Why Does Serval Have No Product Team?

Jake Stauch says Serval has no product function. Engineers talk with customers every day, so product development sits with the engineering team. They adapt to what customers say today versus what customers said a month ago. The product ships and changes faster than anyone can keep up, including him.

Serval hires engineers who understand customers and puts them in front of customers, because so many decisions happen at the edge and not every product decision can rise to leadership. Leadership has to push product decision-making down, move fast, undo a wrong turn, revert, and kill work the team was committed to. When engineers show how the customer sees the product now, leadership changes course on ideas that once felt fundamental.

One thing he is proudest of at Serval is how many times the company has erased work it was very committed to and decided to do things entirely differently after the market changed and the customer changed. The ability to reinvent over and over again is what has enabled Serval to keep up.