10 / What makes a great product team (and how to spot one)

Welcome to Issue 10!

You can feel a great product the second you use it. Everything works just as you hoped, it is reliable, and it quietly earns your trust until you cannot imagine going back. But behind every great product is a team, and figuring out what makes that team great is a much trickier puzzle. Most people have never worked on one, which makes it even harder to recognize the signs. I have been on teams that were functional in name only and a few that were truly exceptional, and the difference was not luck. Over the years, I have noticed the same patterns in the teams that consistently build products people love.

Great product teams boil down to five things: an obsession with users, a bias for action and willingness to experiment, strong psychological safety, clear ownership and expectations, and a genuine sense of fun. I am not saying those are the only things that matter, but I am saying that when I have been part of teams that have all five, the difference is night and day. Everything works better, including communication, creativity, delivery speed, and ultimately, the quality of what we ship.

User obsession is the one that has become completely non-negotiable for me. I have worked on teams that kept an arm’s length from users because they were convinced their vision was so good that of course people would love it. Every time, the result was the same: the product launched and fell flat. You simply cannot build something people want to use without their input, and the best teams know this is not about a one-time “user interview” checkbox during discovery. It is about building continuous systems for actively engaging with your user base. They are always learning about the problem space, always revalidating assumptions with the people who will actually buy and use the thing. The great teams talk to users constantly, not because it is trendy, but because it is the only way they know how to work.

That obsession naturally feeds into the second quality: a bias for action and a willingness to experiment. It is frighteningly common to see teams that appear busy but have not shipped anything meaningful in months. They are bogged down in sticky infrastructure issues, endless micro-changes, or building without a clear direction. While some of that is inevitable in the life of any product, the great teams I have worked with treat those problems as speed bumps, not permanent roadblocks. They work to clear them quickly so they can focus on trying new things that improve the user experience. They also give themselves permission to experiment. In fact, some of the most transformative features I have seen come to life started as throwaway ideas, small and almost silly prototypes that no one expected to amount to much until they did.

Of course, you cannot have real experimentation without psychological safety. I have been on teams where your reputation lived or died by your most recent release, and that kind of pressure kills creativity. People stop sharing bold ideas because the risk feels too high. Contrast that with teams where there is no such thing as a bad idea, where success is measured not just by results but by the frequency and quality of the ideas you bring to the table. In those environments, you can pitch something half-baked without fear of ridicule, knowing that your colleagues will help you shape it into something great. That kind of trust changes everything. It turns collaboration into an accelerant instead of a defensive shield.

Clear ownership and expectations are another hallmark. Startups in particular are chaos factories; everything is changing, priorities shift overnight, and it is easy to lose the thread of what you are supposed to be building and why. The best teams I have been part of had leaders who took the time to set clear outcomes, define who was responsible for what, and make sure everyone understood how our work connected to the success of the business. That clarity did not mean we all marched in lockstep. It meant we had a shared north star, so we could collaborate freely without drifting into misalignment.

Then there is the fun piece, which I think gets underestimated. I do not buy into the idea that your coworkers have to be your family, but you do spend most of your waking life with these people. When teams make space for rapport, banter, and shared experiences outside the immediate work, it pays dividends everywhere else. It might be a quick coffee chat where someone shares surprising user feedback, an after-work laser tag match that becomes a running inside joke, or even a silly mascot that the whole team rallies around. These moments create bonds that make it easier to collaborate, to take risks, and to push through hard stretches together.

When I am considering a new role, advising a startup, or helping a friend evaluate an opportunity, this is the lens I use. You can usually spot these qualities without a formal audit simply by watching a team’s stand-up or planning meeting. You can see whether they encourage new ideas, whether ownership is clear, and whether they seem genuinely interested in each other’s perspectives. You can tell if it is a place where creativity thrives or where the loudest voice in the room always wins.

This is my list. Yours might look different. A good friend likes to remind me that “life's too short to build products nobody wants.” I also like to think that “life's too short to work on bad teams.” If we’re spending the majority of our lives at work, why can't it be great?

Let’s get Technically Lit,

Nick

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