Welcome to TaskFlow! This is your fictional company throughout the Claude Code PM Course.
Company Background
Founded: 2021 Headquarters: San Francisco, CA Stage: Series B ($20M raised) Employees: 50 people
Team Structure
Product (5 people):
- Sarah Chen - Head of Product
- You - Senior PM (thats you!)
- Alex Rivera - PM, Mobile & Growth
- 2 Associate PMs
Engineering (15 people):
- Mike Rodriguez - CTO
- 3 Engineering Leads
- 12 Engineers (frontend, backend, mobile)
Design (3 people):
- Jordan Kim - Head of Design
- 2 Product Designers
Go-to-Market (20 people):
- Sales: 8 people
- Marketing: 6 people
- Customer Success: 6 people
Operations (7 people):
- CEO, CFO, Head of People, IT, Legal, Office Manager, Recruiting
Company Mission
Mission: Empower remote teams to collaborate seamlessly through intelligent project management.
Vision: Become the default project management tool for modern remote-first companies.
Values:
- User-first: Every decision starts with user needs
- Transparency: Default to open communication
- Speed: Move fast, iterate quickly, learn continuously
- Quality: Sweat the details, ship polished products
- Remote-first: Distributed by design, async by default
Company Stage & Traction
Current Metrics (Q4 2024)
Users:
- 50,000 total registered users
- 10,000 active monthly users
- 2,500 daily active users
Revenue:
- $2.5M ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue)
- $250k MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue)
- 500 paying teams
- Average deal size: $5k/year
Growth:
- 15% month-over-month user growth
- 20% month-over-month revenue growth
- 65% net retention rate
- 45% activation rate (sign-up → active user)
Funding History
Seed Round (2021): $2M
- Investors: Y Combinator, several angels
- Used for: Product development, initial team
Series A (2022): $8M
- Led by: Sequoia Capital
- Used for: Scaling team, go-to-market
Series B (2024): $20M
- Led by: Andreessen Horowitz
- Used for: Enterprise expansion, mobile development, international
Market Position
Target Market
Primary: Series A-C startups (50-500 employees)
- Remote-first or hybrid companies
- Tech-forward teams
- Need better than Trello, not as complex as Jira
Secondary: SMB teams (10-50 employees)
- Agencies, consulting firms
- Creative teams
- Budget-conscious
Future: Enterprise (500+ employees)
- Fortune 500 companies
- Requires: SSO, advanced security, compliance
Market Size
TAM (Total Addressable Market): $20B
- Project management software market
SAM (Serviceable Addressable Market): $5B
- Remote-first companies, 10-500 employees
SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market): $500M
- Startups specifically, next 5 years
Competitive Landscape
Direct Competitors
Asana:
- Strengths: Brand recognition, enterprise features
- Weaknesses: Complex UI, expensive
- Our differentiation: Simpler, more affordable, better for startups
Linear:
- Strengths: Beautiful UI, developer-loved
- Weaknesses: Engineering-focused, less PM-friendly
- Our differentiation: Better for PMs, cross-functional teams
Monday.com:
- Strengths: Customizable, visual
- Weaknesses: Expensive, overwhelming options
- Our differentiation: Opinionated workflow, faster setup
ClickUp:
- Strengths: Feature-rich, all-in-one
- Weaknesses: Cluttered, performance issues
- Our differentiation: Focused, fast, polished
Indirect Competitors
- Notion: Documentation tool expanding into project management
- Jira: Developer tool, too complex for cross-functional teams
- Trello: Too simple for growing companies
- Slack: Chat tool with project management aspirations
Our Positioning
Core positioning: Project management built for how remote teams actually work
Differentiators:
- Async-first: Built for distributed teams, not real-time meetings
- Context-rich: Every task has full context (no whats this for?)
