Enterprise Retention Strategy (Principal Product Manager)
Description You're joining Meridian as their first Principal Product Manager. Meridian builds project management software for professional services firms — law firms, management consultancies, and accounting practices. They have 1,400…
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What You'll Be Doing
Description
You're joining Meridian as their first Principal Product Manager. Meridian builds project management software for professional services firms — law firms, management consultancies, and accounting practices. They have 1,400 customers, are growing 35% year-over-year, and recently closed a $40M Series C.
There is a problem the board raised at the last quarterly review: enterprise customers are churning at 3x the rate of the SMB segment in months 6–18 post-launch, and no one owns this problem end-to-end.
The VP of Product has handed you a data package and a mandate: "Figure out what's happening and bring me a strategy. You own this."
The data package:
| Metric | Enterprise ($50K+ ARR) | SMB ($10K> ARR) |
|---|---|---|
| Month 6–18 churn rate | 31% | 9% |
| NPS | +11 | +49 |
| Time to first completed project | 23 days | 4 days |
| Support tickets per seat (months 1–3) | 7.1 | 1.0 |
| % of feature requests built | 14% | 41% |
| Avg. seats per account | 47 | 6 |
Top reasons cited in enterprise churn interviews (conducted by Customer Success):
- "The product doesn't reflect how our firm actually works" (mentioned by 68% of churned enterprise accounts)
- "Onboarding was fine, but we never found a rhythm after the first month" (42%)
- "We couldn't get buy-in from our senior partners — they just kept using email" (38%)
You have 45 minutes to diagnose the problem, define your strategy, and propose a scoped first step your team can ship in 8 weeks.
Constraints to Consider
- Platform migration: The core engineering team (4 engineers, 2 designers) is committed to a platform infrastructure migration for Q3. There is no capacity for net-new feature development until Q4 at the earliest. Your 8-week first step must work within the existing product surface.
- CS owns the first 90 days: Customer Success runs the enterprise onboarding playbook for the first 90 days of every new account. You cannot redesign their process — you must design alongside it or hand off to them effectively.
- Immature analytics: You have the aggregate data above, but no session-level behavioral data, no heatmaps, and no ability to run A/B tests in production this quarter.
- Senior partner adoption is the kingpin: Meridian's enterprise churn data consistently shows that accounts where fewer than 30% of senior partners are active by month 3 churn at 4x the rate of accounts where senior partners are active. You cannot ignore this.
- No headcount to hire: You have the existing team and no budget to bring in contractors or new hires for this initiative.
AI Usage Guidance
We expect you to use AI tools. We evaluate how you use them — not whether you use them. Evidence of iteration, redirection, and critical evaluation scores higher than a polished output with no process documentation.
The single highest-signal indicator: your video answer to the mandatory AI question. If you cannot name a specific moment where you redirected AI output, evaluators will assume you did not.
Mandatory AI question for your video: Walk me through one moment where you disagreed with, pushed back on, or redirected what the AI gave you — and what you did instead. Name the specific moment. Explain what the AI produced that didn't meet the bar, what you did differently, and why.
Video guidance for this role: Speak naturally and conversationally — as if you're briefing your VP of Product directly. Strategic clarity and opinionated framing matter. This is not a verbal fluency test. We are listening for the quality of your reasoning, not the polish of your delivery.
Submission: Upload each deliverable as a separate file directly on the Provn platform: your Initiative Brief, your README document (Sections A, B, and C), and your video walkthrough (MP4 or MOV).
What You'll Accomplish
Demonstrate the ability to diagnose a multi-signal enterprise problem and identify its root driver from imperfect data
Build a prioritized product strategy with explicit trade-offs, naming what you chose not to pursue and why
Design a cross-functional stakeholder alignment plan that differentiates by function and interest
Define a measurement framework that connects early leading indicators to lagging retention outcomes
Show how you worked with AI to accelerate thinking — including at least one moment where you redirected it
How Your Work Will Be Scored
What to Submit
File 1 — Initiative Brief
Format: .pdf, .doc, .docx, .rtf, .txt, .md
A structured product brief presenting your diagnosis, recommended strategy, and 8-week first step. No required format or template — structure it as you would for your VP of Product. Must include: the core insight driving your recommendation, the explicit trade-off you're making (what you're not pursuing), and who owns what.
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File 2 — README Document
Format: .pdf, .doc, .docx, .rtf, .txt, .md
Three required sections:
Section A — Strategic Analysis (300–500 words): Walk through how you diagnosed the problem, what alternative framings you considered and rejected, and your single biggest assumption that would change your strategy if it turned out to be wrong.
Section B — Stakeholder & Measurement Plan: Two parts required. Part B1: A stakeholder map identifying at least 3 functions with distinct interests and your proposed approach to the most difficult alignment challenge. Part B2: Your success metrics — include at least one leading indicator and one lagging indicator, each with a specific threshold and timeframe, and name what you'd change if the leading indicator doesn't move within the first 4 weeks.
Section C — AI Usage Log (Mandatory): This is not a trick. We want to see how you work with AI — not whether you used it. In a short section of your README, document your AI collaboration process. For each significant interaction with an AI tool, briefly note: what you asked the AI to help with / what it gave you / what you kept, changed, or rejected — and why. Three interactions documented is sufficient.
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File 3 — Video Walkthrough (8–10 minutes)
Format: .mp4, .mov, .webm
Record as MP4 or MOV and upload directly on the Provn platform as a separate file. Speak as if you're briefing your VP of Product directly.
Cover:
(1) your diagnosis — what you believe is the root cause and why
(2) your strategy and the key trade-off you made
(3) your stakeholder and measurement plan highlights
(4) mandatory AI question (see AI Usage Guidance above)
(5) what you'd do differently with more time or better data.
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