Aditya Agashe

As Product Managers, we have an innate desire to build great products. However, to be a truly great PM, you must be able to take a step back and evaluate when and how to best enter a market (if at all). The first question you should always ask is why should we do this rather than jumping straight to how we do this. Without a clear strategy, your company will cease to exist.

In the first half of this presentation, we will teach strategic frameworks for making crucial business strategy decisions. When a company is looking to enter a new space, it has three fundamental choices: acquire another company already in the space (buy), license from or partner with another company (borrow), or finally, create its own solution (build). As a Product Manager, your job is to find solutions which align with your company’s goals and users’ needs. Exceptional Product Managers know how and when to use the following arsenal of buying, building, or borrowing rather than blinding jumping to building. We will then apply these frameworks and break down how companies like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have utilized the different strategies presented to meet their business goals.

During the second half of the presentation, we will look at some of today’s top tech firms (e.g. Amazon, Airbnb, etc.) and make predictions of what these disruptive companies will do next and why.