cpo 
Product management is one of the most critical roles in the product lifecycle. A product manager is the head of product, which means that they are responsible for defining the product, its features, and the overall market strategy.
A chief product officer (CPO) is a senior executive who is involved in developing new products and managing existing products. A good time to consider hiring a CPO may be when you’re about to launch a new product or when you’re considering raising money.
A product manager defines the scope of a project, acts as a gate between the business and engineering teams, represents customers, and makes sure that the team is following their product roadmap.
Product decisions are hard because they require a deep understanding of customers, the market, and the company’s capabilities. If you’re not up for it, outsourcing product management may be a viable option.
Find out how to choose between these two roles in our article Product Manager vs Chief Product Officer.
2. Hire A Software Engineer
Hiring software engineers is one of the hardest challenges when starting a business, particularly if you’re an entrepreneur who has no prior experience in software development. Lack of knowledge about developer salaries, skill sets and technologies used by software engineers can make it even harder to find good developers for your business.
The good news is that as an entrepreneur you can still make great software products without having a dedicated team of full-time developers. Hiring contractors or working with freelancers will help you get things done while keeping your costs low. But before you start looking for developers to outsource your projects to, read our guide on how to hire a world-class developer for your startup.
3. Find A Marketing Agency To Launch Your Product
Sometimes entrepreneurs underestimate the importance of marketing when launching their products. Usually they overestimate their own marketing skills or fail to predict how much time it will take to launch their products successfully without external help from marketing agencies and PR companies specializing in B2B marketing. As a result they don’t find time and resources for marketing activities during the first months after product development has been completed.
While you can certainly make your own plans for engaging with influencers or social media communities, there are several other aspects that require special expertise and skills such as: PR campaigns, content marketing campaigns, sales enablement activities or demand generation campaigns. In general, these are areas where ideally you want an experienced agency helping you with your marketing efforts instead of doing everything yourself or relying on inexperienced freelancers or friends who have no specialized skills in B2B marketing.
4. Build A Strong Team (If You Don’t Have One)
One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make when starting a new business is undervaluing the importance of building a strong team around them — especially if they have no prior experience in leading teams themselves. Building a strong team takes time; ideally you should start building it before product development begins so that once development has been completed your team is ready to go live with your product as soon as possible. This saves you both time and money while increasing your chances of success dramatically. When planning your launch phase, schedule time to build your team — even if it’s only part-time at first — rather than trying to do everything yourself at once or outsourcing all tasks upfront without thinking about how much time it will actually take to complete them all within your timeline constraints (which typically results in missing deadlines). This will help you avoid making the same mistakes many other entrepreneurs do by underestimating some tasks which turn out to be more time consuming than expected (e.g., building sales funnels) or overestimating others (e.g., social media engagement). To learn more about what goes on behind-the-scenes during an entrepreneur’s launch phase read our guide on How To Launch Your SaaS Product The Right Way?
