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The other option, and probably most common, is to have someone or several folks dedicated to “product management.”  That probably makes sense in larger organizations or as companies grow,

However, I personally think that this is very dangerous for an early company, and I’d go so far as to say it’s a major red flag.  Here’s an example of what you want to avoid

it’s a good sign and highly preferable if the founders focus and own the product process.  Ideally they’re also able to “go deep” and be involved in the entire product management process, writing the specs for engineering teams, managing the priorities, etc…

I think the founders of a startup need to be very cognizant and controlling of the product management process, at least until you become a larger organization, and avoid the temptation to hire “someone dedicated to product.”  In my experience, the more people/layers you add to the process and the further the founders step away from the product management the process, the worse the outcome.

The trouble with my last company was that our experience in software development came from large companies, where your job is just to ship code.

So we thought that a launch was just about writing the code.  And, we did that in 6 months.  But, what we didn't account for was that in a startup, you don't have a ready large group of users just waiting to use your product. So, your launch time must also include a cycle of user experience and marketing.

So, if you do everything in series in a drawn out way like we did: build, market, measure, it's a cycle that can turn months into years.  Eric Ries suggests that shortening an iterative loop and going through such a loop multiple times quickly is the key to success.  I would take that a step further and suggest not only cutting activities to shorten that loop, but to do as much of this loop in parallel.

Our workflow looks like this: get your Unbounce or LaunchRock page up from Day 1 and start marketing before you have a product.  You can gauge interest and get signups from the very beginning until you're done with the first iteration of the product.  Start getting the Craigslist posts out there on Day 1 to get feedback and potential customers immediately.  Once you have enough of an idea of what to build, start mocking up your idea.  Get those mocks back out to potential customers to make sure you're on the right track.  Iterate as much as possible on paper before building, because it's much faster to re-draw than to re-code.  "Delete features" on your paper prototypes as well, reducing what you need to actually build in code.  Try to code as little as possible to shrink that build time to about 1-2 weeks.  By the time you're done building your first prototype, you've already acquired users from doing marketing in parallel.  This puts you in a position to start measuring usage and gauging interest immediately before iterating through that loop again.

Build, market, measure should happen as much as possible in parallel to reduce your launch time and keep your money, morale, and support up.

28 percent are willing to pay at least $10 more

That means companies have an opportunity to differentiate themselves if they can communicate clearly how they give back to their employees, communities and the environment, per the survey.

nearly 50 percent of 18-24- and 25-34-year-olds are more likely to take a pay cut to work for a socially responsible company

4. Optional: Determine which outlet gets the scoop In today’s media landscape, a story covered 15 minutes ago by another blog can already be considered old news. Therefore depending on the type of news and the market you’re in it might be wise to give one specific media channel the scoop.

8. Distribute your press release In a previous step you set up draft emails for all your PR contacts, now is the time to send them.

6. Write draft emails In the previous step you have probably only sent out the news to a handful of contacts on your contact list.

7. Make the announcement When the day finally comes, you can publish your press release (or have it published automatically if you’re using the schedule option).

5. Send personalized emails to journalists, under embargo If you decided not to give the scoop to a certain blog you can still let journalists know about your announcement before you actually make it public.

9. Thank the people that covered your story Congratulations! Now that your press release is out in the open you should see some coverage happening. Be sure to enjoy all the free publicity your company receives and thank the people that cover your story via a personal email so you can start building a relationship with them for your future press releases.

The more we narrowed our focus the less motivated we became.  We went from looking at a massive addressable market to a subset of people and a minimal product offering.

Focusing, as difficult as it was, was necessary given the reality that we were two

Write everything down.

best ways to drastically narrow your scope, it’s easy to list four or five options but having to pick just one and describe it fully really focuses things.

Pitching everyday

it helps you to iterate much faster.

People tend to love your idea when it’s vague, as they develop their own picture of what it will really be.  -- What we found to really work well was building a baseline pitch deck and iterating on it every day based on what we had learned.

Take all the “ands” out. 

We help parents to fix the problems in their child's daily routine and to encourage them to try new things

We help parents to fix the one or two main problems in their child's daily routine. 

It’s tough to not start writing code after your first positive interview.

Not because we found the best problem/solution mix, but rather because we found one solution that we can quickly test and on which we can iterate.

400,000 employees, roughly 40% of whom work from home or on the road, gaming is a way to help colleagues connect and stay engaged, explains Mr. Hamilton.

found that employees trained on video games learned more factual information, attained a higher skill level and retained information longer than workers who learned in less

Still, gaming experts say there are some pitfalls for companies when implementing games internally. Companies need to make sure that the games are designed to actually reward desired behaviors and are not just doling out meaningless awards or badges.