The Quiet Work Behind SaaS Products
Most of the product work I do is not the kind of thing people screenshot for LinkedIn or ad to a quick X post about a massive breakthrough. You won’t see a glossy interface reveal or a dramatic “we rebuilt everything from scratch” story. You probably won’t even notice the changes until they’ve compounded over months.
Most “quiet” product work looks like this:
Untangling SaaS products that grew faster than their foundations
Turning “we should use AI” into actual workflows that ship
Helping teams move from opinions to real data, then finally to strategic decisions
It’s not glamorous. But it’s where the real leverage is.
When Growth Outruns Foundations
The pattern I see again and again in SaaS and mobile products is simple: The product grows faster than the foundation it’s standing on.
What starts as a clean, focused app becomes:
A mix of overlapping features from different eras
A roadmap driven by “this customer asked for X”
A codebase and experience that only the original team can fully explain
None of this happens because people are careless. It happens because:
Growth goals are real and pressing
Sales teams are doing their job (selling)
Teams genuinely want to move fast and deliver
But eventually, everyone feels the drag:
New features take longer than they should
Onboarding feels bolted-on instead of intentional
AI experiments float around the edges instead of improving core workflows
That’s usually when someone brings in “help” on product, strategy, or operations.
“We Should Use AI” Is Not a Strategy
In the last few years, AI has become the new “we need a mobile app.” I hear versions of the same statement over and over:
“We should use AI here.”
“Can we add AI to this flow?”
“What’s our AI strategy?”
There’s nothing wrong with that impulse. It’s good to be curious. But “we should use AI” is a starting point for better questions, not the strategy itself. The real work is figuring out:
Where is the user already working too hard?
Where is the business burning too much time or money?
Where could AI simplify, not complicate, the experience?
Sometimes the right answer is an AI assistant. Sometimes it’s better routing, fewer steps, or a smarter default. The point isn’t to “have AI.” The point is to improve a real workflow so much that users don’t want to go back.
From Opinions → Data → Strategic Decisions
Another common pattern: product conversations full of strong opinions and very little shared data.
Stakeholders say things like:
“Our users really want X”
“This is what everyone else is doing”
“We tried that before, it didn’t work”
Sometimes they’re right. Often, they’re partially right in a very specific context.My job isn’t to bulldoze those opinions. It’s to honor the intent behind them and then ask:
What do we actually know?
What do we think is true?
How could we test this without betting the whole quarter?
That’s where simple instruments like feature flags, small experiments, and clear metrics massively change the conversation. Instead of “I don’t think this will work,” you get:
“Let’s run it for two weeks on 10% of traffic and see what happens.”
That’s not just better product thinking. It’s healthier team dynamics.
Shiny Roadmaps, Fuzzy Strategy
All of this leads to one of the biggest patterns I’ve seen, especially in SaaS: 👉 Shiny feature roadmaps, fuzzy product strategy. You get:
Beautiful Gantt charts and Notion boards
Dozens of “prioritized” features
Very little clarity on why those features exist and what they’re meant to change
When that happens, teams work hard… and still feel like they’re behind. So I’ve started asking a few default questions in every engagement:
What problem are we absolutely not willing to solve right now?
This creates boundaries. It reveals the “nice to haves” people are secretly trying to sneak in.
What’s the smallest shippable thing that proves this bet is worth doubling down on?
If you can’t shrink the concept, you probably don’t understand it yet.
This is where MVPs, experiments, and prototypes actually earn their keep.
If we had to kill 50% of the roadmap, what survives and why?
Forced tradeoffs show you what the strategy really is.
Anything that can’t survive this exercise probably wasn’t mission-critical.
Those questions don’t magically fix everything. But they do change the conversation. Suddenly, the roadmap isn’t a decorative asset. It’s a list of intentional bets.
For People in the Middle of It All
If you’re the person in the middle of product, operations, and the constant drumbeat of “please ship faster,” you’re not alone.
You’re likely:
Translating executive goals into actual work
Protecting your team from chaos while still making progress
Trying to be responsible with AI without slowing innovation
Holding the tension between speed and foundation
The quiet work you’re doing, such as cleaning up flows, tightening feedback loops, and clarifying bets - just might not get likes or shares. But it’s the work that lets teams keep shipping without burning out or collapsing under their own weight.
I’m going to keep sharing more of these patterns and questions: what I see inside SaaS and mobile products, what’s working, and where AI is actually helping (versus just adding noise).
