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Sam Altman's "Product Improvement Engine"

6 points by imgermi ↗ HN
I read Sam Altman's Startup Playbook years ago and I still wonder...

Are there any companies formally doing "product improvement engines"?

Researched a bit and can't find anyone who either:

- wrote a playbook or some kind of framework to run product engines

- runs some kind of "agency" or "factory" that runs product engines for startups of software based companies

Anyone that knows about this?

7 comments

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exhaze
https://doubleloop.app seems to be trying to do this, though they definitely seem to be targeting companies way past their MVP and something more like series A and up co's that are having trouble scaling their product strategy
imgermi
Interesting to see a SaaS doing something like this! I mostly meant productized services or simply agencies doing something like "product iteration engines".
aristofun
You don't win by cargoculting ideas.
imgermi
Not sure what you mean but thanks for the comment!
cpach
They asked for more info, isn’t that like the opposite of cargoculting?
aristofun
I precisely answered to "Are there any companies formally doing "product improvement engines"? with the reason why there aren't.
kingkongjaffa
> runs some kind of "agency" or "factory" that runs product engines for startups of software based companies

In most cases the product is the company, so outsourcing that learning, that eventually becomes tribal learning within the company culture, is incredibly dumb. Also to build a great product you have to understand you customers needs and solve problems for them, and you can't embed that understanding to imagine a future for them if you outsource it.

On the other hand there are thought leaders and coaches who will help you, and you can hire fractional executives to get you on your feet. See https://www.svpg.com/articles/

> run product engines

There's an entire profession for this, it's called product management.