Business Case Instead of Gut Feeling: Profitability, Product-Market Fit, and Token Costs – with Simonetta Batteiger (Founder @ Inclusive Leaders, ex eyeo, ex Vistra)

Money is not a very romantic topic. Especially if you see yourself as a user advocate fighting against the business – and trusting that the rest will follow. Ever since interest rates rose, we’ve known that it doesn’t work that simply. So in the twenty-third episode of the PRODUKTKRAFT Podcast, I talk to Simonetta Batteiger, product leadership coach and founder of Inclusive Leaders, about commercials in product management. Simonetta came into product via finance and sales, was Head of Product at Sedo, Senior Director of Product Management at Vistra, and most recently led a business unit at eyeo, the company behind Adblock Plus. Today, in her course “Business and Finance Concepts for Product and Tech Leaders,” she teaches product and tech leaders how the economics work.

We begin with the question of what we’re actually talking about when we talk about commercials. Why is a product role, for Simonetta, at least half a commercial role? Why does viability, from Marty Cagan’s Inspired, get short shrift in so many Product Owner trainings? And what happens to product teams that can’t explain why the investment in them pays off – especially when someone on the finance team is looking for costs to cut?

Then it gets practical. Where does someone start who has spent years caring more about user research than about numbers? Simonetta is convinced: it’s not rocket science. Growing revenue, protecting revenue, cutting costs, not spending money in the first place – with these four levers and a back-of-the-napkin calculation, the first business case is done. How much should your team generate relative to its costs? Why is it worth asking the CFO which business case would actually excite them? And why does it help to see finance as just another team you work with, the same way you work with the engineers?

For startups still searching for their business model, Simonetta also has a clear mindset: willingness to pay belongs in discovery, and it has to be asked about cleverly. We talk about why it’s so hard to admit that the numbers don’t add up, when a pivot is the braver decision, and how rising interest rates, inflation, and the AI hype together make for a pretty perfect storm that sharpens the focus on the numbers.

Finally, I bring in my own perspective as the founder of ganzheit. What changes in the calculation when LLM features cause running costs that fluctuate with every use? Why should you measure what individual inferences cost as early as the MVP, and how do you set limits so that individual users don’t blow up the business case? And can you actually be a successful leader without speaking the language spoken in the boardroom?

Have a listen to the twenty-third episode of the PRODUKTKRAFT Podcast to find out why commercials are less intimidating than they sound – and how, with a few numbers in your head, you can become an ally of your finance team!