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Product Management

March’s top product management reads on Mind the Product

Guest Post

Product distribution lessons I learned the hard way

B2B product management

Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML)

Building Product Teams

Business Strategy

Data Driven Product Management

Digital Transformation

Diversity and Inclusion

Minimum Viable Product

OKRs

Prioritisation

Product Design

Product Research

Product Development Process

Product Ethics

Product Discovery

Product Leadership

Product Management Career

Product Strategy

Stakeholder Management

🌎 <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/world-product-day/" style="color:#FFFFFF;text-decoration:underline;">Happy World Product Day!</a> Be sure to celebrate product, yourself, and your peers today! 🎉

Three unconventional ways to be a better product manager 

What product leaders can learn from mergers and acquisitions – Vincent Jong (CPO, Dealfront)

Inside Amex’s mobile app redesign – Jose Quesada at #mtpcon London 2025 (VP Product, Amex)

Breaking into product management: A practical guide for aspiring product professionals

The best resources for product managers in 2025

Eira is an editor for Mind the Product. She's been a business journalist, editor, and copywriter for longer than she cares to think about.

Eira Hayward

Ben Horowitz’s much-repeated phrase describing product managers as the CEOs of their products has led lots of people to get enthused about product management. In this Sunday rewind we look at how MTP co-founder Martin Eriksson disagrees strongly with this thinking. Says Martin: “Unless you’re the founder and the product manager at the same time, you are not the CEO of anything”.
The CEO is ultimately responsible for the success of the business—even that similarity is a stretch, says Martin. A product manager ultimately has a CEO behind them somewhere, and can always pass the buck.
<a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/tag/sunday-rewind/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Read more articles in our Sunday Rewind series.</a>
Martin says that because most product managers don’t pass the buck, this ownership of the problem and willingness to make the hard decisions means that product managers believe they are being a CEO. “However, there is a massive difference between having someone behind you or actually having the final say.”
Martin emphasises that product management is a team sport, and even product leaders are not CEOs of their products. He says: “You are not Steve Jobs, you are not a <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/netflix-abstracts-team-out-of-product-design/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lone genius</a> designing a product from your ivory tower. Never forget that as a product leader you are only as good as your team. Setting them up for success and giving them the space and air cover to do their best is ultimately how you and your product will be successful.”
Read <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/product-managers-not-ceo-anything/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Product managers — you are not the CEO of anything</a> in full to get an understanding of why it can be dangerous for product managers to buy into the idea that they are the CEOs of their products.

core/freeform

The key principles of PLG: Leah Tharin at #mtpcon London 2025 (Product Advisor)

How to structure your product org- Trisha Price (CPO, Pendo)

How to craft a product vision: Ebi Atawodi at #mtpcon London 2025 (Director of Product, YouTube)

Black History Month: Our favourite lessons from from Black Product Leaders at #mtpcon

The journey to SVP Product – 3 things to know (Shannon Scott, Airwallex)

How Superhuman built its AI-powered email search: Lorilyn McCue (AI Product Manager) – Product Unplugged

Lessons from Google Maps’ pricing crisis: Thor Mitchell (ex Google, Miro, CPO Executive-in-Residence)

It’s the Strategy, stupid – Andrew Martinez-Fonts (VP Product, Honeysales)

LLM workflows for product managers: 3 key takeaways (Niloufar Salehi, Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley) – ProductTank SF

SUNDAY REWIND: Product managers – you are not the CEO of anything

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SUNDAY REWIND: Product managers – you are not the CEO of anything

Eira Hayward

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