TAG

# Product Managers

2026-10-17

100 Product Managers Who Changed the World · #32: Ken Kutaragi

The 'Father of the PlayStation' and former CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment. In 1988, fascinated by his daughter's Famicom, he secretly designed the legendary SPC700 audio chip for Sony's rival Nintendo; after Nintendo humiliated Sony at the 1991 Chicago CES by tearing up their CD-ROM partnership on stage, Kutaragi defied Sony's aristocratic anti-toy executives ('Do we just stand down?!'), bet everything on real-time 3D polygons and $1 CD-ROMs, and built the 500-million-unit PlayStation empire. Ranked #32 among the 100 PMs who changed the world, with an overall score of 90.30 (displayed as 90) — vision 94, originality 93, scale 90, taste 88, business 88, insight 86.

2026-10-16

100 Product Managers Who Changed the World · #31: Marc Andreessen

Co-creator of Mosaic, co-founder of Netscape, and co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). In 1993, at age 22, he added the `<img>` tag to HTML in an Illinois university basement and gave the text-only internet a graphical face; his 1995 Netscape IPO ignited the dot-com era and left behind JavaScript, SSL (HTTPS), Cookies, and open-source Mozilla; in 2011 he penned the Silicon Valley manifesto 'Why Software Is Eating the World.' Ranked #31 among the 100 PMs who changed the world, with an overall score of 90.30 (displayed as 90) — originality 96, vision 95, scale 92, insight 85, business 85, taste 82.

2026-10-15

100 Product Managers Who Changed the World · #30: Demis Hassabis

Co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, 2024 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, and product architect behind AlphaGo, AlphaFold, and Gemini. A chess master at age 13 and co-creator of the multi-million-selling game Theme Park at 16, he founded DeepMind in 2010 on a two-step roadmap — Step 1 Solve intelligence, Step 2 Use it to solve everything else. He shocked humanity with AlphaGo's Move 37 and transformed biology by folding all 200 million known proteins. Ranked #30 among the 100 PMs who changed the world, with an overall score of 90.55 (displayed as 91) — vision 97, originality 96, scale 92, taste 85, business 85, insight 82.

2026-10-14

100 Product Managers Who Changed the World · #29: Jan Koum

Co-founder of WhatsApp. Raised in Soviet Ukraine without hot water and surviving on US food stamps as a teenage immigrant, he developed a visceral hatred for surveillance and advertising. Guided by a note taped to his desk — "No Ads! No Games! No Gimmicks!" — he scaled WhatsApp to 450 million users with just 55 employees, sold it to Facebook for $19 billion, and later walked away from nearly $1 billion in unvested stock rather than compromise user privacy for targeted ads. Ranked

2026-10-13

100 Product Managers Who Changed the World · #28: Liang Wenfeng

Founder of quantitative fund High-Flyer and architect of DeepSeek. Uncomfortable with Silicon Valley-style evangelism, he led a small team of engineers to crush AI pricing monopolies with Multi-head Latent Attention (MLA), FP8 mixed-precision, and hyper-efficient training — and with DeepSeek-R1's pure reinforcement learning reasoning, gave Silicon Valley its first genuine existential anxiety from native Chinese innovation. Ranked

2026-10-12

100 Product Managers Who Changed the World · #27: Kevin Systrom

With a team of just 13 people, two radical design constraints — vintage filters and a 1:1 square crop — demolished the barrier to sharing photos. The $1 billion sale to Mark Zuckerberg was mocked by Silicon Valley at the time; today, it stands as the most valuable tech acquisition in history. #27 in our rankings, with scores of 90/94/95/85/94/89 and an overall score of 90.95.

2026-10-11

100 Product Managers Who Changed the World · #26: Wang Xing

Dropping out of the University of Delaware in 2004, he endured the forced sale of Xiaonei and the sudden shutdown of Fanfou before founding Meituan in 2010. During the brutal War of a Thousand Groupons, he refused to spend on billboard ads, betting everything on IT infrastructure and cash reserves; in the food delivery war, his algorithmic dispatch turned '30-minute delivery' into the capillaries of Chinese cities. #26 of the 100 product managers who changed the world, scores 94/92/84/92/93/88, overall 91.00.

2026-10-10

100 Product Managers Who Changed the World · #25: Travis Kalanick

On a snowy night in Paris in 2008, two men could not get a cab. A year later there was UberCab: press a button on your phone, watch a car drive toward you on a map, and get out without reaching for your wallet. The man who built it, Travis Kalanick, was pushed out by investors in 2017 and came back in September 2026 with a robotics company. #25 of the 100 product managers who changed the world, scores 92/88/80/90/95/95.

2026-10-08

100 Product Managers Who Changed the World · #24: Colin Huang

In 2015 Alibaba and JD had already divided China's e-commerce market, and almost nobody thought there was room for one more. Colin Huang built an app where you send a product link to friends and the price drops once enough people join. Five years later Pinduoduo had more annual active buyers than Alibaba. #24 of the 100 product managers who changed the world, scores 93/96/82/95/93/86.

2026-10-07

100 Product Managers Who Changed the World · #23: Daniel Ek

In 2002 Napster was shut down and piracy carried on anyway. A 19-year-old Daniel Ek drew a conclusion: piracy cannot be legislated away, so the only answer is a legal service that is easier to use than piracy and still pays the music industry. Six years later Spotify launched. In June 2026 it had 777 million monthly users and 300 million subscribers. #23 of 100 Product Managers Who Changed the World, scores 92/90/88/94/94/90.

