Product strategy case study exercise for product managers

What is the challenge scenario?

Venturer is a B2B SaaS platform that helps companies manage, pay and onboard freelance contractors: 4.2 million dollars in annual recurring revenue, 85 percent year over year growth, 180 customers, mostly mid market companies with 50 to 500 employees. The Series A closed 18 months ago. The board decides on the Series B in 14 days, and the founding team is split three ways.

The CEO wants to go upmarket to enterprise, pointing to three unsolicited enterprise leads this quarter and a deal size four times larger than today's average. The CTO wants to fix the foundation first, pointing to a 14 percent annual churn rate and an NPS of 31, with two thirds of departing customers citing broken payroll integrations. The Head of Sales wants to expand into a new vertical, marketing agencies, pointing to 12 inbound conversations this quarter and a projected 1.2 million dollars in new revenue within a year. All three are defending a real position with real data. All three also have a blind spot.

What are you asked to do?

For each of the three positions, name the core argument in one sentence, the strongest data point behind it, and the hidden assumption its owner is hoping nobody questions. Pick the position whose logic breaks down most under scrutiny, and be specific about the exact data or logic gap, not just a general disagreement. Write a board ready strategy memo that takes one clear direction, states what you are keeping from each of the other two positions, names what you are explicitly leaving behind, defines a single North Star metric for the next 12 months, and states the condition that would make you reverse the call in six months. Close by writing the opening slide of the board presentation: one headline sentence stated as a decision, three supporting bullets each tied to a specific number, and one line naming the main risk upfront.

What does a strong answer cover?

This bootcamp does not publish a rubric for its practical challenge, so check your own draft against the curriculum's own questions instead of a worked solution:

• Does the answer name the strongest data point behind each position, not just a summary of what each person said?
• Does it identify the specific assumption each side is hoping nobody questions, rather than a vague concern about risk?
• Does the recommendation take one clear direction while stating what it keeps from the other two positions?
• Does the North Star metric name a single number for the next 12 months, rather than a dashboard of several?
• Does the board slide name a real risk upfront instead of implying the strategy has none?

Skills this exercise practises

Mapping competing strategic arguments to their strongest evidence, spotting the hidden assumption inside a confident position, synthesising across three viewpoints into one recommendation, and writing a board ready slide that names its own risk.

Which bootcamp does this challenge come from?

This is the practical challenge from Product Strategy, Builders Camp's two week bootcamp on making strategic choices you can defend, led by Andre Albuquerque across four 120 minute live sessions. Completing it counts toward that bootcamp's certificate. The product roadmap template guide helps once this exercise's recommendation needs to become an actual sequenced plan, and North Star metric examples supports the single number step in the memo. The product sense case study exercise elsewhere in this series practises the same discipline of committing to one defensible call under pressure.

Builders Camp runs live and self paced bootcamps in product management and AI product building. See the Product Strategy bootcamp for current cohort dates and the full self paced curriculum.