The Five-Legged Stool
Product, eng, design, insights, and marketing as one leadership team — with the PM accountable, not king.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 90%
The standard 'three legs of the stool' (product, engineering, design) leaves out the two functions that most often determine whether a feature works: insights (research plus analytics) and marketing (product or brand, depending on the project). Holley's Etsy runs a five-function core leadership team per squad. The PM is not a mini-CEO — they are the person accountable for choosing among ideas and owning what happens next, which is a narrower and sharper role.
Origin
Tim Holley's evolution of the widely-used 'three legs of the stool' product trio model. The 'you don't have to have the best ideas, but you have to choose the best ideas' line is credited in the episode to Nick, Etsy's CPO.
Core principles
- 01The PM's job is selection, not invention: you don't have to have the best ideas, you have to choose the best ideas.
- 02Insights (qual + quant) and marketing are core team members, not consultants you brief later.
- 03PM-as-mini-CEO directing from on high produces worse decisions and worse features.
- 04Accountability is not authority to ignore other viewpoints — but when the group cannot converge, the PM decides and moves.
- 05Org design follows strategy; if strategy is always evolving, so is the org.
How to run it
- 1
Add the two missing legs
Expand the product/eng/design trio to include an insights partner (research and analytics) and a marketing partner. Marketing may be product marketing or brand marketing depending on the project's needs.
Pro tip You will not have dedicated coverage on every squad. Aspire to coverage on all five and staff the missing roles first on the teams that most need them.
- 2
Let the insights decide when they can
Because the team is heavily led by qual and quant insight, most decisions have a clear answer in the data. Run the data first — it resolves the majority of the debates before they become debates.
Watch out Note the failure mode this replaces: Etsy's old consensus culture debated everything. Data-led decision-making is what makes five-person leadership tractable instead of five-way gridlock.
- 3
Name the PM as the tiebreaker, explicitly and repeatedly
When insight is ambiguous, the PM steps forward and states the direction. Re-clarify who is accountable regularly — 'we're always looking to clarify or re-clarify who ultimately is accountable' — because the answer drifts.
Pro tip Framing it as 'on the hook' rather than 'in charge' keeps the collaboration norm alive while still unblocking decisions.
Watch out Accountability is not licence to decide in a vacuum. A PM who uses the tiebreaker to skip consultation destroys the model.
- 4
Make the PM own what's next, not just what shipped
Roughly 80% of experiments fail. The PM's accountability is primarily for the learn-and-redirect loop: did we learn, and what are we doing about it?
- 5
Hire for collaboration, decisiveness, and curiosity
Screen PMs on three traits this model demands: genuine excitement (not just willingness) to collaborate; the decisiveness to move when data is ambiguous; and curiosity/growth mindset, because a small org reprioritizes often and specialists who want one domain forever will struggle.
Pro tip Holley probes for it with live case studies (how they think on the fly, how they react to constraints) and by asking what they have taught themselves.
Watch out The collaboration trait is a real filter. Fast-decision solo operators are not a fit and will be miserable, however strong they are.
In the wild
Etsy's teams are structured as core customer teams (buyers and sellers, on the front lines), partner teams like payments (customer-facing but with external constraints from card networks), enablement teams (recommender systems, design system), and infrastructure at the foundation. The five-leg model runs from group level down to individual squad.
→ A structure explicitly tied to strategy — Holley's stated rule is that org design should follow strategy, and both should keep evolving.
Etsy's CPO frames the PM role as choosing among ideas rather than generating the best ones. With five functions supplying inputs, the PM's differentiated skill is selection under ambiguity and ownership of the follow-up when the choice fails.
→ Fast decisions without the mini-CEO dynamic that Holley says doesn't lead to good decisions or the best features.
Common mistakes
Briefing marketing and research after the decision
Treating insights and marketing as downstream service functions means their constraints and viewpoints arrive too late to shape the product — which is precisely what the five-leg model exists to prevent.
Confusing collaboration with consensus
Etsy's old consensus culture was thoughtful and slow. Five legs without an explicit accountable decider recreates that gridlock with more people in the room.
Running PM as mini-CEO
Directing from on high produces neither good decisions nor the best features, in Holley's experience, and is incompatible with a team whose insight partners often already have the answer.
Is it for you?
Best for
Product leaders at data-rich companies who want speed without reverting to top-down PM authority, and who have (or can build) research/analytics and product-marketing capacity.
Not ideal for
Very small startups where one person wears three of the five hats — the model adds ceremony without adding viewpoints.
From the transcript
“You'll often hear, you know, the three legs of the stool where you've got product and engine design. And we've we've evolved that to five…”
“of course you've got product, eng, design. And we've got our insights partners, so research and analytics. And we've got our marketing partners really working…”
“we don't subscribe to this idea of PM as the mini CEO”
“you don't have to have the best ideas, but you have to choose the best ideas”
“we're so heavily led by the insights either qual or quant, the decision in many instances is clear. When it's not, that's when, you know,…”
From the episode
Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution
Tim Holley (VP of Product)