by Maria Korteleva

Hi, I'm Maria

I've spent 7 years building internal products at FMCG and software companies. And I've learned this the hard way: internal product management is a completely different game than building for customers.

Your users can't easily opt out, but they can resist, work around your product, or simply not adopt it. Your success metrics aren't direct revenue, but cost savings, efficiency gains, and risk reduction. Your biggest blockers aren't technical, they're organizational (dependencies, politics, change resistance).

When I started as a junior PM, I struggled with communication more than anything else. I'd spend 2 hours writing product updates that leadership would skim in 30 seconds. And when things went wrong, I'd freeze, unsure how to communicate without looking incompetent.

I learned by making expensive mistakes:

• Hiding a production incident in my update, losing credibility with leadership
• Writing vague risk statements that got ignored until the problem exploded
• Burying important updates under too much detail, so no one read them

This update system is what I wish I had back then. It gives you the exact structure to communicate with confidence, whether you're crushing it or asking for help.

I created it so you can spend 5 minutes writing updates that leadership actually reads, instead of 2 hours second-guessing every sentence.

Want more frameworks and honest lessons from building internal products? That's what I share in my newsletter (which you just joined). You can unsubscribe anytime.

Let's build better internal products together.

Maria

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How to Use This System

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Why Product Updates Matter (And Why Most Fail)

Your product update is leadership's window into your work. When written well, it: