Product Marketing & Growth Capstone

The idea: Knowledge becomes skill only when you do the work. In the capstone you adopt one product at the start and carry it through the entire product-marketing and growth workflow, producing the exact artifacts a working PMM ships: customer and competitive research, a positioning and messaging framework, a coordinated go-to-market launch plan, a sales-enablement and content kit, and a funnel analysis with a prioritized growth experiment. By the end you'll have a coherent six-artifact portfolio that tells one story about how you'd launch and grow this product — ready to link from your resume and walk through in interviews.

How it works: Each deliverable unlocks after the syllabus topic that teaches its skill. You produce the artifact (a template is provided), submit it, and the app's AI reviews it against a rubric, gives you specific feedback, and lets you revise until it's solid. Finished deliverables assemble into your portfolio — and because each one builds on the last, they add up to a single credible go-to-market and growth story rather than six disconnected exercises.

Your scenario (this is your product)

Unlike some roles where you pick any product, this capstone hands you a realistic brief so every artifact builds on the same facts:

You are the first Product Marketing & Growth hire at "Tempo," a B2B time-tracking and capacity-planning SaaS for small creative agencies (10–50 people). Tempo has a solid product and a few hundred paying teams, but it grew on word-of-mouth and has no real marketing function. The founders are about to launch a major new feature — AI-assisted capacity forecasting — and they have hired you to define who Tempo is really for, sharpen how it talks about itself against incumbents like Toggl and Harvest, run the launch, equip a two-person sales team, and find the biggest leak in the activation-to-paid funnel.

You carry Tempo through every deliverable, so each artifact builds on the one before it: your research defines the customer and the differentiator, positioning turns that into language, the launch puts that language into market, enablement arms the people who sell it, and the funnel work shows you can grow it after launch.

The pricing facts you inherit (use these everywhere): Tempo is sold on one flat plan at $12/seat/month (annual; 14-day free trial, no card). The average paying team is 18 seats ($216/mo, ~$2,592/yr), on a base of ~300 paying teams. For reference, Toggl's entry tier is ~$9/seat and Harvest's is ~$11/seat — Tempo is deliberately not the cheapest, because it sells forward-looking capacity, not the lowest hourly price. The new AI capacity-forecasting feature ships bundled into that single $12 plan at launch — it is a retention and competitive-switching play, not a new price line. These are the canonical numbers: your launch plan (D3), one-pager pricing (D4), and channel economics (D6) must all use them, and if you propose a future paid tier you must label it as your own invention and carry the exact name and price forward unchanged. Do not silently introduce new tiers or prices mid-capstone — that breaks the one-story thread these artifacts are graded on.

The deliverables (your capstone arc)

#	Deliverable	Unlocks after	The skill it proves
1	Customer & Competitive Research Brief (ICP + SWOT)	Topic 3 (Understanding the market and customer)	Knowing exactly who you're for and where you win
2	Positioning & Messaging Framework	Topic 4 (Positioning and messaging)	Turning a differentiator into language people care about
3	Go-to-Market Launch Plan	Topic 5 (Go-to-market and launches)	Coordinating a real launch end to end
4	Sales Enablement Kit & Content Piece	Topic 6 (Content and sales enablement)	Arming sales and attracting prospects in one voice
5	Growth Funnel Analysis & Experiment Design	Topic 8 (Growth experiments and channels)	Finding the leak and testing a fix honestly
6	Marketing Metrics Dashboard & Channel Economics	Topic 9 (Marketing metrics and tools)	Proving the story works with numbers

Each builds on the last: your research (1) surfaces the differentiator your positioning (2) puts into words; that messaging fuels the launch (3) and the enablement kit (4); then the funnel analysis (5) finds where to grow after launch and the metrics dashboard (6) ties the whole story together with channel economics. Together they tell one coherent product-marketing and growth story about Tempo.

What each deliverable contains

1. Customer & Competitive Research Brief (ICP + SWOT) (after Topic 3 — Understanding the market and customer) — A one-to-two-page research brief: a sharp ideal-customer persona for Tempo (segment, pains, gains, and the job to be done), a features-to-benefits translation for two key features, a competitive scan of 2–3 alternatives (including "doing nothing"), and a SWOT that surfaces the genuine differentiator the rest of the capstone will build on. Template: customer-competitive-research-brief.md · ~75 min.

2. Positioning & Messaging Framework (after Topic 4 — Positioning and messaging) — A messaging framework document: a filled-in positioning statement (for/who/category/benefit/unlike/differentiator), a homepage-ready value proposition, a primary message hierarchy of 3 benefit-led pillars with proof points, and audience/channel-tailored variations — the strategic source of truth every piece of copy flows from. Template: positioning-messaging-framework.md · ~90 min.

