If your company’s product is already selling, you’re scaling up, and the unit economics still make sense, then congratulations—you’ve got a challenge ahead. This isn’t easy work, but hey, we’re professionals.

Find those unprofitable complainers — the ones who make up 80% of support interactions—and analyse every single complaint. It’s low-hanging fruit, really. Then, prepare a flashy presentation for stakeholders, pushing the narrative that these problems need immediate attention. Here’s the twist: the more expensive the fix and the less it contributes to new revenue, the better.

Whatever you do, don’t create value for your profitable customers or new segments.

Priorities, right?

Now, here’s the tricky part. No one should know segmentation is happening. Stealth mode activated.

To keep the illusion alive, throw around fancy terms like “CJM,” “USP,” “PLG,” “WTP,” “AI,” “Product Analytics,” “feature creep,” “feature build,” “churn,” and “feature parity.” Don’t worry, 99% of the time, no one’s going to double-check if you’re making sense. Just memorise a couple of Wikipedia definitions in case someone calls you out.

Convince them that the product is trash and that customers are dissatisfied. But fear not! We’ll be saved by a five-hour brainstorming session, where we’ll sweat it out and tear apart each other’s feature ideas. Truly the stuff of legends.

Here’s where things get even juicier.

Generate as many feature ideas as possible and involve leadership in every step. If a stakeholder falls in love with a ridiculous idea, everyone will be stuck making it happen.

Whatever you do, don’t copy competitors’ smart moves—you might accidentally stumble upon something that works. Stick to obvious nonsense like “let’s make a marketplace” or “dark mode for everything.”

If anyone insists on customer interviews, let them do it.
It won’t affect profits because we’re still focused on unprofitable customers. Fixing their problems won’t help. In fact, if they accidentally talk to profitable customers, steer them toward issues that don’t create value—something minor and irrelevant. By the time we’re done, competitors will have pulled ahead.

But hey, the team will feel productive, and that’s what really counts.

Finally, in development, add more animations, make everything cross-platform from day one, and spend six months perfecting every glitch in the UI. If you can hire a whole new team and open another office, that would be even better. Big moves!

Whatever you do, do not test landing pages, emails, or interfaces on profitable segments before launch.

Designers are Gods, product managers are Steve Jobs and metrics like order count or view count are your golden tickets to selling stakeholders on your brilliance. Inflate those numbers, collect your bonus, and move on.

Give it a year or so, and voilà—the product is ruined, the team is burnt out, and you are ready to move on to the next gig. Pop “CPO looking for 300k” in your CV, and off you go to the next lucky company.

Easy. Find the stakeholder with the most giant ego, help them fall in love with a ridiculous idea, and sprinkle in some high-risk tech. Each risk has a 95% chance of failure, giving you a 0% chance of success — simple math.