That's the incredibly frustrating thing about startups. Where to spend your time depends on the context.
At first, you're desperate to validate your product and understand your customers. Spending more time in the lab won't save much time because you have little overhead and changes can happen quickly. Prototypes don't always convey a product's value. Imagine looking at mockups of Dropbox before it was released. I'd be the skeptic saying "So I can only sync one folder? That's stupid!", yet I love Dropbox.
I think Intercom's opinion is based on mature, profitable, companies that build ambitious new products. The proportion of time invested in user research, design and prototyping costs a fraction of changes downstream. My current company is in its sixth year and we have millions of users. In the first six months, users could tweet feature requests and we'd release that week. Building new features today requires a 3-month lead just to be considered for the roadmap.
PM done right can be magical. I don't believe in Smurfs, fairies or 100x devs but I believe in 100x Project Managers.
100x Project Manager? I don’t see it. Not that they don’t bring value, but project managers just don’t have enough leverage in the process to be 100x.
Think Drew Houston deciding that magically syncing files on save without an explicit "Do you want to sync" step was a good idea. Magic doesn't happen often, but it exists in the world.
I have to disagree slightly here. While yes it's hard, unexciting and hard to measure, that still isn't why organizations don't do it.
The reality is that it just takes an incredible amount of time. This is especially true for startups and companies trying to move fast. You have to ask yourself — should I spend 2 sprints talking with customers about their problems, or 2 sprints building a POC that I can then test directly with them. In most cases, good PMs, engineers and designers have some basic idea for a solution that usually gets you 50% of the way there. So while I agree with the article is spirit, it's not a one size fits all process.