Running Product Blindfolded
Read on my website / Read time: 6 minutes
Most Product Managers push off building financial models for their products.
- "That's finance's job."
- "I don't control pricing."
- "I'm not a financial analyst."
- "Ugh. I hate spreadsheets."
- "I only work on a piece of the platform, and my piece doesn't deliver direct revenue."
These are all the excuses I hear.
Some years back, I was leading a team at a fast-scaling company. It was all going great. We were pumping out updates, cross-teams seemed aligned, customer feedback was positive, and our backlog was full.
One day, the CEO asked me to have one of my Product Managers walk him through his roadmap. It was full of exciting updates and ideas. After 15 minutes, the CEO stopped him and asked, "All these features you're proposing... what's the impact on revenue?"
My PM was caught off guard. He fumbled through an answer. Before I could step in to help my PM, the CEO said, "We're spending $X million on your product area. All these ideas sound great, but what I don't see here is what are we getting for that investment?"
We paused. We all knew what my PM was proposing was valuable. They felt valuable. But we didn't have a number. We didn't have a model.
And in that moment, the roadmap looked more like a wishlist than a strategy.
Making Bets Without a View of the Payoff
As product managers, we talk constantly about value.
Customer value. Strategic value. Long-term value.
Yet, too often, when it's time to prioritize or defend a roadmap, we rely on intuition, stakeholder pressure, or vague notions of "customer need" as a proxy for impact.
We don't come prepared with a model for ROI (return on investment) especially one we've built ourselves. Instead, we punt it to Finance. Or someone else. Or we skip it entirely.
One of my go-to questions in my 1:1 PM mentoring calls is how much is:
"How much does your team cost?"
9 out of 10 don't know. Which means they have no idea the type of return they need to be generating. And if we can't do that, how do we as Product Management justify our own existence?
In one of my corporate trainings, a Product Manager told me her goal was to "improve provider scheduling" — enable providers to schedule as many patients in a day as efficiently as possible with as few conflicts as possible, while still enabling enough time for the provider to provide high quality patient care.
When I pressed her for why that metric mattered, she couldn't answer. No one had explained it to her (not even her boss, the PM Director), nor had she tried to find out. She had merely accepted it and started executing.
A little investigation revealed something important:
Their customers (health systems) pay their providers based on how many patients they see and patient satisfaction.
And one of the top drivers of satisfaction?
"How easy was it to schedule an appointment?"
That one insight changed everything for her. She could now connect her scheduling improvements to real customer and business outcomes. It transformed how she:
- Framed her product strategy
- Prioritized her roadmap
- Delivered customer value
- Measured team productivity
- Communicated impact
- And made the case for increased capacity
When we understand ROI, we move beyond just building features. We start driving real results.
Why We Skip the Math (But Should Not)
We didn't become PMs because we love spreadsheets. We love building. We love solving problems. We love helping customers.
So, modeling feels like someone else's job. Finance owns the numbers. Data analysts own, well, the data analysis. We build the roadmap.
But the thing is that our roadmap enables the strategy. The strategy is meant to deliver returns. And without a simple model to estimate returns, we're making bets blindfolded.
The result is:
- We struggle to defend product investments.
- We default to short-term wins over long-term growth.
- We underinvest in initiatives that drive real customer and business value.
- We lose influence in the room when trade-offs get hard.
I Didn't Start Out as a Numbers Person
Early on as a PM, I leaned heavily on Finance for modeling. They'd hand me a 10-tab spreadsheet with complex formulas and assumptions buried six clicks deep. It was so fragile that a change to one number broke the whole dang thing.
So I stopped relying solely on them.
I didn't scrap modeling. I just started doing it differently.
I started by building my own. Simple, fast, directional, and actually useful. Then I'd validate it with Finance. The goal wasn't to produce a GAAP-approved income statement. It was to test assumptions and identify any glaring misses, all to make smarter product decisions.
And it worked. Those back-of-the-napkin models sparked better conversations, faster alignment, and clearer prioritization.
Build the Muscle, Not the Perfect Model
We don't need to become financial analysts. But we do need to build models that help us lead with clarity and confidence.
Here's what that looks like in practice:
1. Start Simple
Use rough math. Estimate impact using key levers — adoption, conversion, retention, pricing, cost — whatever makes sense for your business. (And make sure you understand the business.) Think: "If 5% of users upgrade because of this, that’s an extra $200K per quarter." That's the kind of thinking we want to apply.
2. Build the Model Yourself
Don't start with the Finance spreadsheet. Don't start by asking them to build it. (They're too busy anyway). Start by creating your own.
Start with your product intuition, metrics, and customer understanding. Build something in a single tab. Make the math visible. Outline your assumptions. Use ranges where appropriate and highlight variables. Model best case, worst case, and normal case scenarios. Then, bring in Finance to tighten assumptions and gut-check your logic.
3. Use the Model to Prioritize
Treat ROI like one of your core prioritization criteria. It won't be the only one, but it should be there, alongside customer value and effort.
4. Make it a Living Tool
Our ROI model should evolve as we learn. Ship something? Update adoption numbers. Hear something new in research? Adjust our assumptions. Let the model become a partner in product thinking, not a static doc in a shared drive.
Takeaway: Use ROI Models to Drive, Not Defend
Remember: We're not just building features. We're allocating capital.
And to do that well, we need ROI models we can actually use. Tools that help us think, decide, and lead.
- Don't delegate modeling. Own it.
- Don't aim for precision. Aim for utility.
- Don't wait for permission. Start with your own rough math.
When we ground our product decisions in real, directional impact, we elevate the conversation. We gain trust. And we lead with clarity.
Let's stop flying blind.
