Why Some Founders Distrust Product Managers (But Can’t Quite Explain Why)
You chose to build a product team because you wanted to:
Scale: You needed someone to delegate to, coordinate efforts, and manage complexity.
Develop the product: You needed someone who deeply understands the product and the business to build something users love.
Free up time: You knew you couldn’t do everything alone. You couldn’t be in every meeting or make every decision. You needed someone to trust.
You used to be a one-person orchestra. You personally talked to customers, but now you needed a proxy to advocate for them. You held the product vision, but now you needed someone to carry it forward. You lacked process, and you needed someone to implement it.
So, you hired Product Managers.
Because every peer company has PMs. Google is a PM success story. 99% of successful companies follow this model.
Yet, you still end up in every meeting. You’re doing exactly what you used to do, but now with the uncomfortable feeling that there is a middleman in the room. Secretly, you distrust your PMs. But you push the feeling down. You tell yourself it’s a necessary growing pain—a temporary discomfort, even a sign of maturity that the board expects.
After all, every peer company has PMs. Google is a PM success story. 99% of successful companies follow this path.
So you start questioning yourself:
"Is it me?" Am I just unable to trust and delegate?
"Is it them?" Do I just need the right person? You start hiring and firing PMs. The person becomes the problem.
"Is it our process?" You bring in product consultants. You see improvements for 3 months... until you realize you’ll need to invest in more coaching 6 months down the line.
But every peer company has PMs. Google is a PM success story. 99% of successful companies follow this path.
But what if:
Every company that succeeded actually didn’t have Product Managers?
99% of both successful and unsuccessful companies have Product Managers? (Meaning PMs aren't the deciding factor of success).
Every founder is unique, and Google’s success story is theirs, not yours?
Maybe this explains why there is a different definition of a Product Manager at every single company, and why it’s so hard for founders to grasp and implement it.
Here is the good news. The biggest business success stories actually happened without classic Product Management:
Apple (Jobs era): The Mac, the iPhone.
Braun (Dieter Rams era).
Airbnb: Recently shifted away from a traditional PM-focused model.
McLaren and Lotus (at scale-up phase).
All of these companies developed strong products, deep customer understanding, and flawless coordination despite massive complexity.
How? Because they avoided the PM Trap.
The PM Trap is thinking that because you used to be a one-person orchestra, you need to hire someone else to become that one-person orchestra.
This is why delegation feels so uncomfortable. You are trying to hand off your entire founder brain to one person (or a team led by one person). You expect them to talk to customers the exact same way you do, and create a product vision the exact same way you do.
But they are not you. You did everything yourself because you belong to a rare breed of entrepreneurs who had to do it all to survive.
Now, it’s about transferring responsibility, not to one "mini-founder," but to your team.
As the proverb goes: "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."
This is why your gut tells you something is wrong with the traditional Product Management model. Handing everything over to one person feels dangerous.
The Product Manager is often called the "mini-CEO." The role concentrates a massive amount of power: access to customer data, decision-making authority, and the product vision. Yet, they don't actually write the code, design the interface, or sell the product. Authority without execution.
This is exactly where trust struggles to form.
The companies that succeed at building world-class products share these traits instead:
They have world-class, fully empowered business functions (engineering, marketing, design).
They are highly creative, but ruthless on delivery.
They adapt their focus depending on the company’s phase, rather than forcing a rigid framework.
You don’t have to choose between remaining a one-person orchestra forever or handing the conductor's baton to a stranger.
If you feel uncomfortable with the traditional Product Manager organisation, it’s time to assess whether the "Google Playbook" is actually the right thing for you.
See you next Saturday. Have a great weekend. And if you're enjoying this newsletter… Subscribe!
Jean
