Super interesting post by Doug Fallstrom on the differences in a product manager's role at a start-up compared to a big company. This bit especially hit home for me:

“One of the most challenging aspects for PM is answer the question from engineering: “How do I know a customer will use this if I write the code?”. In a large company, especially with an established customer base in the multi-thousands scale, running various studies and talking to customers is relatively easy, there are so many customers to get feedback from at any point in time. In a startup, especially a storage startup, getting time from the right set of customers can be very challenging and we don’t have the time or money to run expensive 3rd party studies.”

As someone working in a big company, it is easy to take for granted the nearly endless list of users that I can (and do) speak to to help inform enhancements and new features, and to bring bugs to our attention. I love talking to customers, and can well imagine missing it (as Fallstrom clearly does) were I ever to work for a start up.