- Fast & lightweight: Loads instantly, no performance issues
- Beautiful: Design quality rivals Linear, but more functional
- Affordable: 50% cheaper than Asana for same features
Product Philosophy
Core Beliefs
1. Context over status updates
- Tasks should have enough context that anyone can pick them up
- Status meetings are waste - status should be visible in the tool
2. Async by default
- Dont require synchronous coordination
- Build for teams across timezones
3. Opinionated but flexible
- Strong defaults (workflows that work)
- Customizable when needed (not overwhelming)
4. Speed matters
- Tools should be fast to learn, fast to use, fast to load
- No loading spinners, no lag
5. Beautiful and functional
- Good design isnt just aesthetics
- UI should guide users to success
Company Culture
How We Work
Remote-first:
- Team across 8 timezones
- Async communication default
- Weekly all-hands (recorded)
- Quarterly in-person offsites
Documentation:
- Write everything down (Notion)
- Prefer writing over meetings
- Record decisions with context
Meetings:
- Default to no meeting
- If meeting needed: agenda required
- Under 30 minutes
- Notes published after
Tools:
- TaskFlow (obviously! dogfooding)
- Notion (docs, wikis)
- Figma (design)
- GitHub (code)
- Slack (quick communication)
- Linear (engineering tasks - yes, we use competitors!)
Strategic Priorities (2025)
Q1 2025 Focus
1. Mobile app launch
- iOS and Android native apps
- 35% of usage is mobile web (painful experience)
- Unlock field teams, on-the-go usage
2. Enterprise readiness
- SSO (Single Sign-On) - SAML, OAuth
- Advanced permissions and roles
- Audit logs for compliance
- Upmarket strategy
3. Activation improvement
- Increase 45% → 60% activation rate
- Faster time-to-value
- Better onboarding
- Template library
2025 OKRs (Objectives & Key Results)
Objective 1: Achieve product-market fit in enterprise segment
- KR1: Close 20 enterprise deals (500+ employees)
- KR2: Net retention rate: 65% → 80%
- KR3: Average deal size: $5k → $15k
Objective 2: Become the default PM tool for Series A startups
- KR1: 20% market share in Series A startup segment
- KR2: NPS score: 35 → 50
- KR3: Activation rate: 45% → 60%
Objective 3: Establish mobile presence
- KR1: Ship iOS and Android apps
- KR2: 40% mobile adoption (of mobile web users)
- KR3: 4.5+ star rating in app stores
Your Role (Senior PM)
What You Own
Product areas:
- Activation & onboarding
- Core task management workflows
- Notifications system
- Integrations (Slack, GitHub, etc.)
Your goals:
- Increase activation rate (45% → 60%)
- Improve time-to-value (first task completed)
- Reduce time-to-first-invite (viral growth)
Your Stakeholders
Report to: Sarah Chen (Head of Product)
Work closely with:
- Mike Rodriguez (CTO) - Technical feasibility
- Jordan Kim (Head of Design) - UX and design
- Alex Rivera (PM, Mobile) - Cross-platform consistency
- Engineering Leads - Sprint planning, prioritization
Collaborate with:
- Sales & CS - Enterprise customer needs
- Marketing - Launch planning
- Analytics - Data and insights
Your Success Metrics
Primary:
- Activation rate (% of signups → active users)
- Time to first task completed
- Viral coefficient (invites sent per user)
Secondary:
- Feature adoption rates
- User satisfaction (NPS, surveys)
- Support ticket volume
Key Terminology
Workspace: Top-level container (one per company) Project: Collection of tasks (e.g., Q1 Product Launch) Task: Individual work item Epic: Large feature or initiative spanning multiple tasks Sprint: 2-week development cycle Cycle: Same as sprint (we use cycle in product, sprint with eng)
This Course
Throughout this course, youll work on real TaskFlow projects:
- Write PRDs for new features
- Analyze user research
- Plan sprints
- Review competitive intelligence
- Generate user stories
- Communicate with stakeholders
All the context is pre-created. Youre stepping into a working company with active projects, existing documents, and ongoing work.
Lets build some great products! 🚀