“Product leadership is critical,” Sumeru Managing Director John Brennan said on the Scaling with Sumeru podcast. “That’s a function of a couple of things related product-led growth.”
“Number one, we have a generation of users who’ve grown up with the best consumer applications in the world. They’ve been trained to recognize what great software looks like.
“As investors in business software, we invest in software focused on enterprises or businesses. We have to recognize that the users of that software have been trained in their personal lives by their experiences with Facebook and Google, and Amazon.
“We must understand that the bar for the software we create is fantastic and high. It’s created by these companies that are truly iconic companies in that regard.
“The second point is really important to understand about product leadership in today’s world: we’re in a socially linked world. There’s no hiding from mediocre or bad products. Maybe you could keep your customers from talking to one another in the old days. You could offer a reference here or there. Those days are long gone.
“People do their research on the internet. People understand how to find other users. So my perspective is that a customer or user’s social network around a product may be one of the most important and endurable competitive advantages today.
“But it’s also something that you need to tend to. The way you tend to it is by delivering great products. The product simply needs to be great. Not okay, not good, it needs to be very good or great.”
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