3. Go-to-Market Launch Plan (after Topic 5 — Go-to-market and launches) — A GTM launch brief for the AI capacity-forecasting feature: target audience and value prop, a channel mix matched to where the ICP actually is, pricing/timing, a before/during/after launch timeline with owners, the cross-functional coordination plan (product, sales, support), and predefined success metrics with a launch-day announcement plan. Template: gtm-launch-plan.md · ~90 min.

4. Sales Enablement Kit & Content Piece (after Topic 6 — Content and sales enablement) — An enablement package that arms the sales team and attracts prospects: a competitive battlecard (vs. Toggl/Harvest with objection handling), a one-page product summary, and a short SEO-targeted content piece (a "help, don't sell" blog post or guide) chosen against a real search query the ICP types — all in one consistent voice. Template: sales-enablement-kit.md · ~90 min.

5. Growth Funnel Analysis & Experiment Design (after Topic 8 — Growth experiments and channels) — A growth analysis that maps Tempo's AARRR funnel, identifies the worst leak with reasoning, and designs one prioritized A/B experiment to fix it: a clean "if/then/because" hypothesis, control vs. one-change variant, the metric it should move, sample-size/honesty cautions, and how the result feeds the next round. Template: growth-experiment-design.md · ~75 min.

6. Marketing Metrics Dashboard & Channel Economics (after Topic 9 — Marketing metrics and tools) — A one-page metrics dashboard tying the whole story together: a North Star metric, funnel/conversion and retention metrics, channel economics (CAC vs. LTV with the LTV > CAC check) for the launch channels, ROI/ROAS framing, and an explicit call-out of which vanity metrics to ignore and why. Template: marketing-metrics-dashboard.md · ~70 min.

What the finished portfolio demonstrates

A complete capstone is six artifacts about one product (Tempo), each passing its rubric, assembled into a portfolio. To a hiring manager, it shows you can do the whole PMM & growth job — not just describe it:

• You think customer-first, not feature-first. The research brief proves you can find an ICP, translate features into benefits, and name a real differentiator instead of a feature list.
• You can make people care. The positioning framework proves you can turn that differentiator into a positioning statement, a value proposition, and a message hierarchy that other people can write from.
• You can run a launch. The GTM plan proves you can coordinate product, sales, and support across a before/during/after timeline with owners, channels, and predefined success metrics — not just "post on launch day."
• You can arm a go-to-market team. The enablement kit proves you can equip salespeople with a battlecard and objection handling and attract prospects with a help-don't-sell content piece, all in one voice.
• You think like a growth marketer, not just a campaign runner. The funnel analysis proves you can read an AARRR funnel, find the worst leak with reasoning, and design an honest A/B test instead of guessing.
• You're data-honest and business-literate. The metrics dashboard proves you can pick a North Star, check LTV > CAC for real channels, and call out vanity metrics — the judgment that separates a PMM from a poster.

Read top to bottom, the six artifacts are a single narrative: here's who Tempo is for, here's how it should talk, here's how I'd launch it, here's how I'd equip the team, here's where it leaks, and here's how I'd prove growth. That coherent thread is exactly what Topic 10 ("Landing the job") tells you to build a portfolio around and what you'll practice presenting in the interview prep and program schedule.

What "done" looks like

A complete capstone is six artifacts about Tempo, each passing its rubric, assembled into a portfolio you can link from your resume and walk through in interviews. When you reach the interview prep and the program schedule, you'll practice presenting these artifacts the way you would to a hiring manager — turning the launch plan into a "take this feature to market" answer, the funnel analysis into a "sign-ups are flat, diagnose it" answer, and the positioning framework into the live writing exercise real PMM loops run.

Tips

• Keep it real and specific. "Tempo helps agencies" is weak; "Tempo tells a 30-person agency today whether they can take the next project without burning the team" is a PMM thinking. Use Tempo's real situation (creative agencies, Toggl/Harvest, the AI forecasting launch) in every artifact.
• Reuse your earlier work — the thread is the point. The differentiator you name in the research brief should show up in your positioning, drive your launch messaging, anchor your battlecard, and explain your funnel hypothesis. Graders (and employers) reward a coherent story far more than six strong-but-disconnected documents.
• Lead with benefits, back with proof. Every claim about Tempo should translate a feature into a customer outcome and carry a proof point — that habit runs through all six deliverables.
• Be data-honest. When you design the experiment and build the dashboard, resist vanity metrics and impossible-to-trust results. Naming the caution (sample size, what you'd ignore) scores higher than a confident-but-shaky number.
• Use the templates in ../templates/ as starting points, and revise based on the AI feedback rather than aiming for perfect on the first try — that iterate-against-the-rubric loop is the whole point.