A 45-minute AMA, every week.

The Product Circle weekly AMA is a 45-minute session, every week, with a product manager or founder. Questions come from members and are answered live. The idea is in one line: bring the questions you can't ask at work.

What is the Product Circle weekly AMA?

AMA stands for "ask me anything". In Product Circle, it's a short, regular session where one PM or founder takes questions from members. There's no keynote and no slide deck to sit through. Members ask, the guest answers, and the conversation goes wherever the questions take it.

Three things define it:

• Weekly. It happens every week, so you never have to wait long for the next one.
• 45 minutes. Long enough to go beyond the first answer, short enough to fit in a working week.
• Member questions, answered live. The agenda is whatever members want to know.

How the weekly AMA works

What we can say publicly:

1. Each week, a PM or founder joins as the guest.
2. Members bring their questions.
3. The guest answers them live, for 45 minutes.

The day, time, guest line-up and how to join each session are shared with members. If you're not a member yet, the how to join page explains how to apply.

Why "the questions you can't ask at work"

Some questions are hard to ask inside your own company. Not because they're secret, but because the people around you are part of the problem, or because asking would signal something you'd rather not signal. For example:

• How do you push back on a founder who keeps changing the roadmap?
• How did you know it was time to leave your PM job?
• What did you get wrong in your first 90 days as a head of product?
• How did you decide what to pay your first PM hire?
• When did you realise a feature you'd championed wasn't working, and what did you do?

These are questions for someone who has been there and has no stake in your answer. That's who the AMA is with.

Who the weekly AMA is for

The AMA works for anyone in the circle, but it's especially useful if you are:

• A PM a few years in, looking for how more experienced people make calls you're about to face. Pair it with our guide to your first 90 days as a product manager if you've just changed roles.
• A founder, hearing how other founders handled hiring, pricing, fundraising or their first product team. See the page for founders.
• Someone moving between roles, from PM to founder or the other way. Our post on going from product manager to founder covers the shift.

How to get the most from the weekly AMA

The AMA is only as good as the questions in it. A few habits make a big difference.

Ask about a decision, not a topic

"What do you think about pricing?" gets a general answer. "We charge ₹499 a month and our best customers say it's cheap. How did you decide when to raise prices?" gets a useful one. Name the decision you're facing.

Give one line of context

Say your stage, your users and your constraint in one sentence. "Seed-stage B2B SaaS, selling to mid-size Indian manufacturers, two engineers." It lets the guest answer your situation instead of a generic one.

Ask what they'd do differently

Guests often tell the tidy version of a story. "What would you do differently?" or "What did you try first that didn't work?" gets you closer to the real one.

Write down one thing to try

Before the session ends, write the one thing you'll try this week. A single change you act on is worth more than ten notes you never look at again.

There's a longer version of this advice in how to ask good questions in an AMA.

An example of a good AMA question

Here's an illustrative example of a question that tends to get a strong answer. It isn't from a real session.

"I'm the first PM at a 30-person fintech. Engineering wants to pay down tech debt for a quarter; sales wants two features promised to a large customer. I've used RICE and it hasn't settled it. When you were in this spot, how did you decide, and how did you explain it to the side that lost?"

It's specific, it names what's already been tried, and it asks about both the decision and the communication. If you want to brush up on the frameworks behind a question like that, see our guide to product prioritisation frameworks.

How the AMA fits with the rest of membership

The AMA is one of six things members get. It pairs naturally with product teardowns, where you practise the judgement guests talk about, and with office hours, where you pick a 20-minute slot with a VC or founder. The full list is on the membership page.

Frequently asked questions

How long is the Product Circle AMA?

Each AMA is 45 minutes. It happens every week.

What happens during a weekly AMA?

A PM or founder joins for 45 minutes and answers questions from members, live. There are no slides to sit through; the session is driven by what members ask. Our guide on how to ask good questions in an AMA helps you get a useful answer.

Can I ask anything?

That's the point. Members bring the questions they can't ask at work, and the guest answers live. Specific questions with a line of context get the best answers.

Is the AMA online or in person, and when is it?

The day, time and joining details are shared with members. The monthly chai meetup is the format that's in person.

Do I need to prepare?

Not formally, but one well-framed question goes a long way. Name the decision you're facing, give one line of context, and ask what the guest would do differently.

Bring your first question

If there's a question you've been carrying around that nobody at work can answer, the weekly AMA is where to ask it. Start with a short application on the how to join page.