founding-pm

Name: founding-pm
Author: Productfculty-aipm

70stars33forks

How to install founding-pm?

productfculty-aipm/pm-copilot-by-product-faculty/founding-pm

$npx -y skills add Productfculty-aipm/PM-Copilot-by-Product-Faculty --skill founding-pm

Installs into the current project.

Summary

Use this skill when the user says "I'm the first PM", "founding PM", "I joined a startup as the only PM", "how do I set up PM processes from scratch", "no PM infrastructure exists", "I'm building the PM function", "what should a first PM do in 90 days", or is navigating the uniqu

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SKILL.md

1	# Founding PM — The First 90 Days and Beyond
2
3	You are helping a Founding PM navigate the unique context of being the first product manager at a company — where there's no playbook, no existing PM function, and everything needs to be built simultaneously with building the product.
4
5	Framework: Lenny Rachitsky (first PM checklist, his own Airbnb founding PM experience), Jackie Bavaro (Founding PM-specific advice, Cracking the PM Career), Shreyas Doshi (altitude calibration for early-stage).
6
7	Key principle: As a Founding PM, your job is not to implement PM best practices. Your job is to make the company more likely to find product-market fit. Everything you do should be evaluated against that single test.
8
9	## Step 1 — Load Context
10
11	Read `memory/user-profile.md` for company stage (pre-PMF vs. post-PMF), team size, CEO relationship, and current product state.
12
13	## Step 2 — The Founding PM Context
14
15	The Founding PM role is categorically different from a PM at a scaled company:
16
17	What's different:
18	- No design system, no established process, no PM tooling convention
19	- Engineers wear multiple hats — they may also do architecture, infra, and code review
20	- The CEO is often also doing product thinking — your role is to amplify and sharpen their thinking, not replace it
21	- You will do things that "aren't PM work": writing support docs, QA-ing the release, setting up analytics, interviewing customers
22	- Discovery and delivery happen in days, not quarters
23	- There's no roadmap — there are bets
24
25	What's the same:
26	- Users still have real problems
27	- Evidence still beats opinion
28	- Writing still clarifies thinking
29
30	## Step 3 — Pre-PMF vs. Post-PMF Split
31
32	The Founding PM role changes fundamentally after PMF. Help the user identify which context they're in:
33
34	Pre-PMF (the search phase):
35	- Primary job: Generate and test hypotheses about what users will pay for and keep using
36	- North Star: Learning velocity, not feature velocity
37	- Wrong move: Building a roadmap when you don't know what to build
38	- Right move: Run cheap experiments. Get qualitative signal fast. Use prototypes to test before building.
39	- Time allocation: 60% discovery / 20% strategy and communication / 20% execution support
40
41	Post-PMF (the scaling phase):
42	- Primary job: Systematize the things that made PMF happen so the team can scale them
43	- North Star: Retention and growth loops
44	- Wrong move: Continuing to run scrappy experiments without building repeatable processes
45	- Right move: Document what's working, create a roadmap, hire more PMs
46	- Time allocation: 40% execution / 30% strategy / 30% discovery
47
48	## Step 4 — The First 90 Days
49
50	Days 1–30: Listen and map
51
52	Week 1–2: Context immersion
53	- Interview every person on the team (even if it's 5 people): What's broken? What would they do differently? What are they most scared of?
54	- Interview 10 customers before making any product decisions. Read every support ticket. Join customer calls.
55	- Map the current product: What does it do? What do users actually use? Where do they drop off?
56
57	Week 3–4: Diagnosis
58	- Write a 1-page product diagnosis: Here's what I see. Here's what users are saying. Here's what's uncertain.
59	- Share with CEO before doing anything else. Alignment before momentum.
60	- Don't pitch solutions. Pitch questions.
61
62	Days 31–60: Establish the foundation
63
64	- Set up the basics: analytics tracking (if absent), a customer feedback loop (Slack channel, lightweight CRM, whatever works), a place to document decisions
65	- Run your first structured discovery: a batch of 5–8 user interviews focused on the highest-uncertainty assumption
66	- Write the first version of the ICP: Who are the 20% of users who generate 80% of value?
67	- Propose the first real roadmap — even if it's Now / Next / Later with 3 items each
68
69	Days 61–90: Drive
70
71	- Own an outcome end-to-end: one feature or initiative from discovery to launch
72	- Write the first stakeholder update — establish the habit of communicating progress to the team
73	- Propose one process addition that will save the team time (sprint rituals, grooming cadence, etc.)
74	- Assess: What did I get wrong in my initial diagnosis? Update accordingly.
75
76	## Step 5 — The CEO Relationship
77
78	The biggest determinant of Founding PM success is the CEO relationship. Specifics:
79
80	What the CEO usually wants from a Founding PM:
81	- A thinking partner who makes the CEO's product instincts sharper, not a replacement
82	- Someone who brings user evidence to prioritization conversations
83	- Someone who writes down what

Productfculty-aipmPublisher · 69 listings

Preview

Productfculty-aipm/PM-Copilot-by-Product-Faculty

# Founding PM — The First 90 Days and Beyond

You are helping a Founding PM navigate the unique context of being the first product manager at a company — where there's no playbook, no existing PM function,

Framework: Lenny Rachitsky (first PM checklist, his own Airbnb founding PM experience), Jackie Bavaro (Founding PM-specific advice, Cracking the PM Career), Shr

Key principle: As a Founding PM, your job is not to implement PM best practices. Your job is to make the company more likely to find product-market fit. Everyth

RepoProductfculty-aipm/PM-Copilot-by-Product-Faculty

License—

TypeSkills

CategoryPlanning

UpdatedApr 2026

Repo stars70

First seenJul 22, 2026

People who liked this also viewed

6 picks

Type

founding-pm

70stars33forks

View on GitHub

How to install founding-pm?

productfculty-aipm/pm-copilot-by-product-faculty/founding-pm

$npx -y skills add Productfculty-aipm/PM-Copilot-by-Product-Faculty --skill founding-pm

Installs into the current project.

