Stepping Into 2026 with Intention

If I had to summarize 2025 in one word, it would be clarity, not because everything was clear from the start, but because the year demanded it.

Time and again, the work forced sharper questions: What problem are we really solving? Who are we solving it for? And why now? The answers weren’t always comfortable, but they were necessary.

One of the most important lessons I relearned in 2025 is that building the right thing will always matter more than building fast. There were moments where spending more time upfront to clarify the problem saved significant development effort later. The correction wasn’t more output, it was better framing, tighter scope, and a clearer definition of success.

Another recurring theme was learning to make decisions without forcing certainty too early. As product managers, we’re often expected to provide answers and direction quickly. But last year reinforced that strong outcomes come from resisting premature commitments, allowing space for discussion, challenge, and iteration before locking in decisions.

That same mindset extended into how we approached quality. In 2025, we invested more deliberately in our QA process, introducing it earlier and treating it as part of discovery rather than a final checkpoint. The result was a noticeably smoother experience for users, especially first-time users. Catching issues earlier and validating flows before release reduced friction and helped us ship with greater confidence.

Failure was part of the process too, missed assumptions, underestimated complexity, and features that didn’t land as expected. What mattered most wasn’t avoiding these moments, but how quickly they surfaced and how openly teams responded. In practice, the teams that performed best weren’t the ones that made no mistakes; they were the ones that identified issues early and adjusted without ego.

That mindset is what we’re carrying into 2026.

• Not chasing certainty too early

• Not optimizing for speed at the expense of understanding

• Not confusing output with progress

If 2025 sharpened the lens, 2026 is about applying that clarity with confidence, building with intention, staying close to users, and creating space for thoughtful decision-making.

These experiences shape how we approach products today. As we move into 2026, the following principles guide how we build, grow, and support our products.

Our Product Principles for 2026

Our focus for 2026 is simple: build products that solve real problems and deliver lasting value. Every decision we make is guided by clarity, intention, and trust, so the products you use are thoughtful, reliable, and built with purpose.

We take a product-led approach to growth. Strong fundamentals come first, and everything else, adoption, scale, and go-to-market execution, builds on that foundation.

These principles shape how we work and how we make product decisions.

1. We start with your problem, not our roadmap

Before building anything new, we invest time in understanding the challenges you’re facing and the context around them. Clear problem definition helps us avoid unnecessary features and focus on what truly matters.

2. We learn early, so we build better

We test assumptions, listen closely, and validate ideas before scaling them. Learning early reduces risk and leads to better, more confident product decisions.

3. We move deliberately

Speed matters, but only after alignment. We balance progress with care to ensure what we deliver is reliable, usable, and ready to scale.

4. We make clear choices to stay focused

Not every idea becomes a feature. We’re intentional about trade-offs so we can concentrate on what delivers the most value, for both the product and its growth.

5. We build for long-term trust

We think beyond short-term wins. Every decision considers reliability, consistency, and the long-term relationship we’re building with our users and partners.

What this means for you

You can expect us to:

• Build products grounded in real needs, not unnecessary features

• Prioritize optimized experiences across board

• Make thoughtful, well-considered improvements informed by learning and feedback

• Deliver reliable releases that scale with confidence

• Support product growth with intentional, product-led go-to-market strategies

• Prioritize clarity, focus, and long-term value over noise

Our goal isn’t just to ship more, it’s to build better, grow deliberately, and support you at every stage of your product’s journey.

In short, in 2026, we will continue to take a product-led approach, focusing on solving real problems and building with intention.