The CRO, not product marketing, is closest to the customer and knows what they will buy. The product roadmap should be a collaborative effort driven by the CRO, who can directly tie feature delivery to ICP expansion and revenue forecasts. This creates accountability and predictable growth.

Scaling past $200M requires a CPO to think in terms of new revenue streams, business models, and financial growth levers like attach rates. They must partner with finance to model and drive business outcomes, not just ship product features.

Pendo's CPO warns that scaling isn't just about replicating processes for more teams. Leaders must simultaneously build coordination systems (design reviews, clear communication) while fighting to maintain the "maniacal focus on the customer" and rapid innovation that characterize small teams.

The tension between growth and profitability is best resolved by understanding your product's "runway" (be it 6 months or 6 years). This single piece of information, often misaligned between teams and leadership, should dictate your strategic focus. The key task is to uncover this true runway.

The CPO's responsibilities have expanded from product roadmaps to key business decisions like go-to-market strategy, partnerships, and defining the company's core focus. This strategic voice is becoming central to the C-suite, sometimes even before a CTO or CMO is hired.

PMF isn't a fixed state achieved once. It's a continuous process that must be re-evaluated at every stage of growth—from $1M to $1B. A company might have PMF for one scale but not for the next, requiring a constant evolution of strategy and product.

A product leader should actively manage development by allocating effort into three buckets: future big bets, core foundation (stability/tech debt), and growth/optimization. The resource allocation isn't fixed; it must dynamically shift based on the product's maturity and immediate business goals.

Balance your roadmap investments: Horizon 1 drives revenue from core offerings. Horizon 2 incubates new bets to find the next $10M product line. Horizon 3 lays the foundation for future growth by exploring cutting-edge technology and long-term bets.

A single roadmap shouldn't just be customer-facing features. It should be treated as a balanced portfolio of engineering health, new customer value, and maintenance. The ideal mix of these investments changes depending on the product's life cycle, from 99% features at launch to a more balanced approach for mature products.