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My framework for creating longer term roadmaps

man wearing black and white stripe shirt looking at white printer papers on the wall

As product managers (and product owners), one of our core responsibilities is to create, manage and own the product roadmap. Not only what we are planning to achieve in the next few sprints but also to be able to show what is a mid and long term vision for the product (or part of product) that we are responsible for. We don’t do this because our managers ask us to do so. We do it because the product is often in the centre of the business impacting many stakeholders. For example, the marketing team needs to prepare marketing campaigns to support new feature launches, customer support needs to plan for more support tickets when a big feature and redesign is planned and many others. 

In this post, I’ll give you a framework that helps you create a longer term roadmap so that the dependencies mentioned above are addressed as well as the product managers aren’t forced to make unreasonable commitments.

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5 easy ways to find a startup idea

Getting the right startup idea that would be worth pursuing is, obviously, one of the most important steps in starting your business. I’m not a very creative person and coming up with ideas wasn’t always easy for me. And I was definitely not alone who was struggling with finding the right idea. If you are like me, I have a solution for you. Here are the 5 different ways that work for me when a need to come up with new ideas.

I’ve met two kinds of startup founders. The first type are the ones with a very vivid imagination, visionaries who are sometimes too impractical and therefore need to have someone who are very practical and business oriented by their side.

The latter guys are not very creative though and as I mentioned, I’d consider myself not creative as well. They enjoy implementing and executing already existing ideas into life rather than generating new ones.

Both types can experience difficulties with finding the right idea. Being too creative is also not very good sometimes, as you could come up with an extremely crazy solution for crazy guys like you who are so exceptional that the market they form will be tiny. Or you would even not be able to stick with one idea and keep changing it to make make it perfect.

Here are the 5 ways that help me find the right startup idea when I need it.

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Improve your startup pitch, avoid these usual mistakes

A startup pitch is usually your five minutes of glory that can help you attract the investors. Pitching your startup to them is often the only time you get when you are a first time founder and the investors don’t know you. They, on the other hand, hear a lot of pitches and you are “only” one of the many founders they have seen. It’s not a good starting position. But if you avoid making the mistakes that most less experienced entrepreneurs make, you increase your chances with the investors significantly.

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7 tips to help you win Startup Weekend


I should probably say “7 tips to help you maximize your chance to win Startup Weekend”, because if more teams follow my advice, there will only be a one winner anyway. And quite frankly, it still doesn’t guarantee anything because there are judges that decide and pick the winners. I’ve mentored a lot of teams on Startup Weekends over the past few years and I noticed that the top 3 teams have always had something in common. They succeeded in validation, business and product – what are the categories for judging criteria.  Here are my 7 steps that help you succeed and maximize your chance to win Startup Weekend .

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The right approach to validate your idea during Startup Weekend

No problem – no startup. Every successful startup solves a problem. Without a problem, there is no solution and therefore no business. If you want to succeed on Startup Weekend, you’ll have to quickly validate that your idea solves a real problem in order to have enough time to build the right prototype and prepare the business case. 95% of teams that I mentored during four or five Startup Weekends used the wrong approach to validating the problem and their ideas. Therefore, they had to double (or even triple) their effort if they wanted to fix it and still get a chance to succeed. I am going to quickly explain you what is the mistake and how to avoid it to validate whether your idea solves a real problem.

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Don’t do startups that everyone likes

Let’s admit it. When you tell someone about your idea, you want them to like it. You are wired to crave for being liked all the time, whatever you do. And I’ve been the same, for now. I decided to change it, because I realized how toxic those words – “I LIKE IT!” – are. It happened quite recently.

Igor and I have been working on Mentegram for two years. It’s been an amazing journey with an amazing team and people we met. I’m still very passionate about it, because I see how we are going to help many people improve their mental health conditions and therefore their lives. I really like this mission that Mentegram has. Being able to improve health of millions is very inspiring and motivating. And that leads to a problem that we haven’t expected.

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Business Model Canvas for Google Docs

Business Model by Alex OsterwalderAre you searching for the Business Model Canvas that you want to share with your remote team, or just take with you whenever you want? I was searching as well and couldn’t really find one. Of course, there are some apps or templates, but neither of them were really simple to use. So I logged on to my Google Docs account and created a template in Spreadsheets that you all can use.

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