Product is often a black box to finance. And yes, that includes Engineering, Product Strategy, Infrastructure, Product Marketing, and more. These are the teams working behind the scenes, creating the “magic” that the company ultimately sells. Finance, far too often, focuses on what they consider the “real” stuff: the CAC, ARR, and burn summarized in your rolling forecast that drive your valuation.

I won’t waste time with a story. Every finance leader can relate to focusing more on the commercial side than the product side. The engineering team works in its silo, and somehow, a product emerges. Too many finance leaders ignore that part of the business because software delays are unpredictable. R&D rarely follows a neat timeline. And when anyone raises the idea that the product is falling behind, the executive response is:

“We have product-market fit. Look at our scale. We just need to sell it.”

Really? Mistake.

Product is the business.

Product is not a cost center just because it is hard to quantify its direct revenue impact. In the beginning, it is almost all of your expenses. Over time, it becomes about a third of your costs. But more importantly, it is the very thing your customers are paying for. The product is the company. Dismissing it as an operational black box is short-sighted and reinforces the belief that “finance hates product.”

Yes, so far we have focused on Cash, GTM, and CS, but it is just as critical to focus on the foundation of your business: your product. Of course, this should be done in tandem with each of the relevant teams, but it is your job to make sure you have these bases covered.

Let’s go.

1. Product usage metrics

First, you need to understand and highlight usage. The best way to do this is by establishing a North Star Metric (one metric that ties your customers’ success to your own) that serves as the key driver of your company’s success. Too often, people dismiss “usage” as a vanity metric, likely a holdover from the gamed numbers of the early 2000s. But the right usage metric won’t distract your team; it will focus them.

• Make one product metric the North Star Metric. Make it simple. Don’t turn it into a composite abstraction. You can save that for the customer health score. Pick something that’s easy to explain, easy to track, and clearly reflects product value. For more, see this external link. 

• Identify three secondary product metrics. These should contribute to a fuller use of customer success. If this isn’t clear, work across the teams to find them.

• Tie the North Star Metric into financial metrics. You should already have a historical view of your financials and operating ratios. Now, set your product metrics side by side with these numbers. Look for correlation. Understand which product behaviors track most closely to revenue, retention, or expansion. See which one gives you the clearest signal.

• Slice and dice by revenue, start date, location. Using these metrics, review your entire customer base. You need to understand how different segments are engaging with the product. This is the key to unlocking growth and efficiency. Compare usage patterns against your current performance frameworks. This will reveal the blind spots.

• Merge your key product metrics into CS scores. Ideally, your team is already using the same customer health score as the CS team. But let’s be honest, this is often not the case. Push to unify your product tracking and CS scores into a single view of customer health. Better yet, bake them into your operational models.

Hopefully, you have all this information already. If not, your team needs to get it and fast. Once you do, put it to use across every model you build. Product usage gives you more actionable insight than sales numbers or efficiency ratios. It’s grounded in how problems are being solved. And let’s be honest, it’s just more fun to work with.

Tip: EAT YOUR OWN DOG FOOD. If you want to actually gain the respect of your team, know their work. Know the product. Don’t be another ‘corporate cog.’

2. Product Roadmap

The product roadmap is critical because it orients your entire company and signals growth to your customers. All teams should know when things are going to be released because they are critical to everything commercial. It can be hard to get teams to commit to this, but they need to, just like everyone else in the company. Deadlines matter. So:

• Get your product roadmap. Do you have one? You should have one for major features. It doesn’t matter how detailed it is. If the product team doesn’t want to confine itself, fine. But your teams need to know what you are releasing, when, and why.

• Tie the roadmap to your budget. Use your operational model. Place the roadmap in both the past and future alongside financial results. This adds credibility to your assumptions and connects product delivery to performance.

• Clarify expected product results in terms of metrics. For each product development, define the expected impact on your North Star Metric. Measure against this both going forward and looking back. This gives you a great proxy for ROI and keeps things measurable.

• Integrate the roadmap into your narrative. When presenting your company’s future or financial projections, reference the major features driving those numbers. This reinforces the story and aligns stakeholders around the product as a growth engine.

• Review the roadmap each quarter. During your regular business reviews, include the roadmap and where you stand against it. Of course, plans can change, but make this evaluation a formal part of the operational model.

If it’s not realistic to separate the product roadmap from your operating model, at the very least, include a clear link to show how what you’re building supports the rest of your business.

Tip: People get excited about Product. Much more than they do about ARR. Use that to your advantage by bringing what you are building into the conversation as often as possible.

 3. Team efficiency

Okay, now you have reviewed the customer-facing metrics. Now it's time to review “is the tech team performing?” In our next article, we will discuss how to generally do this across all your teams, but for now we will be looking at product-specific reviews. To do so:

1. Do a high-level comparison of spend vs. output. There are several different ways to do this, but keep it simple. Look at the last six months spend and then what was delivered. Does this make rough sense as a sanity check?

