In the UK and the US, there are TV shows where entrepreneurs pitch their businesses, hoping to secure investment and mentorship from "Dragons" or "Sharks." These investors are ruthless, and a common pitfall is failing to know their numbers.
"You're asking for thousands, and you don't know your last three years' turnover?!" they'll fume. "How can I invest if you can't tell me your margins?!"
A Product Owner may not need to raise investment, but thinking like an entrepreneur—knowing your key metrics and how to improve them—can elevate your ability to deliver value. Whether your product is an internal tool or a revenue-generating product, imagine you had to pitch it to a demanding Shark. Would you be ready?
Step One: Pick Your Numbers
Your product likely isn't an early-stage start-up, so traditional business metrics like margin and turnover might not apply. Instead, ask yourself:
- What does success look like for my product?
- If an investor asked, "Is this product working?" what evidence would I show them?
- Which numbers would convince stakeholders to invest further?
For example, a B2B SaaS product might focus on customer churn rate, cost of acquisition, and monthly recurring revenue. An internal tool might track adoption rates, efficiency gains, and reductions in manual work.
Make a list of 5-10 key metrics that provide insight into your product’s performance. The Evidence-Based Management (EBM) guide offers useful reference metrics, such as Time to Market, Current Value, and Unrealised Value.
Step Two: Know Your Numbers
An effective entrepreneur can recall their key business numbers at any moment. While they may not know every line of the latest management report, they understand their core metrics instinctively.
From your long list of 5-10 metrics, create a shortlist of fundamental numbers—the ones you should always have at your fingertips. Then, assess your access to these numbers:
- Are they difficult or expensive to obtain?
- Do you need to improve your ability to track them?
- Are there barriers preventing transparency?
Make a plan to transition from an unprepared entrepreneur stumbling into the den to someone who confidently owns their numbers and impresses the Sharks.
Step Three: Improve Your Numbers
Now, imagine you’ve been invited to pitch your product—but the next available slot is 6-12 months away. What can you do in that time to make your numbers more compelling?
Evaluate the Value of Product Backlog Items
Prioritising backlog items based on value ensures you are making strategic decisions, rather than being too responsive or tactical. One way to do this is to create a systematic approach in advance of individual backlog ordering decisions. One Product Owner I worked made a strategic choice on the six forms of value she wanted to prioritise, with weightings:
- Value in attracting new customers (10%)
- Value in retaining existing customers (30%)
- Value in reducing operational costs (20%)
- Value in increasing brand awareness and identity (10%)
- Value in maintaining employee satisfaction, motivation, and retention (20%)
- Value in increasing capacity to respond to new opportunities (10%)
She would then score each new Product Backlog item in each category, which would give her an ordering rank. For example, if you’re working on an internal HR tool, a feature that automates onboarding might score highly for "reducing operational costs" and "improving employee satisfaction" but "brand awareness." wouldn't even be on the list. Another Product Owner in the same company might be customer facing, and would have a different set of categories.
Create Ideas That Target Value
Back to our start-up founder pitching to investors... They do know their margins but now they're under scrutiny and they need to improve them. A Shark might suggest shifting production from a kitchen table to a factory to cut costs (and maybe offering to help... for a price...)
Apply this thinking to your product. Pick a key metric—especially one on your shortlist—and brainstorm ways to improve it. Challenge yourself (or your team) to generate 100 one-line ideas. The first 10 will be obvious, the next 10 might seem ridiculous, but hidden within the rest may be something transformative. Identify the best ideas and add them to your Product Backlog.
Final Step: Apply Empiricism to Dial Up Value
Scrum is built on empiricism—transparency, inspection, and adaptation. Here’s how to apply that mindset to your product:
- Transparency: You now know your numbers.
- Inspect: At the end of every sprint, check if your changes improved the key metrics.
- Adapt: Invest more in what works, learn from what doesn’t, and refine your approach.
For example, if you introduce a new onboarding flow in your product, track whether sign-ups and activation rates improve. If they do, invest more in that area. If they don’t, investigate why and adjust your strategy.
By embedding these habits into your daily practice, you’ll transition from managing a backlog to strategically maximising value—just like a great entrepreneur.
Find more resources, including a video introduction and a PDF product value canvas at Wild Humans AI