5 Ways Web3 Changes Product Management

Having been a product manager and gone through enterprise training in the “Craft,” as well as having built and delivered dozens of products (both hardware and software) over the years — I wanted to take a moment to outline what changes in moving from Web2 and Web3 when it comes to product management.

Change #1: Tokens are additional Products, with additional Complexity

Every Web3 organization which chooses to introduce a token is effectively introducing a new product, which must be “managed” alongside whatever other products the organization is offering. This can include a roadmap, utility and more.

Unlike traditional software or SaaS products, tokens have a number of unique characteristics. The market is flooded with tokens which have not been “Product Managed” well and have spiked, crashed or otherwise failed in various ways. I am expecting product managers of the future to need to undertake significant study of economics, banking and finance as well as have a broad understanding of the Web3 market before they will be able to create a token which offers a “sticky” unique value proposition.

Change #2: Governance is an additional Product

If Web3 product managers don’t have enough to do already, they must also deal with the fact that the governance for their project, it’s design and implementation represents “yet another” product to manage on top of the core offering.

Product Managers in Web3 may often be called upon to make decisions around if and how governance for their project is implemented and be familiar with different possible ways to structure the stakeholders, investors and users taking part in their ecosystem.

Change #3: Community Gets Complicated

In Web3, community goes from “a group of people who hang out with us and use our products” to “a complex, layered and nuanced pool of end users.”

For example, an average infrastructure project might have the following stakeholders:

• Investors who just want to buy and hold the token or receive airdrops
• Validators who want to support your particular PoS network
• Users and Customers who want to use your token for whatever it’s purpose might be

In terms of a “Product,” the token must treat each of these different stakeholders differently and understand how to communicate with, gather data and design the end product in such a way that it will succeed.

In my opinion, Web3 product managers are going to need to “open” a large portion of their work and get used to doping regular group meetings to gather real-time feedback from end users.

Change #4: The Web3 Product Manager Skill Stack Is Much Larger

When I was a product manager, I took an excellent training called “Pragmatic Marketing Practical Product Management.” This was invaluable training, I have no idea how anyone wanting to engage in Product Management could perform their role without training of this type.

The Pragmatic Marketing Institute has a framework for product managers which looks like this:

Product Managers in Web3 probably are going to need to understand a similar framework with added elements: Governance, Community, Tokenomics, Economics and more. Product Managers in Web3 must have a significantly extended skillset from classical product managers.

Change #5: Developer Experience As A First Class Element

My biggest problem with the above Pragmatic Marketing framework in trying to transition it from Web2 to Web3 is that Developers are becoming one of the most critical partners in any Web3 platform.

Having a strong understanding of “Developer Experience” is likely to be a critical factor in the difference between success and failure of a Web3 product. This training likely requires significant exposure to software development or technical evangelism or developer advocacy.

Closing Thoughts

While I have seen some discussion of Web3 Product Management, I believe that there is a massive gap in the professional definition of what this actually involves. No one actually knows what a Web3 Product Manager looks like, or how to find one, or how to train them.

If you are thinking about becoming a Web3 Product Manager, I would love to discuss with you my experience and make some recommendations about how to position yourself for success. If you are trying to hire a Web3 Product Manager, I have a lot of ideas about how to approach training.