2026-10-06

100 Product Managers Who Changed the World · #22: Jack Dorsey

On March 21, 2006, Jack Dorsey posted the first tweet: just setting up my twttr. Three years later a friend lost a $2,000 sale of glass faucets because he could not take a credit card, and the two of them built the Square reader that plugged into a headphone jack. One person built two products from nothing, and both are still around. #22 of 100 Product Managers Who Changed the World, scores 92/90/90/88/94/94.

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.

2026-07-25

Liang Wenfeng Is Now the World's Richest AI Founder — By Doing the Opposite of Every Big Tech Giant

Bloomberg's data: DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng is worth $36 billion, doubled in a year, surpassing the co-founders of OpenAI and Anthropic to become the richest person in pure AI foundation models. From a product manager's angle, here's why his 'narrow and deep' bet outran the giants stacking money and headcount.

2026-07-25

AI Tore Down the 'I Can't' Wall — the One Left Is in Your Head

A few hundred people at DeepSeek out-built a company of 100,000+. WAIC opened a whole zone for one-person companies. Three years ago, both were filed under 'impossible.' Most of the walls that fell these past two years were the same kind: I don't know how to do this. But there's one wall AI can't knock down.

2026-07-23

Alibaba Is Doing the Math, Tencent Is Paying Tuition: A PM's Read on the Big-Tech AI Split

Both poured 100 billion yuan into AI. In Q1 2026, Alibaba's cloud AI revenue crossed 30% of external revenue for the first time, while Tencent lost about 8.8 billion yuan. But Tencent wasn't idle either — WorkBuddy became the No.1 office agent. From a product manager's angle, here's the split between the two AI strategies, and where they go next.

2026-07-22

This Round of Big Tech Layoffs Is Hunting the Product Managers Who Just Pass Messages Along

As of July, the tech industry has cut roughly 200,000 jobs in 2026 — a thousand a day — and more than half the layoff notices name-check AI. The strangest data point is Microsoft: on the same day it cut 4,800 people, HR chief Amy Coleman went out of her way to add, 'The roles eliminated today were not replaced by AI.' Everyone else is racing to say 'AI did it'; Microsoft is racing to say 'don't blame AI.' Underneath those two contradicting statements is the same answer nobody wants to say out loud: the first thing AI eats isn't a job title, it's a layer — the message-passing layer. And product managers happen to be one of the most message-dense roles there is.

2026-07-20

Spain Beat Argentina 1-0 and Lifted the Cup, Messi Bowed Out With 0 Shots: What Locked Down the World's Best Was a System

July 19, New York. Spain beat Argentina 1-0 with an extra-time winner and lifted the World Cup trophy. And Messi — in the final of the last World Cup of his career — played the full match with a shot count of 0. In 120 minutes Argentina took just 2 shots, 0 on target, shut down completely. To make the player the whole planet agrees is the best go a full night without a single shot, one defender is never enough — it takes an entire team, an entire system: Rodri locking down midfield, ~70% possession keeping Messi out of dangerous areas, 20 shots to 2. Put another way: Spain didn't beat Argentina by finding a stronger genius; they used a system that depends on no single person to lock down the single strongest person. This final quietly taught a lesson to everyone who builds products and leads teams.

2026-07-20

Why Does AI Keep Getting It Wrong? It's Not Dumb — You Didn't Say It Clearly

You ask AI to build something, and eight or nine times out of ten it comes back wrong, and you think "this AI is useless." But after a few months of doing this every day, I'm more and more sure of one thing: when AI gets it wrong, most of the time it isn't dumb — I didn't say it clearly. Same requirement, phrased differently, and it nails it on the first try. There's a very plain truth underneath this — AI can't read minds. It does what you said, not what you meant. This piece lays out the requirement-writing method I've worked out: the five parts of a requirement that lets AI get it right the first time, the five most common ways of not saying it clearly and how to fix each, and three moves that turn AI from a hand into a brain. All of it is copy-pasteable.

2026-07-19

The Woman Who Built ChatGPT Just Shipped a Model She Admits Isn't the Strongest — and Investors Are About to Value Her at $50 Billion

Yesterday Kimi K3 was still shouting "topped the charts, number one in the world." Today the woman who built ChatGPT did the exact opposite. On July 16, Mira Murati's Thinking Machines released Inkling — a 975B open-weights model, natively multimodal, with adjustable thinking effort — yet in black and white the announcement says it is "not the strongest overall model available today, open or closed." Meanwhile this company, just a year and a half old, is raising a new round at roughly a $50 billion valuation — four times last July's. Why is someone who shipped a model that isn't the strongest worth $50 billion? The answer hides in the thing she's best at, and the most expensive thing in the AI era: judging what actually makes a good product.

2026-07-18

The 100 PMs Who Changed the World · No. 3 | Jeff Bezos: At 62 He Made Himself CEO Again — to Bet on the One Thing Amazon Never Pulled Off

No. 3 on the list is Jeff Bezos, OVR 97, with a 99 on the Business dimension — the highest tier on the whole list, higher even than Jobs. Just last month, this man — retired four years, worth roughly $250 billion, free to spend his days on rockets and yachts — made himself CEO again: personally co-leading the AI startup Project Prometheus, which just raised $1.2 billion in June at a $41 billion valuation. Why would a man who perfected the art of "letting go," who designed his company to run without him, step back into the ring at 62? The answer hides in his real invention — a method that forces everyone to first write down, on six pages, exactly what they want, and to write the press release before building anything. In today's world, that method happens to be the most valuable thing there is.