Product design question
You are a Product Manager for Telegram. What new features will you build?
- Slack
- Product design
- Hard
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What this question tests
Tests feature prioritization tied to a specific platform's known differentiators, requiring the candidate to build on Telegram's actual strengths rather than generic messaging features.
How to approach it
- Identify Telegram's known differentiators: large group channels and broadcast capability, bots and automation, and a cloud-based multi-device sync experience.
- Segment users: large public channel owners and community admins, versus everyday private chat users, since their needs differ sharply.
- Identify an underserved need: channel and group admins lack strong native monetization and analytics tools, unlike creators on other platforms.
- Propose a feature: native channel monetization (subscriptions or paid broadcast tiers) paired with basic audience analytics for admins, building directly on Telegram's existing large-channel strength.
- Weigh the trade-off: monetization features must not compromise Telegram's reputation for minimal ads and a clean, fast experience for regular users.
- Define success as channel admin adoption of the monetization feature and revenue generated, tracked separately from core messaging engagement.
What a strong answer includes
- Builds on Telegram's actual known strength, large channels and broadcast, instead of proposing generic chat features any app could have.
- Identifies a real, underserved need for that segment: monetization and analytics tools for channel admins.
- Uses illustrative numbers as assumptions: assume a meaningful share of large channels would pay for basic analytics and subscriber-only content tools.
- Explicitly protects Telegram's minimal-ads, clean-experience reputation as a constraint on the new feature's design.
Common mistakes
- Proposing generic messaging features (stickers, reactions) that don't build on Telegram's specific strengths.
- Ignoring the channel admin segment, which is one of Telegram's most distinctive user types.
- Not addressing the risk of monetization features clashing with Telegram's low-ads brand identity.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you price the monetization feature?
- How do you protect Telegram's clean, low-ads experience while adding this?
- How would you measure adoption among channel admins specifically?
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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 7: AI UX and human oversight: design for a system that is wrong sometimes
- Chapter 14: Get the job: the AI PM interview loop