2. Bucket the teams’ spending. How much time is being spent on the core product, on tech debt, on aspirational features? Is this the direction that your company wants to go? Note that this will change over time depending on your maturity (hopefully everything at the beginning is BUILD…)

3. Assign a cost per feature. This is a bit tougher, but when you look forward you want to be able to give a rough estimate of both time and cost for future features. Obviously, this is more art than actual science, but work with the team to get *rough estimates* which can often be done by splitting out product teams and/or % time splits in general.

4. Compensation. Is everyone on commercial teams tied to bonuses but everyone on the product team primarily base salary? Why? Consider tying a portion of salary to product releases or even your North Star Metric.

5. Compare against the benchmarks. There are a lot of benchmarks for products. A lot of frameworks. Monitor your progress against these benchmarks (% spend, developments).

Obviously, this is not a linear analysis. There may be core functionality, bug fixes, moonshots that don’t lead to direct sales. But, just because it's hard doesn’t mean you shouldn’t at least ask the questions to see how things are going and possibly identify any problems that will hurt you down the road.

Tip: Meet across the product team (engineering, product design, product marketing, etc)! Often they are curious about finances and how their work is driving revenue. Join a relevant call to talk through a finance topic, then stick around so you can be part of the meeting.

4. Decrease the Silos

The team can be siloed quite intensely. Often, commercial teams are present in the office, and their metrics are emphasized everywhere, while contractors, who are often remote, work from home or other locations, with their metrics largely hidden. This creates a visibility gap that can lead to misalignment. So, you should review:

• Sales team input. Are teams winning or losing a lot of deals to competitors? What are the most requested features that the team isn’t able to show? What about demos? What more could the product do to help?

• Marketing input. Do they feel that the feature list is up to par with competitors? Are they able to communicate the product easily to generate pipeline?

• Customer Success input. Is the product team acting on their feedback? Do they feel heard? What are the biggest recurring issues? How many tickets are outstanding, and what trends do they reveal?

• Assign a business partner to Product. Sales, CRM, and CS teams often have a dedicated business partner, but product rarely does. This is a mistake.

• Review the progress. Like the roadmap, you want to make sure that you bring up the progress that product has had across the other teams. You can do this by looking at tickets, feedback, and general usage.

Overall, you may be the most unbiased observer in these fields. At many startups, blame is often passed around when issues arise. By bringing these conversations and metrics into management reviews, you ensure the business functions cross-functionally, something that is in your best interest.

Tip: The same business partner that supports Customer Success should also support Product to ensure alignment and break down any silos across the most important part of the business.

5. Review the Tools and Infrastructure bills

Depending on the company, tech overhead can either be a rounding error or a significant cost center. These expenses directly impact your COGS, making their optimization critical. Here’s what you need to assess:

• Clearly define infrastructure costs. Don’t lump everything into a single bucket. Break down hosting, cloud services, licensing, and support separately. This granularity is key for identifying optimization opportunities.

• Know your scale. Identify exactly what scale your technology infrastructure supports today and where the breaking points are. At what customer or usage thresholds will costs escalate? Plan ahead to ensure you’re neither overspending nor underprepared.

• Are there key features you’re paying for? Do you rely on an external product for your integrations? Do you rely on purchased software for your dashboards? How will they scale? At what point do you need to bring them in-house?

The impact of these optimizations varies widely by business. Sometimes, trimming these costs makes a big difference; other times, it’s negligible. The key is doing the legwork to determine which case applies to you.

Tip: Ask a lot of what-if questions. If you ask whether you are built to scale and they respond, “Yes, we can handle 100x greater requests tomorrow”… Maybe you overbuilt as a B2B company?

6. Maintain Momentum

You’ve laid the groundwork; now maintain momentum by embedding product focus into your core operating rhythm. Here’s your checklist:

• Review product results monthly. Incorporate a crisp product snapshot in your Monthly Business Reviews starting with the North Star. Highlight progress, tie results explicitly back to your financial metrics, and flag any risks or opportunities.

• Link roadmap clearly to financial outcomes. Every feature on your roadmap should have an associated financial expectation. Continually revisit these assumptions, making sure your projections remain credible and clear.

• Integrate North Star into top-level KPIs. Don’t isolate product measures. Embed them alongside ARR, churn, or customer acquisition cost in a company-wide operating model. Reinforce that product metrics aren’t secondary; they’re fundamental to financial success.

• Iterate relentlessly. Continually refine and reassess your product metrics, roadmap assumptions, and spend efficiency. This isn’t a one-time exercise; it's a continuous loop that drives improvement.

Of course, it’s not your job to manage Product. You should handle it like any other part of the business, include the numbers in your organization-wide narrative and let the Product team set the direction.

In conclusion.

Bringing product into every financial discussion is critical. By consistently connecting product metrics to financial outcomes, clearly mapping your roadmap, and relentlessly assessing your team's efficiency and tech overhead, you position your company for sustainable growth. This will bring the team together, and give people a North Star that isn’t the uninspiring ‘ARR’.