Earning our keep 💰, problem framing 🧩, building great products 🛠️✨

ROI matters at the product level, not the feature level. Products must earn roughly 5–6x their maker-team costs to justify investment ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ 

Sign Up |Advertise|View Online TLDR Together With TLDR Product Management 2026-01-20 Vibe coding is ending. Product work is becoming more strategic (Sponsor) Multi-agent systems now let PMs validate ideas, ship features, and acquire customers in minutes without deep domain expertise. Instead of using AI only for coding, you can orchestrate workflows that cut cycle time and free up strategic thinking. The real shift: you scale by making better decisions, not by working longer hours Read how it works → 📱 News & Trends Earning our keep (4 minute read) ROI matters at the product level, not the feature level. Products must earn roughly 5–6x their maker-team costs to justify investment, and that simple ratio should anchor strategic conversations with CEOs. Solving Problems the Hard Way (7 minute read) Real progress comes from the hard, human work of shaping clear lanes, assigning ownership, and sustaining good habits over time. Frameworks matter less than disciplined sensemaking, shared accountability, and the willingness to adapt as reality shifts. 🚀 Opinions & Tutorials Your problem framing is sabotaging your strategy (4 minute read) Strategy fails when teams skip problem design and rush to solutions measured by usage instead of value. The real moat is collaborative problem framing, which creates a shared understanding that AI cannot replicate. Skill gives you power. Taste decides how you use it. (7 minute read) Late in a career, execution stops being the constraint, and judgment becomes the work. Taste shifts from spotting flaws to restraining power, serving as the only defense against incentives that reward speed over coherence. 🧑‍💻 Resources & Tools Demystifying AI Agents for Managers: A Practical Setup That Improves Delegation and Reduces Rework (4 minute read) With less time and energy, a manager used AI agents to encode expectations upfront, reducing micromanagement, rework, and the need to hover. 25 Things I Believe In to Build Great Products (6 minute read) Great products are built by small, empowered teams that move fast, focus relentlessly, and learn directly from users. Speed, judgment, and a builder mindset matter far more than process, credentials, or internal theater. 🎁 Miscellaneous Uncle Rico and the Tragedy of the Great Idea That Goes Nowhere (7 minute read) Ideas are cheap; outcomes are scarce. In a crowded, AI-amplified market, traction comes from selling concrete results and reduced risk, not from insisting an idea should speak for itself. The ensh*ttification of ensh*ttification (5 minute read) Ensh*ttification isn't inevitable - it happens when incentives shift and trust stops being protected. For Tailscale, keeping personal users happy is not a loss leader, but the engine of enterprise growth. ⚡ Quick Links Do LLMs Actually Change the Economics of Rebuilding Enterprise Software? (3 minute read) LLMs speed up code, not enterprise complexity. Coding Agents are Good First-Time User Testers (2 minute read) Coding agents are useful first-time user testers because they expose where interfaces rely on hidden assumptions. Love TLDR? Tell your friends and get rewards! Share your referral link below with friends to get free TLDR swag! https://refer.tldr.tech/b3142ada/9 Track your referrals here. Want to advertise in TLDR? 📰 If your company is interested in reaching an audience of product management professionals and decision makers, you may want to advertise with us. Want to work at TLDR? 💼 Apply here, create your own role or send a friend's resume to jobs@tldr.tech and get $1k if we hire them! TLDR is one of Inc.'s Best Bootstrapped businesses of 2025. If you have any comments or feedback, just respond to this email! Thanks for reading, Ellen Le Manage your subscriptions to our other newsletters on tech, startups, and programming. Or if TLDR Product Management isn't for you, please unsubscribe.