When planning, differentiate the 'roadmap' from a simple to-do list. The roadmap should outline 5-7 major strategic shifts or capabilities you need to acquire—such as building a personal brand or mastering paid ads—not just the daily tasks required to get there.

Instead of incremental planning, run "megatrend workshops" to identify major societal or technological shifts 15-20 years out. By working backward from that inevitable future, you can define what your company needs to do in 5 years, and therefore what you must invest in today.

In early stages, the key to an effective product roadmap is ruthlessly prioritizing based on the severity of customer pain. A feature is only worth building if it solves an acute, costly problem. If customers aren't in enough pain to spend money and time, the idea is irrelevant for near-term revenue generation.

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.

Avoid overly detailed, multi-year roadmaps. Instead, define broad strategic 'horizons.' The shift from one horizon to the next isn't time-based but is triggered by achieving specific metrics like ARR or customer count. This allows for an agile response to market opportunities while maintaining strategic focus.

When a product team is busy but their impact is minimal or hard to quantify, the root cause is often not poor execution but a lack of clarity in the overarching company strategy. Fixing the high-level strategy provides the focus necessary for product work to create meaningful value.

Don't just tweak last year's product plan. Start from a blank slate by defining business goals first, then allocate resources to the value propositions needed to win. This avoids getting stuck in maintenance mode and forces a focus on strategic priorities.

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.

Robinhood is shifting its planning process to focus on what will be announced at its next public product keynote. Instead of setting abstract internal goals, this aligns the entire company around concrete, customer-facing deliverables and creates a powerful, immovable deadline for shipping.