A return of the king: What’s next for tech in a time of scarce capital

(Note: This article has been cross-posted on LinkedIn by Barry Po, Brilliant’s Founder and CEO)

Some years ago, I found myself in the presence of a VC sporting a t-shirt that read “Make stuff that people want.” 

As simple and obvious as it may be to say, it’s equally easy to find product leaders who will readily attest to just how incredibly hard it is to do.

Product management today is a discipline under fire from many sides. Burnout from having to keep up with unceasing technology advancements in areas like AI. The pressure to monetize every feature or deliver every offering under a SaaS- or subscription-style business model. Not to mention the retreat of many companies who find it increasingly challenging to make strategic investments that advance product development.

If you’re such a product leader and feeling burned out, you’re not alone. A recent survey from EY revealed employees and leaders alike feeling overwhelmed by the constant, rapid evolution of AI, with 50% of senior leaders saying enthusiasm about AI integration and adoption had declined in their organizations.

At the same time, consumers and businesses alike have become skeptical about products claiming to be the “next big thing.” 

Journalist and author Cory Doctorow writes in the Financial Times about the world entering the “enshittocene” – a build on “enshittification,” which became the American Dialect Society’s Word of the Year for 2023. As Doctorow puts it – we find ourselves today in a world full of products and platforms undergoing a three-stage evolution.

“First, platforms are good to their users,” writes Doctorow. “Then, they abuse their users to make things better for their customers. Finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves.”

And then he says: “There is a fourth stage: they die.”

Doctorow’s views seem prescient, if not emblematic, of the landscape that product leaders have to live in everyday. While innovation has never been faster, they may find themselves making decisions that are difficult and at odds with the mission of “making stuff that people want.”

Some recent examples: Google recently announced it is discontinuing the Nest Protect, the only product in memory, like ever, to make your home smoke detector something you’d gleefully share with your friends and family. In December, NVIDIA announced it would begin restricting subscribers of its Geforce Now game streaming service to 100 hours of playtime a month, which as many a Redditor might say, “kind of BS.” And in January, Netflix announced yet another subscription increase despite reporting a record increase in new subscribers.

Maybe it’s just a sign of the times. The era of bountiful capital is over. And with that capital scarcity, a desire from entrenched investors to return to business fundamentals: strong earnings per share, efficient delivery, and maximized profit.

It’s recognition that gone are the days of deep wallets to drive high growth, where the rallying cry was for startups and high-growth ventures to secure market share at any cost.

Which leaves those who are tech leaders and masters of product in their organizations asking the question: where does product go from here?

Briefly, IMO: it spells an opportunity to return to form. 

While it seems like product teams everywhere are facing the reality of needing to re-evaluate what value their offerings create, or how they’re monetized, or even whether they deserve to exist – great product leadership has never been more important. 

In the face of constraint, whether financial, organizational, or market – are new opportunities to innovate. Instead of asking “How do we offer less and charge more,” product leadership can ask “How do we get back to creating value?”

Here are some thoughts I’ve had recently about the emerging critical success factors for product leaders today:

Product teams must remain the voice of the customer. That’s a core responsibility that can be easy to overlook at a time when stakeholders are demanding profitability and it seems like the easiest thing to do is cleave away “unnecessary” parts of the product experience to achieve short-term results. Product leaders can (and must) still fiercely advocate for the customer at every level of product development. And in today’s world – may be the only people who can really connect the dots between customers, features, benefits, financial return, and ultimately avoid the potential slippery slope of product prioritization becoming bean-counting exercises. 

It’s imperative to seek opportunities to give more than take. Nothing feels worse than being on the wrong end of a relationship that is obviously lop-sided. And customers who may feel jilted by the products they used to love dearly may feel like they’re being asked to put more in to get less out. While it may very well be a reality that business models, pricing, and even feature sets may need to adapt to changing circumstances, a little customer empathy can go a long way to making tough decisions easier to digest. If pricing needs to change, what can be offered to alter the value equation for the customer? If a much loved feature has to be sunset, can businesses find a way to openly recognize and address a customer’s likely disappointment?

Leaders must seek facts rather than opinions to yield insight. Early in my career, I was mentored to help teams go with what they knew, not what they thought. And that still holds today – in businesses that feel the need to react, it’s easy to get stakeholder opinions on topics like what matters most to customers, or how customers are likely to receive a product’s next iteration. Ultimately, such opinions must give way to facts – and rather than asking stakeholders what they think, product teams have the ability to reduce uncertainty by engaging customers and finding out. Those insights might yield creative solutions to challenging circumstances – instead of leaning on the first option to come to mind, there might be a better way.

And this just scratches the surface. Put simply, the path to getting back to making exciting products comes from getting back to what successful product teams embody as a fundamental truth: Even if you feel like you know your customers well, you can always get to know them even better. And with a modicum of empathy, understand how they’re responding to the world around them – and how what you offer can better fit into the world they live and work in.

As the old saying goes, “The Customer is King.” It may just be the time to hail a return of the King.