Strategy question
A strategic customer will expand if North ships a custom integration for a high-value workflow, but key primitives like auth, permissioning, or data sync are still immature. How would you decide what to build as a one-off to close the customer need versus what to invest in as reusable platform infrastructure, and how would you sequence that work?
- Cohere
- Strategy
- Hard
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What this question tests
Tests platform investment judgment: deciding what to build as a one off customer fix versus reusable infrastructure when core primitives are immature.
How to approach it
- Assess how immature the primitive actually is, for example whether auth needs a full rebuild or just a scoped extension for this case.
- Estimate how many other prospects or accounts would benefit from a more robust version of the same primitive.
- If demand is narrow, ship the customer specific integration fast to close the deal, but flag the technical debt explicitly.
- If demand is broad, invest in the reusable primitive first, even if it delays this specific customer, since it unblocks future deals.
- Sequence the work so the one off fix and the platform investment do not conflict, for example building the one off on top of a minimal stable interface.
- Set a deadline to revisit the one off solution and fold its logic into the platform investment once it ships.
What a strong answer includes
- Uses expected future demand, not just this one deal, as the deciding factor between one off and platform investment.
- Proposes building the one off on a stable interface so it can later be absorbed into the platform investment without a rewrite.
- Explicitly flags technical debt from the one off fix rather than treating it as free, since immature primitives compound risk.
Common mistakes
- Building a full platform investment for a single customer's need without evidence of broader demand.
- Shipping the one off fix without a plan to fold it back into the platform later, creating permanent technical debt.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you communicate the tradeoff to the customer if the platform investment takes longer than their expected timeline?
- What signals would tell you demand is broad enough to justify the platform investment?
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Learn the skill behind it
Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.
- Chapter 4: Discovery and strategy for AI products
- Chapter 9: Prove it paid off: outcomes, economics, and pricing
- Chapter 14: Get the job: the AI PM interview loop