Summary

Files · 1

View on GitHub

SKILL.md

1	# Founding PM — The First 90 Days and Beyond
2
3	You are helping a Founding PM navigate the unique context of being the first product manager at a company — where there's no playbook, no existing PM function, and everything needs to be built simultaneously with building the product.
4
5	Framework: Lenny Rachitsky (first PM checklist, his own Airbnb founding PM experience), Jackie Bavaro (Founding PM-specific advice, Cracking the PM Career), Shreyas Doshi (altitude calibration for early-stage).
6
7	Key principle: As a Founding PM, your job is not to implement PM best practices. Your job is to make the company more likely to find product-market fit. Everything you do should be evaluated against that single test.
8
9	## Step 1 — Load Context
10
11	Read `memory/user-profile.md` for company stage (pre-PMF vs. post-PMF), team size, CEO relationship, and current product state.
12
13	## Step 2 — The Founding PM Context
14
15	The Founding PM role is categorically different from a PM at a scaled company:
16
17	What's different:
18	- No design system, no established process, no PM tooling convention
19	- Engineers wear multiple hats — they may also do architecture, infra, and code review
20	- The CEO is often also doing product thinking — your role is to amplify and sharpen their thinking, not replace it
21	- You will do things that "aren't PM work": writing support docs, QA-ing the release, setting up analytics, interviewing customers
22	- Discovery and delivery happen in days, not quarters
23	- There's no roadmap — there are bets
24
25	What's the same:
26	- Users still have real problems
27	- Evidence still beats opinion
28	- Writing still clarifies thinking
29
30	## Step 3 — Pre-PMF vs. Post-PMF Split
31
32	The Founding PM role changes fundamentally after PMF. Help the user identify which context they're in:
33
34	Pre-PMF (the search phase):
35	- Primary job: Generate and test hypotheses about what users will pay for and keep using
36	- North Star: Learning velocity, not feature velocity
37	- Wrong move: Building a roadmap when you don't know what to build
38	- Right move: Run cheap experiments. Get qualitative signal fast. Use prototypes to test before building.
39	- Time allocation: 60% discovery / 20% strategy and communication / 20% execution support
40
41	Post-PMF (the scaling phase):
42	- Primary job: Systematize the things that made PMF happen so the team can scale them
43	- North Star: Retention and growth loops
44	- Wrong move: Continuing to run scrappy experiments without building repeatable processes
45	- Right move: Document what's working, create a roadmap, hire more PMs
46	- Time allocation: 40% execution / 30% strategy / 30% discovery
47
48	## Step 4 — The First 90 Days
49
50	Days 1–30: Listen and map
51
52	Week 1–2: Context immersion
53	- Interview every person on the team (even if it's 5 people): What's broken? What would they do differently? What are they most scared of?
54	- Interview 10 customers before making any product decisions. Read every support ticket. Join customer calls.
55	- Map the current product: What does it do? What do users actually use? Where do they drop off?
56
57	Week 3–4: Diagnosis
58	- Write a 1-page product diagnosis: Here's what I see. Here's what users are saying. Here's what's uncertain.
59	- Share with CEO before doing anything else. Alignment before momentum.
60	- Don't pitch solutions. Pitch questions.
61
62	Days 31–60: Establish the foundation
63
64	- Set up the basics: analytics tracking (if absent), a customer feedback loop (Slack channel, lightweight CRM, whatever works), a place to document decisions
65	- Run your first structured discovery: a batch of 5–8 user interviews focused on the highest-uncertainty assumption
66	- Write the first version of the ICP: Who are the 20% of users who generate 80% of value?
67	- Propose the first real roadmap — even if it's Now / Next / Later with 3 items each
68
69	Days 61–90: Drive
70
71	- Own an outcome end-to-end: one feature or initiative from discovery to launch
72	- Write the first stakeholder update — establish the habit of communicating progress to the team
73	- Propose one process addition that will save the team time (sprint rituals, grooming cadence, etc.)
74	- Assess: What did I get wrong in my initial diagnosis? Update accordingly.
75
76	## Step 5 — The CEO Relationship
77
78	The biggest determinant of Founding PM success is the CEO relationship. Specifics:
79
80	What the CEO usually wants from a Founding PM:
81	- A thinking partner who makes the CEO's product instincts sharper, not a replacement
82	- Someone who brings user evidence to prioritization conversations
83	- Someone who writes down what

Productfculty-aipmPublisher · 69 listings

Preview

Productfculty-aipm/PM-Copilot-by-Product-Faculty

# Founding PM — The First 90 Days and Beyond

You are helping a Founding PM navigate the unique context of being the first product manager at a company — where there's no playbook, no existing PM function,

Framework: Lenny Rachitsky (first PM checklist, his own Airbnb founding PM experience), Jackie Bavaro (Founding PM-specific advice, Cracking the PM Career), Shr

Key principle: As a Founding PM, your job is not to implement PM best practices. Your job is to make the company more likely to find product-market fit. Everyth

RepoProductfculty-aipm/PM-Copilot-by-Product-Faculty

License—

TypeSkills

CategoryPlanning

UpdatedApr 2026

Repo stars70

First seenJul 22, 2026

People who liked this also viewed

6 picks

Type