Great ideas fail every day.

Not because they lack potential, but because they lack direction.

Product success requires more than working on ideas with skilled developers. It requires strategic product knowledge, deep market understanding, thoughtful validation, and the ability to pivot when needed.

Too often, companies rush to build a solution before validating their users’ problems and the solution’s prototype. They invest months in development only to launch products that miss the mark.

Whether you’re a startup founder, an SMB, or leading an enterprise, turning your vision into reality requires the right strategy — long before you start building anything.

Three Worlds, One Challenge: Startups, SMBs, and Enterprises

Different-sized companies have distinct challenges, but all of them — startups, SMBs, and enterprises — benefit from collaborating with a third party for product management work.

Startup

As a startup founder, You will likely be biased toward action.

You are eager to move forward and bring a product to market. I often observe a pattern: founders jump straight into working with developers, creating what they think needs to be built. Most developers simply build what is asked of them without questioning it — after all, it’s not their job to have a Product-centered mindset.

Speed is essential, but moving fast in the wrong direction can be disastrous for your project — or even your entire business.

This modus operandi frequently results in a product that neither solves the right problem nor resonates with its intended audience — a complete waste of time and money.

The most efficient use of your resources is to start with the problem, not the solution. Take time to understand your audience, refine the problem you’re solving, ideate, prototype, and validate with continuous testing. Only when you’re very clear and certain, do you start building.

SMBs

SMBs face a unique position, standing between startups and enterprises in their approach to product development.

If you’re an SMB, you’re similar to a startup in the sense that you most likely lack a dedicated internal team to guide your product efforts. You tend to move straight to development without testing and validating assumptions, often leading to wasted resources.

At the same time, as an SMB, you share a challenge with enterprises: you can’t justify hiring a full-time product manager for a project whose success is uncertain. The risk of committing to long-term hires for an experimental initiative is too high.

Enterprises

If you’re working in an enterprise environment, you operate differently from startups. But you still face your own set of challenges.

One key question is: how can I innovate while safeguarding the stability of my existing business?

Sometimes, this means finding ways to digitize your services or build tools to support your current operations. Other times, it’s about being disruptive, like pivoting from a physical product to a digital service or transforming brick-and-mortar offerings into online experiences.

In cases like this, hiring a full-time Product manager for an uncertain project is risky. Especially so when the project’s success isn’t guaranteed. Sometimes, internal teams also struggle with bias or lack a fresh perspective, which is an issue when you need to create truly innovative solutions. By working with a third party, businesses access senior product management expertise without the long-term commitment of full-time hires.

An External Perspective Matters — Here’s Why

Working with a third-party product management agency results in a variety of benefits for clients:

1. Reduced costs: Hiring experienced product managers is expensive. Working with a third-party provider allows businesses to access senior product management expertise at a fraction of the price, without the risks of internal hires.

2. Mitigated risks: Rushing into development without proper ideation and validation is a waste of resources. Ultimately, you build features that don’t solve real problems or are not a priority. The way to mitigate those risks is by focusing on solutions that matter, something a product management agency can support you with. In the enterprise case, a third party also reduces the risk of hiring employees for a project that might not exist a few months into the future.

3. Cross-industry expertise: Internal product managers are allocated to the same assignment for years, limiting their exposure to different challenges and contexts. Third-party product management agencies work across a variety of industries and have a broad, updated expertise that allows them to achieve creative and effective solutions.

Outsourcing Product Management Can Be Challenging Too

Outsourcing product management work comes with its own set of challenges. Most likely, you’ll deal with the following:

Challenges Inherent to Being External to a Team

Building Trust: Trust doesn’t happen overnight. To build it, everyone must continuously show expertise and genuine commitment to common goals. From the very first interaction, external PMs should prioritize transparency and clear communication, involving all stakeholders in the process.

Fostering a Cohesive Team Culture: Integrating external people into your team requires time for them to learn the company culture. To bridge that gap, external PMs should actively work on understanding the company’s values, workflows, and dynamics, adapting to how the team operates. This will turn them into an extension of your team rather than being regarded as external contributors.

Detecting Early Signs of Misalignment: Not being embedded in your team 24/7 means the external members might miss subtle cues of misalignment when they start to arise. To counter this, create regular checkpoints and open channels for feedback. That way, everyone will spot and address any issues before they escalate.

Remote Working

Most likely, the product management agency will be working remotely.

The challenge of different time zones and schedules can lead to communication gaps. To ensure this doesn’t happen, establish clear processes for collaboration, such as consistent updates, structured check-ins, and detailed documentation. This ensures alignment, regardless of where team members are located.

While these challenges can’t be overlooked, simple ways exist to overcome them. When you proactively prevent issues from arising, the benefits of working with a third-party agency far outweigh the potential drawbacks.

Build Smarter, Not Faster

Building successful products isn’t about moving quickly, it’s about moving strategically.

We’ve all seen products that launched quickly but failed to connect with users. Every misstep wastes time, money, and energy that could have been spent building something meaningful. Worse, it gives your competitors an unfair advantage: more time to get ahead.

The secret isn’t speed — it’s knowing exactly what you’re building and why.

The Product SWAT Team: What We Do and How We Work

At Purple Brains, one of our clients called us their “Product SWAT Team”.

It’s the best compliment we could receive because it perfectly captures what we do. We come in when you need us, focus on solving the critical challenges, and leave you with everything you need to move forward.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

1. Define the problem: We start with the problem, not the solution. We help you get clear on your vision, your audience, and the challenge you’re solving.

2. Validate assumptions: Once the problem is established, we validate it through qualitative and quantitative research or any other method that serves the situation. This process allows us to correct or confirm our different assumptions through experimentation and validated learning.

3. Prototype the solution: Based on the insights from previous steps, we create wireframes and test them with our target users to ensure you’ll build the right solution.

4. Map out the plan: With a clear vision of what needs to be built, we prioritize features and create a focused roadmap for your MVP and post-MVP features. We also provide suggestions for the launch and growth, advice on KPIs to track, recommended channels, the business model, high-level financial projection, and the necessary team to execute the plan.

5. Provide oversight: Based on each client’s needs and requirements we can either stop at the previous step, providing you with a plan forward, or stay involved during the development phase, helping manage the process and keeping things on track, launch and grow your products.

At Purple Brains, we are seasoned tech entrepreneurs and product professionals, providing a hands-on service that you don’t get with large agencies. We only work on 2 to 3 projects at once, allowing us to stay focused, work more closely, adapt quickly, and address challenges more effectively.

We’re your partner to help you move forward with confidence, whether you’re a startup founder, an SMB, or leading innovation at an enterprise. Let’s build smarter, together.