There’s a quiet revolution happening in the world of product management. While much of the spotlight shines on tools like Jira, Notion, and Figma, one company has steadily — almost silently — built itself into the backbone of how world-class teams build products.

That company is Productboard.

From scattered spreadsheets and disjointed systems to a $1.7B platform used by companies like Salesforce, Zoom, VMWare, and UIPath, Productboard has cracked the code on building software for product managers — by product managers.

But how did they get here?

Over six months, I went deep. I interviewed leaders including the CEO and VP of Product. I spoke to customers and competitors. I read everything available, listened to every podcast, and used the product extensively myself.

What I discovered isn’t just a story about a successful SaaS company — it’s a masterclass in building tools that deeply understand their users.

Let’s break it down.

Customer-Centricity: The Non-Negotiable

Productboard didn’t start with a flashy interface or clever AI features. It started with a belief: the customer should be at the center of product development.

It sounds obvious, but many tools miss this.

As one Productboard team member bluntly told me, referring to a major competitor:

Their data model doesn’t even have a customer.

That customer-centric design shows in how Productboard works. PMs can filter roadmaps by specific customers or segments — making it incredibly easy to prioritize what truly matters. This feature alone turns the tool from a tracker into a decision-making engine.

It also drives adoption.
As one user told me:

After three months, our entire team had shifted to the mindset of: if it doesn’t live in Productboard, it doesn’t exist.

It’s sticky. It’s trusted. And it’s built from a place of empathy.

Teams That Mirror the Journey, Not the Feature

Most companies organize product teams around features or technical domains. Not Productboard.

Instead, they map their squads to the actual journey of a product manager. Their R&D team of ~100 engineers, 9 PMs, and 7 designers is structured into squads like:

• Feedback Synthesis
• Stakeholder Engagement
• Roadmapping
• Enterprise Infrastructure

This structure isn’t just internal. It directly impacts what gets built — and how fast.

When Autodesk needed enterprise-grade permissions, the team had the structure to respond. When VMWare needed team-specific views, they rolled out Team Spaces to serve that use case.

Productboard isn’t just shipping features. They’re solving problems in the sequence PMs encounter them.

Radical Dogfooding

We use Productboard to build Productboard, said PM Albert Yam during our conversation.

It’s not just a tagline. It’s their way of life.

Every feature is road-tested internally before it reaches customers. Their own product feedback, prioritization, and roadmap planning all happen within the platform. And they don’t hide this — they show it to customers.

In one example, they walked a team at British telecom Sky through their internal hierarchy and tagging system. Sky was so impressed, they adopted it wholesale.

This kind of transparency builds trust — and loyalty.

AI Where It Actually Matters

It’s easy to slap AI onto a tool and call it innovation. But Productboard’s approach is different: their AI is embedded into the workflows where it matters most.

Productboard Pulse automatically analyzes customer feedback, identifies trends, and suggests priorities. This isn’t just a time-saver — it unlocks strategic insight.

Albert Yam again explained:

If you ask ‘what are the top feature requests of enterprise customers as a segment,’ that enables collaboration you can’t do in other systems.

This level of synthesis turns overwhelming volumes of data into actionable product direction.

Land and Expand — with Purpose

Productboard’s go-to-market motion is as strategic as their product.

It typically starts with a single passionate product manager. Once the tool proves its value, it expands to their team, then the division, and eventually sees global deployment.

This drives excellent net revenue retention.
As one GTM leader told me:

Even if we have some churn when a champion leaves, there’s always growth from existing customers bringing in new users.

Their pricing also scales with value — seat-based and tiered, it grows as their customers grow.

This strategy isn’t just about revenue. It creates natural product virality within companies.

From a Simple Tool to a Full Platform

In 2023, Productboard made a pivotal shift.

They expanded from three use cases — feedback, prioritization, and roadmapping — into a comprehensive, scalable product management platform. Their new data model is similar to Salesforce’s: customizable, flexible, and built for complexity.

You can now create standard objects and custom fields — just like Salesforce,” one PM explained.

This move wasn’t just technical. It was strategic. It repositioned Productboard to be the single source of truth for product teams.

And it showed in the funding:

• $8M Series A (2018, Kleiner Perkins)
• $45M Series B (2019, Sequoia)
• $72M Series C (2021, Tiger)
• $125M Series D (2022, Dragoneer)

Their last round valued them at $1.7 billion.

Still, their biggest competitor?

Spreadsheets, presentations, and PMs trying to bend Jira into something it’s not.

What Can We Learn From Productboard?

Productboard didn’t win by being louder or faster.

They won by being more thoughtful.

They listened deeply to product managers. They built for the real work behind the scenes. And they never lost sight of the customer.

If you’re building a tool — or building anything — for product people, there’s something profound here:

• Build workflows, not features.
• Show your work.
• Treat your internal use case as your first customer.
• Stay close to your end user.
• Never underestimate the power of structure and strategy.

Final Thought

In a world where every startup wants to “disrupt” product management, Productboard quietly decided to understand it.

And in doing so, they became indispensable.

If you’re a PM looking to up your game — or you’re building tools for builders — studying Productboard isn’t optional. It’s essential.

Written by Aakash Gupta