🎯 What Running My Own Dev Company Taught Me About Product Management

When you’re the PM and the boss, there’s no one else to blame. Running my own software development company didn’t just teach me how to build apps. It taught me how to survive, adapt, and deliver in the real world of product.

Here are the biggest product management lessons I learned the hard (and often hilarious) way by building and running my own dev shop.

🛠️ 1. Product Thinking Starts Before the First Line of Code

When you own the business, you quickly realize that jumping into development without validation is like burning money in slow motion. I learned to

• Pressure test ideas early with scrappy prototypes

• Interview real users before defining features

• Use constraints like budget, time, and chaos to drive creativity

PM Lesson: If the idea can’t survive a whiteboard, it won’t survive production.

🔁 2. Prioritization Isn’t About What You Can Build. It’s About What You Shouldn’t

Clients and team members often had just one more feature in mind. I had to become a ruthless editor.

We prioritized by asking

• Will this move a KPI or just feel good

• What’s the opportunity cost of building this now

• Can we test this without building the full thing

PM Lesson: Saying no politely is your job. Saying yes to everything is how products fail.

🎯 3. You’re Not Just Building for Users. You’re Also Managing Expectations

As the face of both product and delivery, I became fluent in translating between

• Clients’ business goals

• Developers’ reality

• Users’ needs

PM Lesson: The product isn’t just the app. It’s also the process, the trust, and the clarity you bring to everyone involved.

👀 4. Features Are Cheap. User Experience Is Expensive

It’s easy to build a login screen. It’s hard to build a login flow that’s intuitive, delightful, secure, and fast. Running my company forced me to appreciate that

• Good UX takes time and it’s worth every second

• Technical debt in the UI is just as dangerous as in the backend

• Shortcuts now mean rework later

PM Lesson: Every pixel is a product decision. Treat it that way.

📉 5. Failure Isn’t Fatal. But Shipping Late Is

I learned to embrace lean launches and imperfect v1s. Especially when clients were waiting and budgets were tight. I also learned that

• Users don’t notice what’s missing. They remember what’s broken

• A shipped MVP beats a perfect plan that never sees daylight

• Feedback is more valuable than internal opinion

PM Lesson: Done is better than perfect. Just make sure it’s usable.

🙌 Final Thought: Wearing All the Hats Made Me a Better PM

When you run a dev company, you’re not just managing products. You’re managing people, pressure, and priorities all at once. That experience shaped how I now approach every project with empathy, urgency, and strategic focus.

I’m not just thinking like a product manager. I’m thinking like a business owner, builder, and user all at once.

And that’s a perspective I wouldn’t trade for anything.