Product Strategy Interview Questions (2025 Guide)

This guest post is from Alexis and Adrienne's Product Managers at Work newsletter.

I know people who are really good at strategic thinking.

One of my friends can instantly take a problem that at first appears intractable, like “How would you drive down the cost of Waymo’s autopilot system to increase profit?” and then instantly break the question down, identify the most important levers, and separate signal from noise to drill down at an airtight strategic plan.

People who do this well are great at strategy and would make sharp executives.

They also tend to ace product strategy rounds like those in Google Product Management Interviews or Meta's Product Sense interviews.

When I interviewed for Google, the Product Strategy portion asked questions like:

• “What business would you build on top of self-driving cars?”
• or “How would you revolutionize the car wash industry?”

I was successful and landed a job at Google.

What made me successful was constantly thinking of different example responses (repetition) and finding patterns in good and bad answers.

Developing lots of examples helped me understand what makes good, clear strategic thinking different from cloudy strategic thinking.

Here are some observations I’ve made that will help you answer these questions better and build your intuition about good vs. great product strategy.

Product strategy questions are most common in product manager interviews and BizOps interviews.

You should also have a good product sense when asked, "Why Google?"

Product Strategy Interview Questions

Companies like Google tend to ask three main types of product strategy questions.

These also align with questions business executives tend to face:

Company Strategy

• Imagine that you’re the CEO of Netflix. What is your strategy for the next 10 years?
• How would you revolutionize the car wash industry?
• How would you solve the housing crisis in San Francisco?

Entering or Expanding Markets

• Pretend Google wants to acquire iRobot, the robot vacuum company. What would you look for? How would you position this acquisition?
• What is an area where Google is underinvested?
• What new vertical should Amazon enter?
• How can Ford sell more cars?

New Technologies

• Let's say Google starts building self-driving cars itself. What are some of the businesses you could start with that technology?
• Let’s say everyone's internet speed was 100x faster. What are some of the businesses you could start with this technology?
• Let's say you have a technology that allows people to time travel. How would you monetize this?

Defining Company Strategy

One helpful technique for defining company strategy is breaking the product into smaller, more tractable building blocks.

Let’s say you are asked:

How would you revolutionize the car wash industry?

Bad Answer

Customers, especially millennials, care about convenience, so I would launch a mobile car wash service that allows customers to wash their cars while at work.

Good Answer

There are several aspects of a car wash business:

• payments,
• cleaning,
• marketing.

For payments, car washes probably struggle with the cyclical and weather-dependent nature of car wash demand, so we could experiment with a loyalty program to help with the cash flow.

For the cleaning itself, one issue with car washes is that people have to drive somewhere and often wait in line. Instead of having people go to car washes, I’d design a way to have car washes come to people.

For marketing, car washing is currently a commodity. Car wash services sell beautiful cars, but a way to make it a habit would be to sell a sensation and turn getting your car washed into an experience—maybe the liquid soap sprays different colors, EDM music blasts, and neon lights flash while you go through the car wash tunnel. There are many ways to transform a car wash into a sensational experience.

Great Answer

A great PM would break things down like a good PM does.

However, they'd also consider changing consumer preferences or a solution that adds a layer of new technology.

One example of changing consumer preferences is the declining rates in car ownership among millennials and Gen Z. A great PM would recognize this. They might instead propose a car wash maintenance service that partners with car rental services like Turo and GetAround.

Entering or Expanding Markets

Let’s say you are a PM at Ford and you’re trying to answer:

How can Ford sell more cars?

Bad Answer

Ford could launch a few things, such as a car rental service or renting their EV charging stations to other EV car companies.

In this way, the PM throws things at the wall and sees what sticks.

If something works, they won’t know why, and because there is no methodical process, there is no way of figuring out what is working vs. not working, how to double down on the things working to repeat success.

Good Answer

Ford's goal is to sell more cars.

To this end, Ford could launch a car rental service allowing owners to rent cars on a network. This would lower the friction of potential buyers test-driving a Ford EV and create an extra revenue stream.

This is better than the previous answer because the PM establishes a framework but falls short when the PM immediately deep-dives into one solution.

The ideal would be to explore several options (breadth-first search), develop criteria for honing down on one, and then dive deeper into one (depth-first search).

Great Answer

Ford’s goal is to sell more cars. There are several aspects from which we could look at this:

• Launch new features
• Manufacturing
• Sales and Marketing

Ford could sell new cars by

• launching new features that excite customers,
• or investigating manufacturing, which could involve either bringing down the car's manufacturing cost to make it more affordable, or producing more vehicles in less time,
• or improving the sales and marketing strategy.

If you ensure these buckets are Mutually Exclusive and Collectively Exhaustive (MECE), you can be confident that you have explored the entire territory and have not let any granules of sand (that could potentially be significant business opportunities) fall through any holes.

New Technologies

When these types of questions involve a new technology, it's helpful to consider its downstream impacts.

Every new invention has a consequence, and those consequences have consequences.

Suppose you are asked:

Let’s say the internet speed was 100x faster. What are some of the businesses you could start with this technology?

Bad Answer

If the internet speed were faster, a big business opportunity would be in gaming, especially virtual reality gaming, where you would need to send a lot of image data over the network.

Good Answer

With faster internet speeds, we’ll see a decrease in latency, which means that things like high-fidelity VR are possible because you need a large feed for VR. This creates exciting opportunities, like high-fidelity VR video conferencing that makes users feel like they are in the same room with their co-workers.

The Good PM provides more justification but still jumps to only one answer and doesn’t clearly explain the interviewer’s thought process.

Great Answer

New technological inventions often change the structure of an industry.

The best way to predict how the industry will change and discover new business opportunities is to consider the consequences of the new technology at each level.

In this case, the first-order consequence of faster internet speeds is a decrease in data transfer latency, making cloud computing easier.

The second-order consequence is that devices will no longer need onboard computing, and less storage will be necessary on-device. For example, phones can store photos in the cloud because they can be quickly loaded and pulled up.

When devices no longer need powerful onboard computing, many opportunities open up.

I see two categories:

• The wearable technology space,
• The nanotechnology space...

PM Interview Advice

Landing a product job requires more than just applying!

1. Create an excellent PM resume: Companies like Google receive over three million applications yearly. 80-90% of candidates never pass the resume screen. Ask friends, mentors, or our tech resume coaches to review your resume. Use our PM resume template if you need help getting started.
2. Prepare for interviews: The product management interview process will test your product sense, product design, product strategy, analytical and estimation skills, and behavioral fit with the company. Review the most frequently asked PM questions and answers.
3. Review the company: Each company has a unique mission, products, and approach to PM interviews. Spend time understanding how they envision their place in the world. How could you help them achieve that vision? 
4. Practice: Even the most knowledgeable candidates can feel nervous during the interview. You can practice with Exponent's free peer-to-peer and AI PM mock interview portal. Every day, PM candidates role-play in 1:1 mock interviews and give feedback.
5. Interview: All the preparation and hard work you've done have led up to this moment! It's time to turn on your camera and nail those PM interviews!