Beyond Gut Instinct: How Top PMs Actually Manage Product Risk

It was 2:00 AM, and I was staring at yet another failed product launch postmortem. After spending six months building what we thought was the perfect feature, user adoption was hovering near zero. “Where did we go wrong?” kept echoing in my mind.

This scene played out multiple times in my early PM career until I discovered something that would fundamentally change how I approached product decisions. The secret wasn’t in better specs or more features — it was in how we managed risk through feedback.

After 15 years leading products at companies like Affirm and Apollo, I’ve finally cracked the code. Let me share the Risk-Feedback Matrix that I wish someone had taught me when I started.

The Four Horsemen of Product Risk

Every product decision, no matter how small, carries four distinct types of risk:

Value Risk: Think of this as building a bridge no one wants to cross. We might build something perfect, but if it doesn’t solve a real problem, it’s worthless. I learned this lesson the hard way at my first startup, where we spent months building a “revolutionary” feature that users never asked for.

Usability Risk: Imagine having the cure for cancer but packaging it in a bottle that’s impossible to open. That’s usability risk. The solution might be perfect, but if users can’t figure out how to use it, you’ve failed.

Feasibility Risk: This is the “can we actually build it?” question. I once promised a feature to our biggest client before checking with engineering. Let’s just say that was an uncomfortable conversation.

Business Viability Risk: Even if users love it and we can build it, will it make business sense? At Affirm, we had countless features users wanted, but not all of them aligned with our business model.

The Risk-Feedback Matrix

Here’s where it gets interesting. Each type of feedback excels at addressing specific risks. Let me share some real stories that illustrate this:

1. Customer Interviews: The Reality Check I’ll never forget a particular merchant interview at Affirm. We had spent weeks analyzing data and crafting the “perfect” solution. Then, in just one hour, a merchant completely upended our assumptions. They weren’t struggling with what we thought — their real pain point was something our analytics had completely missed.
2. Usage Data: The Silent Truth-Teller At Apollo, we were convinced our new workflow was intuitive — until we looked at the drop-off data. Users were abandoning the product at exactly the same point, telling us something our internal testing never revealed. The data told a story our intuition missed.
3. Support Tickets: The Unfiltered Voice During my time working on Fortnite, we discovered our biggest issues not through beta testing or user research, but through support tickets. One particular pattern of tickets revealed a crucial onboarding issue that our testing had completely missed. It was like having thousands of real-time user researchers working 24/7.
4. Sales Feedback: The Market Reality Check At Apollo, our sales team kept hearing the same thing: enterprise customers loved our core offering but needed something slightly different. This feedback led to a complete repositioning of our enterprise product, something we would have missed if we were only looking at usage data.

The Million-Dollar Lesson

Here’s the truth I wish I’d known earlier: no single feedback channel tells the whole story. The magic happens when you use them in concert. Think of it like a symphony — each instrument has its role, but the real magic happens when they play together.

Customer interviews give you depth, usage data provides scale, support tickets offer unfiltered truth, and sales feedback keeps you grounded in market reality.

Putting It Into Practice

Now, whenever I face a major product decision, I run it through the Risk-Feedback Matrix. For each risk type, I ask:

• What feedback channels are best suited to address this risk?
• What blind spots might we have?
• How can we combine different feedback types to get a complete picture?

This approach has saved me from countless failures and helped me create products that resonate with users while making business sense.

Remember: Product management isn’t about avoiding risks — it’s about managing them intelligently. The Risk-Feedback Matrix isn’t just a framework; it’s your compass in the complex world of product decisions.