Product design question
You have two quarters to launch a self-serve managed version of North for mid-market customers. Which customer segment would you target first, what would be in and out of the MVP, and how would you position and price it relative to Cohere’s higher-touch enterprise offering?
- Cohere
- Product design
- Hard
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What this question tests
Whether you can scope a self-serve MVP for a new segment within a tight timeline, and reason about positioning and pricing relative to an existing higher-touch offering without cannibalizing it.
How to approach it
- Target mid-market companies with an existing internal AI or platform team who can self-configure but do not have budget or need for a dedicated enterprise sales relationship.
- In MVP scope: a guided self-serve setup flow, a small set of pre-built agent templates for common workflows, and transparent usage-based pricing shown up front.
- Out of MVP scope: deep custom integrations, dedicated support SLAs, and advanced compliance options that are core to the enterprise tier, keeping those as clear upsell paths to the higher-touch offering.
- Position self-serve as the fast-start option for teams ready to build now, and the enterprise offering as the option for teams needing custom integration, compliance guarantees, or dedicated support, so the two tiers feel complementary, not competing.
- Price self-serve with a usage-based model with a low entry point, keeping it clearly below the value threshold where a mid-market customer would instead need the enterprise tier's guarantees.
What a strong answer includes
- Draws a clear scope line (self-serve config and templates versus custom integration and SLAs) that maps directly to what differentiates the two tiers, avoiding overlap.
- Explains how positioning avoids cannibalizing the enterprise offering instead of just optimizing the new tier in isolation.
- Picks a pricing model, usage-based with a low floor, and ties it explicitly to the target segment's willingness to pay.
Common mistakes
- Scopes the MVP so broadly it overlaps with and undercuts the enterprise offering.
- Picks a target segment without explaining why they wouldn't just use self-serve instead of ever upgrading.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you handle a self-serve customer who outgrows the tier and needs enterprise features.
- What would make you add a feature back into the enterprise-only tier after launch.
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More questions from Cohere
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