Product Management line, station 6 of 11Business & Finance line, station 3 of 4
The Business of Product
Check that every order, customer and investment makes money: unit economics, business cases a managing director will sign, pricing and packaging, and marketplaces with real moats.
- 4lessons
- 2.5 hto read and do
- Intermediatelevel
- 4podcast episodes
- 4checked exercises
- 2simulators
Tools you'll use in this course
The lessons open these with a template ready. They work for your own job too, no course needed.
About this course
Good products still fail when the money doesn't work: an order that loses 40 cents every time, a subscription that only heavy users buy, a scanner rollout whose savings never appear, a marketplace that charges more than its sellers can pay. This course teaches the business arithmetic and judgement that strong PMs use before they grow anything: contribution margin per order, CAC, LTV and payback, NPV and sensitivity ranges, value-based pricing, and how network effects, take rates and moats really work.
Every lesson works with the same numbers at Mangrove Market, a fictional grocery chain with 320 stores, 60,000 app orders a day and 1,800 partner shops. You follow Imran as he fixes a dark store's losing orders, asks the managing director for 1,300 new handheld scanners, tests a partner-shop delivery fee and pilots a three-sided marketplace of customers, shops and riders. Real, checked examples, such as Blinkit's and Getir's quick-commerce results, Amazon Prime's price rise, DoorDash's merchant plans, M-Pesa's fee bands and Airbnb's service fees, show the same ideas in the wider world.
Internal tools get full attention: cost to serve per order or GRN, hard and soft benefits, and business cases for hardware such as handhelds or a GPU server for an AI assistant. Two lessons have simulators, every lesson has an auto-checked JavaScript exercise (order margin, NPV and payback, a subscriber's margin, liquidity), and each ends with a template you can copy into your own work and a podcast episode for the commute.
What you will be able to do
- Calculate contribution margin per order, CAC, LTV and payback, split them by segment, and find the lever that fixes a loss soonest
- Measure cost to serve for an internal tool and count only the savings that really turn into cash
- Build a business case for a hardware-plus-software investment with payback, ROI, NPV, low, base and high cases, sensitivity and switching values
- Answer a managing director's questions on one page and ask for a staged decision with a measured gate
- Set prices from customer value, design tiers, fences and subscriptions, and test a price change without breaking trust
- Explain how a marketplace reaches liquidity, set a take rate that fits the seller's margin, and judge whether a moat is real
Syllabus
4 stops, about 2.5 h in total. Each stop fills in when you complete the lesson.
Unit economics: does each order make money?
Before you grow anything, check that one unit of it makes money: one order, one ride, one subscriber, one delivery to a shop. This lesson shows you how to build the money story of a single order line by line, add the customer layer (CAC, LTV and payback), find the lever that fixes a loss soonest, and use the same method for internal tools as cost to serve.
Unit economicsContribution marginCAC and LTVCost to serve
Business cases a managing director will sign
Big product bets often need money before they need code: 1,300 new handheld scanners for the stores, or a GPU server for an in-house AI assistant. This lesson shows you how to build the business case for a hardware-plus-software investment, calculate payback, ROI and NPV, show honest ranges instead of one hopeful number, and answer the questions a managing director asks, in the order they ask them.
Business casesNPV and paybackSensitivity analysisHard and soft benefits
Pricing and packaging
Price is the strongest lever in unit economics and the one teams test least. This lesson shows you how to set a price from the value customers get, measure what they will really pay, package your product into tiers and subscriptions that customers sort themselves into, price for businesses and payments, and test a price change without losing trust.
Value-based pricingPackaging and tiersWillingness to payPrice testing
Marketplaces, platforms and moats
Some products get better as more people use them: more shops bring more customers, and more customers bring more shops. This lesson explains how network effects really work, how to start a marketplace from nothing and measure whether it works, how much a platform can keep from each sale, how a three-sided marketplace of customers, shops and riders stays in balance, and where lasting advantages come from.
MarketplacesNetwork effectsTake ratesMoats
Capstone: Should Mangrove launch Mangrove Plus?
A realistic project with a rubric and a model answer.
Final exam and certificate
10 questions drawn at random, 70% to pass.
Capstone project
Should Mangrove launch Mangrove Plus?
The app team wants to launch Mangrove Plus, a monthly subscription for free 30-minute "Now" delivery, and the managing director wants your recommendation in two weeks. Work from the course's numbers: about 60,000 app orders a day, an average basket of about $18, a $1.50 delivery fee, a rider cost of about $3.60 per order, a 22% goods margin, 2% payment fees, and a contribution margin of about $1.07 on a repeat order without a discount. Model the contribution per order with and without Plus, and the result per member for the heavy users who will join first. Set a price and one or two tiers with clear fences, such as a basket threshold or an annual plan. Estimate how order frequency, basket size and dinner-peak rider demand would change, and say where those estimates come from. Build a three-year business case with ROI, payback and NPV at 12% a year in low, base and high cases, including the build, marketing to members and any extra rider shifts. Finish with a five-slide recommendation that names the one assumption that would flip your answer and proposes how to test it before a full launch.
You will hand in
- A unit economics sheet: contribution per order today, per order for a Plus member, and per member per month with and without the change in behaviour you expect
- A pricing proposal: value to the customer, the price corridor, one or two packages with fences, and a test plan with grandfathering
- An estimate of how members' order frequency, basket size and dinner-peak rider demand change, with sources or stated assumptions
- A three-year business case: costs and benefits by month or year, ROI, payback and NPV in low, base and high cases, a sensitivity chart and the switching value of the key assumption
- A five-slide, answer-first recommendation with a staged launch and a measured gate
Check what you know
Already know some of this? Answer 4 quick questions, one from each lesson, and we will mark the lessons you can skim. It takes about 2 minutes and nothing is graded.
Questions
Do I need a finance or accounting background?
No. Every formula is explained with worked Mangrove numbers, and the exercises check your arithmetic as you go. Basic spreadsheet skills help for the project. You will learn the words finance uses, such as NPV, payback, capex and opex, so you can work with your finance team confidently.
I build internal tools that earn no revenue. Is this course for me?
Yes. Cost to serve, hard and soft benefits, and business cases for hardware and software are taught with internal tools in mind: the Store app's handheld scanners, phone orders against app orders, and a GPU server for an AI assistant for store managers.
What do the simulators do?
The unit economics lesson has a simulator for one 30-minute order: change the basket, fees, rider cost and discounts and watch the margin, break-even and LTV move. The business case lesson has one for 1,300 store scanners, with low, base and high cases, a sensitivity chart and the managing director's three questions.
Are the real company numbers up to date?
They were checked against the sources listed in each lesson, with years given, in October 2026. Fees and prices change often, so check the source again before quoting a number in your own work.
Will this help with PM interviews?
Yes. Unit economics, pricing, investment decisions, marketplaces and moats are common in execution and strategy interviews, and each lesson has an 'In interviews' note on what a strong answer covers.
Is it really free?
Yes. Every lesson, podcast episode, exercise, quiz, final exam and certificate is free. The labs and their templates for real work are free too. Plus and Premium add every lab challenge, weekly extras and a mentor on top, and they never lock the tools or the courses.
How long does it take?
Each lesson shows an honest time for reading and doing. Most people finish a course in two to four weeks at three or four hours a week.