Your Startup Needs a Product Engineer Immediately

Who’s in charge of building your company’s product?

Unless you’re flying solo, there are probably multiple answers to this question. But that’s changing. The role of “product” within almost all industries is trending toward less emphasis on product management and product marketing, and more towards using technology and data to determine everything from what we’re building to how we’re selling it.

It’s the science of Product Engineering, and your company needs one of these engineers, preferably at the executive level. Probably now.

The Evolution of Product

Let’s start by taking a quick walk down the path of entrepreneurial history. It used to be that a company was started with an idea and someone to sell it. We can go all the way back to plucky quacks shilling Dr. Kokane’s Good Tyme Health Elixir and things of that nature.

When business became Business, let’s say around the middle of the last century, companies were founded and/or led by enterprising folks with a grip on growth — MBAs from Ivy League schools who were maybe already monied and connected. People who knew finance, deals, politics.

The technology revolution that exploded from the garages of the 1970s made it mandatory that tech become a part of the product process. And still today, we have the traditional pairing of the business founder/leader and the technology founder/leader. One needs the other, or at least needs to supplement the other side with a well-run team.

When we see both business and technology talents baked into the same person, that tends to be rare. An engineer who can sell? A leader who can code? Unheard of!

These people are no longer rare, and we need them building our product. The CEO builds the company, the CTO builds the technology. The Chief Product Officer wields the technology to grow the company.

From Management to Marketing to Engineering

I’m going to use myself as an example of how product science is evolving with this new dual-threat skillset.

I’m an industrial and systems engineer by education. I was a developer early in my career. As an entrepreneur, I’ve…