Why feature-level ROI usually fails

Rich Mironov has spent decades watching product teams lose the room because they were speaking the wrong language. In his new book Money Stories, he makes the case that product managers need a second vocabulary: one built around revenue, retention, and return. 

In this conversation, he walks through the core framework, why order-of-magnitude estimates beat false precision, how to build a roadmap that holds its ground against sales pressure, and what the AI moment has in common with the early days of mobile. 

Chapters

• 02:03 — What are money stories, and why do executives need them?
• 03:59 — How accurate do you actually need to be? The case for order-of-magnitude thinking
• 05:52 — Using money stories as a sorting mechanism — and how to handle the "close this deal now" pressure
• 10:54 — Tagging roadmaps with revenue ranges and the "or principle"
• 15:58 — Does every PM need this, or just senior leaders?
• 21:46 — The two flavors of ROI: earning your keep vs. feature-level returns
• 26:57 — Why feature-level ROI almost never works — and why product leaders need to push back
• 30:33 — The story archetypes: upsell stories explained
• 38:02 — The retention/churn story archetype
• 41:32 — Why product people get this wrong: fear of commitment and the need to be understood
• 44:52 — How AI changes (and doesn't change) the money story framework
• 48:58 — How to build financial literacy as a product manager

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.