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# PM rankings

2026-10-31

Tobi Lütke: From a Frustrated Snowboard Shop Owner to the Man Arming Millions of Rebels Against Amazon

[DO AI PM Top 100 Product Managers · #45 Tobi Lütke] In 2004, 24-year-old German programmer Tobi Lütke just wanted to sell snowboards online from Canada—only to find existing e-commerce software so awful that he wrote his own store engine in Ruby on Rails. Two years later, he realized other merchants wanted his software far more than his snowboards. Here is how a 87.2-point master PM (VIS 90 · BIZ 90) built a $230B+ GMV commerce infrastructure by refusing to steal his merchants' customers.

2026-10-30

Top 100 Product Managers · #44 | Vitalik Buterin: At 19, He Turned 'Programmable Money' from a White Paper into a World Computer

[DO AI PM Top 100 Product Managers · #44] In 2010, Blizzard casually nerfed the Warlock's Siphon Life spell in World of Warcraft. A 16-year-old Vitalik Buterin cried himself to sleep, quit the game, and realized the fatal flaw of centralized software. At 19, he wrote the Ethereum White Paper, turning blockchains from pocket calculators into a Turing-complete World Computer. At 28, he hot-swapped the consensus engine of a $300B live network with zero downtime, cutting its energy use by 99.95%. Score: 87.3 (#44).

2026-10-03

100 Product Managers Who Changed the World · #20: Brian Chesky

In October 2007 two design-school graduates who couldn't make rent put air mattresses on their San Francisco living-room floor and charged guests $80 each. In 2025 Airbnb made $12.2 billion in revenue. The man who built it is Brian Chesky: son of two social workers, trained in industrial design, once sold election-themed cereal at $40 a box, and in 2023 said Airbnb had got rid of the classic product management function. No. 20 of the 100 product managers who changed the world, six dimensions 92/95/95/90/89/93.

2026-10-01

Soichiro Honda: a motorcycle for people who didn't ride motorcycles, 100 million times over

In October 2017 cumulative production of the Honda Super Cub series reached 100 million, a world record for a single motorcycle series. One line from its brief is famous: a soba delivery boy should be able to ride it with one hand while carrying a stack of noodle trays in the other. The man who built it was Soichiro Honda, a blacksmith's son who started as a garage apprentice at 15 and spent his life on the making, never the selling. No. 19 of the 100 product managers who changed the world, six dimensions 93/92/92/90/95/90.

2026-09-30

Taiichi Ohno: his product wasn't a car, it was the way to build one

In 1982 GM closed its Fremont, California plant, whose workers were considered the worst in the US auto industry. Two years later Toyota and GM reopened it as NUMMI; over 85% of the staff were the same people, now working under the Toyota Production System, and quality soon matched Japanese plants. The system's chief designer was Taiichi Ohno, and the 'lean' and 'MVP' that software people talk about every day trace back to his shop floor. No. 18 of the 100 product managers who changed the world, six dimensions 90/88/92/94/93/96.

2026-09-29

Pony Ma: in the worst month of the 3Q War, he approved WeChat

On 3 November 2010 Tencent announced 'a very difficult decision' and told users to stop running QQ on any computer with 360 installed. On 19 November a new project that could replace QQ was formally approved inside Tencent: WeChat. On 21 November the 3Q War ended in mutual apologies. No. 17 of the 100 product managers who changed the world, six dimensions 90/94/88/96/97/89.

2026-09-06

No. 11 of the Greatest Product Managers: Akio Morita — He Was Right About the Walkman and Wrong About How People Would Use It

The Walkman shipped on July 1, 1979 with an initial run of 30,000 units. It sold 3,000 in its first month. Sony staff spent weekends on trains and busy streets handing headphones to strangers; August sold 27,000 and cleared the run. By the end of March 1999, 186 million cassette Walkmans had been sold. Morita ranks 11th at 94.20 — vision 98, but insight only 92, because he put two headphone jacks on it.