GoGuardian is an EdTech company in Los Angeles that scaled from an idea to a $100M company in just over three years with a great deal of ups and downs along the way. Cody Rice, Product Manager at GoGuardian, talked about the ins and outs from a product perspective without having to make your own mistakes. This includes building an MVP, getting a product to the market, how to hire your product team, and what NOT to do as a Product Manager. But most importantly, when you have cost your company millions, feel like everything is on fire, and are scrambling to keep the plates spinning, how a simple mindset change can provide light years of growth and allow you to find success in your own career.

1. How to Find Success in a Product Manager
Role by GoGuardian PM
www.productschool.com

2. FREE INVITE
Join 22,000+ Product Managers on
productschool.com/slack-community

3. Product
Management
2-month part-time
Courses

4. Coding
for Managers
2-month part-time
Courses

5. Data Analytics
for Managers
2-month part-time
Courses

6. Blockchain
and
Cryptocurrency
2-month part-time
Courses

7. Tonight’s Speaker
Cody Rice

8. $0 to $100M in 3 years
Lessons and Learnings from
GoGuardian
Cody Rice
Senior Product Manager at people.ai

9. EdTech (Education Technology)
5M students (10% of total K-12)
ChromeOS specific
1 product -> 3+ products
120+ employees
300M+ events per day

10. Cody Rice
Lead Product Manager
Employee ~10
Started in the apartment
Wore many hats
Product
● Hired first PM
● Technical PM
● Idea to launch
● Oversaw scaling
● Head of product

11. Product Management = Problem
Solving

12. Engineering Problem Solving
Problem Space
Solution
Assumptions and Constraints

13. Product Management Problem Identification

14. Better Approach
Market
Problem
Researc
h and
Validatio
n
Prototypi
ng
Building
Launchin
g

15. What problem is this
talk going to solve?

16. Research - Know your market
Audience
● Position
○ Future product managers
○ Currently product managers
○ Early startup employees/entrepreneurs
○ Other
● Experience
○ New grad
○ New to product
○ Experienced
○ Leader

17. Research - Know your market
● Takeaways
○ What do you want to learn?
○ What parts of scaling a startup are interesting to you?
○ What are your unknowns

18. Validation - Module Options
● Growth Mindset and Psychological Safety
● Prioritization
● Building an MVP
● Product at a startup vs mature organization
● Implementing artificial intelligence
● Hiring a product manager

19. Growth Mindset and Psychological
Safety

20. Growth Mindset

21. Carol Dweck
Stanford

22. Original Study
● 1st round of hard problems
● Praised one group for intelligence, other for effort
● 2nd round of hard problems
● Divergence
○ Group that was praised for intelligence gave up earlier
○ Group that was praised for effort worked longer and harder

23. Psychological Safety

25. Original Study
● Interviewed hundreds of Googlers
● Highest-performing teams
● Identified what was most strongly correlated

26. Psychological Safety in Practice
● Asking questions during meetings
○ Pagination vs Infinite Scroll
● Insecurities as distractions
○ Machine Learning Paper
● Admitting insecurity leads to trust
○ Relationships without Fear

27. In Action - Failures as Learning
● Retros and Agile
● Building data science team
● Building the wrong product
● Reflecting on mistakes

28. Questions?
Back to Choices

29. Prioritization

30. What is prioritization?
Deciding what is most important to build
Most critical execution related job of a product manager

31. Information In - Information Out
Produc
t
Manag
er
Market Research
Customer Calls
Surveys
SWOT
Competitive
Analysis
Funding
Team Dynamics
Prioritization
Market Needs
MVPs
ROI Calculations
Product Strategy
Roadmaps
Backlog
Positioning
Go-to-Market

32. Art vs Science
Perfect data doesn’t exist
You are doing the best job with the information available
Create feedback loops to iterate quickly
Each day there is new information

33. Questions?
Back to Choices

34. Building an MVP

35. Cupcakes and Skateboards

36. Questions?
Back to Choices

37. Product Differences
Startup vs Mature Org

38. Objective
1. Overview of product at mature organizations and startups
2. Help navigate your choices in the process

39. What is the difference from the outside?
Startup
● Small teams
● Unstructured hierarchy
● Finding product market fit
● Ambiguous business model
● Scaling
● Company politics
Mature
● Larger teams
● Structured hierarchy
● Proven market fit
● Firm business model
● At scale
● Company politics

40. Which is a good fit for you?
Startup
● Autonomy
● Learn by doing
● Opportunity everywhere
● More upside
● Easy to access
● Lots of hats
○ Many non-product roles
○ Project manager
○ Engineering manager
Mature
● Good management
● Training
● Guidance
● More stability
● Name brand
● Clear expectations
○ Benchmarks for success
○ Path to promotion

41. How to find what works for you
Reflect on past experiences
Try it all
Realize that perspective
comes with mistakes

42. Questions?
Back to Choices

43. Implementing Artificial Intelligence

44. Objective
1. Avoid our mistakes in implementing ML
2. Use “Jobs to be Done” framework to decipher tasks

45. Current View of AI
Data
Machine
Learning
Revenue

46. Data
Actual View of AI
Revenue
Machine
Learning
ML
Algorithm
Feature VALUE!

47. Better Approach
Market
Problem
Researc
h and
Testing
Prototypi
ng
Building
Launchin
g

48. Jobs to be Done
Jobs to be done is a newer approach to product management
● Jobs to be done works very well with ML
● Automate portions of the task
● Use feedback to improve ML

49. GoGuardian Example
FLAGGIN
G
WORDS
CONTENT
CATEGORIZA
TION
CONTEX
T
RESEAR
CH
BEHAVIOR
UNDERSTAN
DING
ACTION
PLAN
TAKE
ACTION
GoGuardian Educator
CONTENT AND CONTEXT
ANALYSIS
Educator Educator Educator EducatorGoGuardian
ACT
GoGuardian

50. Questions?
Back to Choices

51. How to Hire a Product Manager

52. Step 0 - Reflect on Expectations
Get clear on why you are making this hire
● Explicit vs implicit expectations
● What will they own
○ Vision vs Delivery
○ New product ideas vs iterative improvement
● Hire timing

53. Step 1 - Know the Role!
Stage of company
● Startup
● Growth
● Organizational structure

54. Step 1 - Know the Role!
Stage of product
● Idea creation and validation
● Launch
● Scaling
● Maintenance

55. Step 1 - Know the Role!
Interpersonal dynamics
● Strengths and weaknesses of surrounding team members
● How does product interface with the rest of the organization

56. Step 2 - Define Success
Various metrics
● 90 and 180 days
● Team integration
● Leadership
● Product ideas

57. Step 3 - Process
● Google’s process
○ Validate their product capabilities
○ Find the fit later
● Startup
○ Find someone that knows more than you about product
○ Have the team that they are working with validate their fit

58. Step 3 - Interviewing
Be consistent!!!

59. Questions?
Back to Choices

60. Cody Rice
Senior Product Manager
linkedin.com/in/devincodyric
e

61. Part-time Product Management Courses in
San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles,
New York, Austin, Boston, Seattle, Chicago,
Denver, London, Toronto
www.productschool.com