Old vs New
The New Product Playbook articulates a fundamental shift from optimizing for "business success" to optimizing for "user relationship health". The core insight is that nurturing meaningful relationships with users leads to more resilient and sustainable businesses, especially over the long run. Every other difference is downstream of this one.
You can arrive at the explicit principles of The New Product Playbook by working backwards from this goal.
For example, in order to optimize for relationship health, it quickly becomes clear that your masters are important. Who are you actually internally incentivized to build for? Users? Investors? A board?
This picture will become more clear as you work through this essay. For now, here's some differences to help add color:
| Old Product Playbook | New Product Playbook |
|---|---|
| Metric-centric decision making | Relationship-centered decision making |
| "How can we optimize this flow?" | "How can we solve more user pain better than anyone else? |
| A/B testing as primary decision making vector | User informed intuition and craft as guiding forces |
| Short-term conversion optimization | Long-term relationship building |
| Many bugs and inconsistencies in the product | Zero bug tolerance. A bug is anything a user thinks is a bug |
| Growth hacking | Organic, word-of-mouth growth |
| Retention is driven by features | Retention is driven by the overall experience |
| Aquisition is driven through paid media | We can develop the relationship before sign-up through value driven organic social to |
| Lacks conviction without data | Develops strong POV and taste |
| "It's okay to build a product you don't use." | "Why would you build something you don't use?" |
| Incentivizes corner cutting | Incentives integrity |
| Test referral incentives | Drives organic referrals through value |
| Seeks funding | Prioritizes profitability |
| Communicates vaguely and reactively | Communicates proactively and transparently |
This playbook is for you if:
- You're building products in increasingly competitive markets where technical differentiation is becoming harder
- You value craft and quality but need a framework, vocabulary and throughline to justify this approach
- You're seeking sustainable differentiation that competitors can't easily copy
- You believe there's something fundamentally broken about metrics-obsessed product development
- You want to make products that fufill its makers and users alike.
This approach might challenge you if:
- Your primary goal is maximizing short-term growth metrics at all costs
- You work in an environment where every decision requires A/B test validation
- You operate in a market with little competition where relationship quality isn't yet a factor (not for much longer)
- You can't imagine a world where you role back a KPI improving experiment
- Your goal is to exit
With that contrast in mind, let’s explore the forces reshaping our industry and why The New Product Playbook is more imporant than ever.