Melissa Perri – Author Biography
Early Life
Melissa Perri is an American product management executive, consultant, and educator. She built her career in product leadership at technology companies, including serving as a product executive at eBay, where she experienced firsthand how large organizations struggle to build products customers actually want.
Career
Perri founded Produx Labs, a product management consultancy, and became one of the most sought-after teachers of product management in the tech industry. She created Product Institute, an online school for product managers, and has advised Fortune 500 companies and startups alike on transforming how they build software. Her 2018 book Escaping the Build Trap became an instant classic of product literature.
Major Works
Escaping the Build Trap: How Effective Product Management Creates Real Value (2018) is her signature work — a guide to shifting organizations from shipping features to solving customer problems.
Writing Style and Themes
Perri writes crisp, no-nonsense business prose aimed at practitioners. Her central concept is the “build trap”: organizations that measure success by output (features shipped) instead of outcomes (customer value created). Her prescription: strong product management, empowered teams, continuous discovery, and strategy rooted in solving real problems. Her work is part of the broader movement — alongside Marty Cagan and others — professionalizing product management as a discipline.
Legacy
Perri is one of the defining voices of modern product management. Escaping the Build Trap reshaped how thousands of companies think about the product organization’s role, and “build trap” has entered the industry vocabulary. Through her teaching and consulting, she has trained a generation of product leaders.
