I am seeing a lot of Twitter debates on whether Twitter should have integrated NFT PFPs or not. These are mostly based on whether people believe in web3 or not. Reading these values driven twitter threads won’t help you become better at Product.

What is more productive instead? Doing the exercises below.

  • Let’s go back a year. Lets assume you were leading the Twitter New Initiatives/ web3 team. Jack comes to you to ‘do something on web3’. How would you have proceeded? This is what CEOs do. Give abstract problem statements. How would you have given structure to it? This is a good exercise for a SPM/Lead looking to head Product teams in the future.

  • You are not the HOP. The HOP to whom you report to came up with the charter for this team based on what Jack asked for. Let’s say the roadmap your HOP came up with consists of NFTs, Payments, Gaming, Super creators etc. You are the Product Lead for NFTs. The HOP has asked you to create a 3 yr vision doc on Twitter - NFTs integration. A very high level doc to inspire the PMs in your team and give them direction. What would your vision doc contain?

  • You are the PM who is executing the PFP project. What would your spec look like? How would you milestone it? What would be the success metrics of this project? What are the risks? Would you have come up with the same MVP that Twitter came up with? Would you have built it as part of Twitter’s paid product: Twitter Blue vs building it for the core product? What are the trade offs? How would you have designed it?

If I was a web3 company CEO hiring new PMs, I would have made this exercise part of the interview process.