1.7 million views, and his latest crossed 280,000 in under a day. He was already known for creating fantastic content at Replit, and he brought his own distinctive style of presenting with him.
https://x.com/mattyp/status/2117302664799396177?s=20&embedable=true
https://x.com/mattyp/status/2120206234804727821?embedable=true
HeyClicky is a similar case. Farza Majeed generated 15 million views for a relatively straightforward product, presented in an interesting way.
https://x.com/FarzaTV/status/2041314633978659092?embedable=true
Do Hector, Matt and Farza understand what the consumer wants any less than a classical product manager? I would imagine not. And it's not just the marketers. More and more founders are taking a much more public stance, talking about their products directly to their consumers. The skill of selling yourself in an interesting way is starting to be a non-negotiable.
It's not just the product leaders; it's the CEO's job as well. Look at the number of CEOs who have started doing this, whether it's Sundar Pichai posting Google demos himself, Satya Nadella talking up Microsoft's latest, or Tobi Lütke building in public at Shopify. You can see a trend there. In a cluttered market, standing out matters more, and the mindset matters more than ever before.
It's not about Twitter or Substack
And it's not about Twitter, Facebook or Substack. To be honest, the channel is completely dependent on where your customers and your target audience sit. It may be G2 reviews, it may be Twitter, it may be LinkedIn, it could be the right forums. Doesn't matter. And it's not about being salesy or constantly trying to push what you have. Sometimes it's about genuinely being helpful in the periphery of the domain you operate in.
Shouldn't good product managers have been doing that anyway?
But shouldn't the product manager have been doing that all along? Well, yes. Technically, a good product manager would have been scouring the customer channels on a weekly or monthly basis and responding to key queries. That said, in a lot of organizations, with the deluge of "stakeholder management" and "prioritization meetings", that genuine customer connect has been deprioritized for more "important" alignment activities. The really good product managers are probably already doing it, but now it has pretty much become a non-negotiable.
So, coming back to it: what skills start to matter more? I trust more and more product managers will need to be comfortable putting their face out there, being able to eloquently present what they have to offer and, well, not be shy.
Clearly, a lot of customer service problems can and should be agentified. Booking did a good job of that. But a reasonable number of jobs need your face out there and your personal touch, because if you're handing over everything you do to a bot, what is your reason to exist anyway?
When building becomes cheap and your customer base is large enough, feedback comes in from every direction. The core role is to stay consistent with a vision and not get distracted by short-term feedback that trades off your long-term vision. That is a big part of orchestrating building right now.
Being a builder is a temporary crutch
Today, there's all the talk about the builder and how that's a must-have skill. But my hunch is that it won't really last. Not because it's not important, it clearly is, but because it'll become table stakes, and then not sufficient, over the next year or two. When everybody can build, building is not what gets you out. True understanding of your customer and their problems, and your ability to articulate and sell it, becomes what really matters.
It's like Excel or Microsoft Word. Sure, there was a point in time when you had to put Microsoft Word on your resume as a skill set, and that was worth something. Today, that's not even a question. You're assumed to know it.
That's why there was a separate post going around saying the ideal job profile is a person who's perennially online and able to generate buzz for the product. That person is rare, and that's the person who's going to be calling the shots.
Visioning, combined with amplification and the ability to cut through the noise to the core, is the skill set to be had.
