This document summarizes a presentation about the roles and responsibilities of a product manager at different sized companies. It discusses how the role differs at an international corporation (Comodo), a grown-up startup (OpsGenie), and a baby company (Thundra). At each stage, the product manager has more responsibilities like project management, sales, HR, customer success, technical writing, and marketing in addition to core product tasks. Interacting with executives is also more direct and inclusive of company targets at smaller companies compared to larger ones.

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5. Emrah Şamdan
TONIGHT’S SPEAKER

6. Roles of a PM in a
fast-shipping start-up
Emrah Şamdan @emrahsamdan

7. Who am I?
● METU CENG, Bilkent MBA Alumni
● Developer @Tubitak,Arcelik, TCMB
● PM @Comodo, OpsGenie, Thundra
● Organizing committee of Serverless Turkey

8. Today’s agenda
● Motivations to become a PM for a software developer
● Real story: What I do at Thundra?
● How it differs to be a PM in different sized companies?
○ Comodo (International corporation)
○ OpsGenie (Grown-up startup)
○ Thundra (Baby company)

9. https://slideplayer.com/slide/3200519/11/images/3/What+Does+A+Product+Manager+Do.jpg
What Does A Product Manager Do?
No, seriously. What does a product manager actually do?

10. https://image.slidesharecdn.com/what-does-a-product-manager-do-sandeep-grover-feb-2016-160215213741/95/what-d
oes-a-product-manager-do-5-638.jpg?cb=1455572384

11. https://brainmates.com.au/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/What-does-a-Product-Manager-d
o.jpg

12. Why did I decide to be a PM as a developer?
● Will I be able to catch up with the
trending technology as a developer?
● Will there be a job for me when I’m 40?
● So, I’m making an MBA, I should
manage something, right?
● I would manage this “project” if I were
to manage so I can manage some other
things.
● How different it can be from project
management after all?

14. You should think to become PM, if
● You naturally can think about the values
that you can provide the customers.
● You sometimes find yourself dreaming
what would you do if you were the
customer facing with the bug you just
created.
● You feel excited to tell about the
project/product that you are in.
● You understand what modules can be
brought together to bring a value.

15. Thundra: A remarkable
story.

16. What I do in Thundra?

17. Briefly
● Project Manager
● Sales Manager
● HR
● Customer Success
● Technical Writer
● Product Marketing Manager
● QA
● Booth person
And yes, Product Manager.

19. The trick is
● Don’t try to do everything yourself.
○ Ask for help of developers. They are friends. Sometimes..
● Motivate the team that you are startup
● Keep the team updated with the long term and short term objectives
● Talk about the competition, talk it, a lot!
● Full dedication!

20. How do I spend a day at Thundra?
● Create requirements
● Get it done
● Promote it like there is
no tomorrow

21. A life saver for a startup PM: Jobs to be Done
● Products are not bought by specific sets of people but can be hired for a
specific job by many different types of people.
● Motivate on struggles rather than needs
○ Start from need because people tend to talk about need naturally
○ Question the need, dig into pain points.
○ Propose alternative cures to the pains.
○ Find the best cure that pays off. Go back to step 1 or 2 a)

24. Intercom Example

25. How to apply this to Thundra?
● Struggles:
○ Can’t dig into CW logs easily
○ Can’t aggregate the logs and traces
○ Can’t understand the performance problems.
○ Can’t trace an event all the way between nanoservices
○ Can’t detect the bottlenecks in the architecture easily.
○ Can’t get preemptively warned about the issues in my serverless stack.
○ Can’t configure alarms for my SLAs with specific set of customers.

26. ● International Company
● Trying to build the next big thing
● Communication Barrier
● Conflict of Interests
● Process Oriented
● Great school of product engineering
relation
● International company
● Strong follower to beat the first
● Team spirit
● Result oriented
● Great school of product market
relation
● Trying to be international company.
● Small company. Hot technology. A lot higher personal reputation.
● Team spirit FTW
● Competition and customer oriented.
● Great school of entrepreneurship

27. How to develop features
● Competition, customer
tickets, sales prospects
● Mockups, wireframes
● Use cases
● Flexible prioritization
● QA Check
● Marketing Demo in the
time of release
● Competition, team
using product,
customer research
● Simple mock-up,
include UX early,
technical feasibility
discussion.
● Rigid prioritization
● Last checks
● Weekly Sync with
Marketing team
● Competition, team
using product,
customer research
● Simple mock-up,
communication with
devs and go!
● Very flexible
prioritization
● Work as QA
● Be a member of
Marketing Team

28. How to interact with executives
● Indirect communication
● Unperiodic meetings
● No visibility over
budgets or executive
level targets
● Direct
communication
● Periodic meetings
about roadmap
● Full visibility and
inclusion on the
company level yearly
quarterly targets
● Oops..
● Talk every single day
about the roadmap and
the things that we’ll
achieve together.
● Full visibility

29. Thanks!
We’re hiring devs. Hit emrah@thundra.io with your CV!

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