ChatPRD: From Meeting Solution to Popular PM Tool
by Claire Vo on April 7, 2024
Situation
In a resource-constrained environment, Claire Vo's team faced a critical challenge: they needed to build a complex technical product, but lacked a dedicated technical product manager to create the necessary specifications. The platform PMs were occupied with other important initiatives, creating a potential bottleneck for this urgent technical project.
Actions
- Rapid problem-solving: During a meeting about the technical product, Claire recognized the gap and volunteered to address it immediately
- AI experimentation: Between the beginning and end of the same meeting, Claire used ChatGPT with a custom prompt to draft a "very serviceable PRD spec for this very technical product"
- Prompt refinement: Over several months, Claire refined her prompt to consistently produce high-quality product documentation
- Internal sharing: Initially shared her "ChatPRD" as a GPT in the GPT Store for her team's use
- Commercialization: When facing monetization limitations in the GPT Store, Claire built a standalone web application (chatprd.ai)
- Product enhancement: Added customization capabilities to the standalone app that weren't possible in the GPT Store:
- Personalized assistants that learn from each user's specific content
- Company and role-specific customization
- Document creation and iteration features
- Additional tools and integrations
Results
- Widespread adoption: Thousands of people now use ChatPRD daily
- Significant productivity gains: Users report saving "dozens of hours" on documentation
- Diverse use cases emerged:
- 60% use it to transform ideas into complete PRDs with objectives, user stories, scope definitions, UX flows, narratives, sequencing, and measurement plans
- 30% use it to improve existing documentation (PRDs, strategy docs, roadmaps)
- 10% use it for brainstorming and internal PM work
- Team scaling impact: Some users report being able to support larger engineering teams without additional PM hires
- Financial success: What started as a project to "buy a nice glass of wine a week" now generates enough revenue to "buy cases of wine"
- Personal fulfillment: Provides Claire with a "joy space" where she can code, learn new technologies, and build products she would use herself
Key Lessons
- Rapid prototyping with AI: AI tools can dramatically accelerate the creation of functional product documentation, even for technical products
- Side projects as skill development: Building AI tools helps product leaders understand both how AI might impact their function and how to build products with these new technologies
- PM leverage is changing: The traditional ratios of PMs to engineers may shift as AI tools enable individual PMs to support larger teams
- Skill evolution, not replacement: While AI can handle "lowercase c communication" (information synthesis and coordination), "capital C Communication" (influence, conviction, leadership) remains uniquely human
- Sustainability through efficiency: In resource-constrained environments, AI tools can help maintain quality while extending runway
- Joy as a metric: Side projects should remain sources of joy and learning; Claire maintains ChatPRD as her "100% fun" space
- Proactive adaptation: Product leaders should experiment with AI tools to lead from the front rather than being caught on their back foot as the industry evolves