Write a Product Strategy for an AI-Native Customer-Support Startup
Overview
What this challenge is about.
Conduct desk research on the customer-support automation market (TAM, growth rate, competitor landscape — Zendesk, Intercom, the new AI-native cohort like Decagon and Sierra). Interview 6 mid-market support leaders (intros facilitated) to validate target-customer definition. Write an 8-page strategy following the Richard Rumelt 'Good Strategy / Bad Strategy' structure: diagnosis (what's hard), guiding policy (the bet), coherent actions (the 4-quarter roadmap). Make 3 explicit non-goals (what the company will NOT do). Deliver the 8-page strategy doc, a 10-slide investor summary, and a recorded 30-min readout the team can rewatch.
The Brief
What you'll do, and what you'll demonstrate.
Write a defensible product strategy for a seed-stage AI-native customer-support startup that the team can execute against and investors can underwrite.
Earning criteria — what you'll demonstrate
- Apply Rumelt's 'Good Strategy' framework to a real seed-stage company
- Size a market with defensible TAM/SAM/SOM math
- Define a target customer that focuses the team and the GTM motion
- Write strategic non-goals — what the company will NOT do
Program Fit
Where this fits in your program.
Sharpens the same skills your degree expects you to demonstrate.
Skills
Skills you'll demonstrate.
Each one shows up on your verified credential.
Careers
Roles this prepares you for.
Real titles. Real skill bridges. Pick the one closest to your trajectory.
Product Manager
Writing a Rumelt-structured strategy for a real seed-stage company is the kind of artifact that gets PM candidates onto strategy-track product interviews.
This challenge sharpens
- product-strategy
- positioning
- roadmap-planning