The document discusses why startups will eventually need a product manager. As startups grow to 12-30 employees, they encounter problems like too many employee conversations to coordinate, multiple sales deals to fulfill, and more focus on immediate revenue over strategy. A product manager can help by prioritizing new product ideas and requests, representing customers, and ensuring the product roadmap aligns with business goals. The document recommends hiring someone with product management experience to fill this role as startups scale.

1. Why You’ll Eventually Need A
Product Manager At Your Startup
Rich Mironov
28 July 2015
©
Rich
Mironov,
2014
Early
Stage

2. • Veteran
product
manager/exec/strategist
• Business
models,
agile,
organizing
product
teams
• 6
startups
as
“product
guy”
or
CEO
• The
Art
of
Product
Management
• First
Product
Camp,
first
agile
product
owner
track,
blogging
since
2001
ABOUT RICH MIRONOV
w w w . M I R O N O V . c o m 2

3. • What do product managers do?
• Why (small) startups don’t have them
• Growth creates problems
• You’ll need your first product
manager at 12-30 employees
AGENDA
3w w w . M I R O N O V . c o m

4. market information, priorities,
requirements, roadmaps, epics,
user stories, backlogs,
personas, MRDs…
product
bits
strategy, forecasts,
commitments, roadmaps,
competitive intelligence
budgets, staff,
targets
Field input,
Market feedback
Segmentation, messages,
benefits/features, pricing,
qualification, demos…
Markets &
CustomersDevelopment
Marketing
& Sales
Executives
Product
Management
WHAT DOES A PRODUCT MANAGER DO?
w w w . M I R O N O V . c o m 4

5. 5
WE CAN PRODUCT
MANAGE OURSELVES
w w w . M I R O N O V . c o m

6. CEO
CTO
Dev
Dev/UX
Dev/Build
STARTUP DON’T NEED ORG CHARTS
OR FORMAL PROCESSES
6w w w . M I R O N O V . c o m
Pitch,
funding,
biz
model,
vision,
BD,
sales,
markeRng,
PR,
legal,
office
space,
payroll…
Architecture,
code,
hiring,
customer
pitches,
hiring,
code,
resolve
tech
disputes…
Front
end,
code,
UX/
UI,
mobile
client,
code,
“how
it
works,”
user
support
Back
end,
code,
cloud,
data
&
APIs,
code,
security,
code,
performance,
code…
Code,
repository,
build,
code,
backup,
plaXorms,
testbed…

7. SUCCESSFUL STARTUPS GROW
7w w w . M I R O N O V . c o m

8. CEO
Mktg
Social
Sales
US
EMEA
ROW
Bus
Dev
COO
RecruiRng
Finance
Eng
Team1
Team2
SysOps
15+ PEOPLE FORM AN ORGANIZATION
8w w w . M I R O N O V . c o m

9. • Departments
• N2
employee conversations
• Current customers’ expectations
• Multiple deals from sales/BD
• Focus on immediate revenue
• What’s the status of x or y or z
(and can we ship it NOW)?
PROBLEMS AT SCALE
9w w w . M I R O N O V . c o m

10. GOOD IDEA TRAIN
• Pulls into product station every day
• From customers, sales, CEO, eng, competitors, surveys…
• Unloads hundreds of “good ideas” each day
• Most are not new, inconsistent, not worth displacing current work
• Eng can implements 2-3 good ideas per week
10w w w . M I R O N O V . c o m

11. My urgency somehow creates resources
• “CEO says it’s really important.”
• “We already promised it to a big prospect.”
• “How hard could it be? Probably
10 lines of code.”
• “We’ve been talking about this for months.”
• “Engineering should be more productive.”
MAGICAL BACKLOG THINKING
11w w w . M I R O N O V . c o m

12. • Requests always >> capacity
• Fulfilling all requests is bad
• Can’t A/B test everything
• Bottom-up feature lists
don’t create strategy
PRIORITIZATION LAWS OF GRAVITY
w w w . M I R O N O V . c o m 12

13. 1. One backlog despite pressures and promises
2. Represent broad set of customers/users
3. Details and facts: what does it really do today?
4. Curate the product/target segment
5. Work the issues, speak
the truth
TITLES DON’T MATTER
SOMEONE NEEDS TO MANAGE THE
PRODUCT
13w w w . M I R O N O V . c o m

14. • “We’re proud to say that our startup does not hire
product managers”
• “I’ve never seen a product manager do a good job.”
• “We have growth hackers,
product owners and
customer champions”
CAN BE A RELIGIOUS ISSUE
14w w w . M I R O N O V . c o m

15. • Goal is to get more (of the right things) done
• Lightest/leanest tools, fewest meetings
• Templates don’t
replace judgment
• Be a mensch, not
(just) an MBA
“JUST ENOUGH” PRODUCT
MANAGEMENT
15w w w . M I R O N O V . c o m

16. • Sounds sexier than it is
• My key hiring criteria
1. PREVIOUS product management experience
2. Technical enough to be respected
3. Co-located with engineers
4. Product taste
5. Subject/segment expertise
• First-timers need a mentor
NOT EVERYONE WANTS TO BE A
PRODUCT MANAGER (OR SHOULD BE)
16w w w . M I R O N O V . c o m

17. CONTACT
Rich Mironov, CEO
Mironov Consulting
233 Franklin St, Suite #308
San Francisco, CA 94102
RichMironov
@RichMironov
Rich@Mironov.com
w w w . M I R O N O V . c o m 17