Do Startups Still Need Product Managers?

Once upon a time (circa five minutes after Agile became a buzzword), Product Managers (PMs) were hailed as the CEOs of the product. They sat at the intersection of user needs, business goals, and engineering feasibility, coordinating chaos and trying to make sense of it all.

But it’s 2025 now. AI tools like ChatGPT can write specs, prioritize backlogs, and even suggest UX improvements. Developers are more product-minded than ever. And in the Web3 world, DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) have replaced hierarchies with community votes and token incentives.

So… do startups still need PMs?

Let’s break it down.

🤖 1. “But AI can do product work now…”

Sure, AI is great. You can ask it to write a user story, generate roadmap options, analyze user sentiment, or even spit out a growth strategy. But the real work of product management isn’t just about writing Jira tickets.

It's about making judgment calls in messy, ambiguous situations. It’s about saying “no” to features that don’t align with the company’s core bet, even when a paying customer is asking for it. AI can assist, but it doesn’t own the outcome. Accountability doesn’t scale with compute.

🧠 2. “Our devs understand the product. We don’t need middlemen.”

Totally fair, especially in small, sharp startup teams. In fact, many early-stage companies run smoothly without a PM. The founder plays the role, or it's a shared responsibility across the team.

But as soon as:

• There’s more than one customer segment,

• Engineers are drowning in context switching,

• Or your product starts evolving faster than your docs…

You’ll wish someone was managing the product.

PMs bring structure to chaos. They connect dots across marketing, sales, design, and dev, making sure you’re not just building stuff fast, but building the right stuff.

🌐 3. “In Web3, the community decides everything.”

Ah yes, Web3, where governance tokens and Discord emojis determine product direction.

In theory, PMs shouldn’t exist in DAOs. But in practice? Someone still needs to coordinate, write proposals, prioritize features, and align community input with technical capacity.

Call them “product stewards,” “protocol facilitators,” or “governance whisperers”, they’re still PMs, just in hoodies and pseudonyms.

In decentralized environments, PMs may not own the roadmap, but they curate the chaos, make information accessible, and keep the community aligned.

📊 4. “Startups can’t afford another role.”

True, hiring a PM too early can slow things down. But hiring too late can cost you clarity, speed, and focus. Good PMs help startups avoid building features no one wants and chasing user feedback without a strategy.

Think of a PM as a scaling function, not overhead. They help you go from “we’re shipping fast” to “we’re shipping smart.”

🔗 TL;DR: Yes, But...

✅ If you’re pre-product-market-fit: you probably don’t need a PM yet.
✅ If you’re scaling, have multiple users/stakeholders, or exploring multiple product directions — it’s time.
✅ In AI-heavy or Web3 startups: PMs look different, but the role is still essential — more about facilitating clarity than controlling direction.

🎯 Final Thought

PMs aren’t going extinct. They’re evolving.
The best ones now are part strategist, part user researcher, part systems thinker, and part AI co-pilot. In a world full of noise, PMs help teams stay focused on the signal.

So no, PMs aren’t obsolete. They’re just rebranding. Again. Quote me on That Autobots roll out!