The ONE Mistake That Keeps PMs Stuck for 12-18 Months

(Continuing from Part 1: The 3 skills that get PMs promoted)

I've audited 30+ product organizations. The same pattern keeps showing up. I call it "hedging" - and it's probably costing you 12-18 months of career progress.

The Mistake: Hedging Your Bets

You're building too many things at once. Not because you want to, but because you're scared to pick just ONE thing.

This shows up as:

• Building 3 features simultaneously "to see which one works"
• Trying to appeal to multiple customer types at once
• Designing for hypothetical future use cases
• Creating optionality instead of commitment

The Real Cost

I tracked products that hedged vs. products that committed:

Products that HEDGED:

• Built 3-5 features simultaneously
• Time to product-market fit: 18-24 months
• Team confusion about priorities
• Mediocre results across all features

Products that COMMITTED:

• Built ONE core feature
• Time to product-market fit: 6-9 months
• Team clarity and focus
• One feature done exceptionally well

The difference: 12-15 months.

A Real Example: Red Bull TV

At Red Bull, we faced a choice:

• Option A: Build 3 different revenue models and test them all
• Option B: Bet on ONE model (B2B licensing)

We picked Option B. Everyone thought we were crazy to put all our eggs in one basket.

Result: We went from cost center to revenue center in 9 months.

If we'd tried all 3? We'd still be testing after 2 years.

Why PMs Hedge

The pressure to hedge comes from multiple sources:

1. Fear of being wrong - "What if I pick the wrong thing?"
2. Stakeholder pressure - Different execs want different things
3. Customer feedback - "But customers are asking for all these things!"
4. Best practices - "Run multiple experiments to de-risk"

All of these sound reasonable. But they lead to diffused effort and slow progress.

What to Do Instead

1. Pick ONE Customer Type

Not "everyone." Not "SMB and Enterprise." Not "current users and new users."

Pick ONE. Build for them. Ignore everyone else for 90 days.

2. Pick ONE Core Value

Not "we do everything." Not "all-in-one platform." Not "flexible for any use case."

Pick ONE thing you'll be world-class at. Say NO to everything else for 90 days.

3. Create Real Constraints

Give yourself artificial constraints:

• Only build for this ONE customer type
• Only solve this ONE problem
• Only ship features that serve this ONE value

These constraints force clarity.

How to Know if You're Hedging

Ask yourself:

• Are we building features for multiple different customer types simultaneously?
• Do we have 3+ major initiatives running in parallel?
• Are we designing for "flexibility" and "future use cases"?
• Do we have clarity on our #1 priority, or do we have 5 "#1 priorities"?

If you answered yes to any of these, you're probably hedging.

Making the Shift

Start this week:

1. List everything you're building
2. Mark the ONE thing that matters most
3. Push everything else to "After we nail this one thing"

It's scary. You'll feel exposed. You'll worry about missing opportunities.

But it's the fastest path forward.

Coming Next: Part 3

The hidden rule top PMs follow (but never talk about). It's about holding two opposite beliefs at the same time - and why that's actually a superpower.

Question for the community: Are you hedging or committing right now? Be honest - how many major things are you building simultaneously?