In this presentation, Benjamin Golombek walks us through their journey to Product Management. Benjamin also highlights their own product as a success story and provide tips on how to transition from UX to Product Management to anyone who is interested.

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8. Benjamin
Golombek
TONIGHT’S SPEAKER

9. Managing the Product:
How to Get IN and Innovate in a Larger Company
Ben Golombek 10.10.2018
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10. ● Intro / Audience
● My Background
● Breaking Into Product
● My Product
● The Corporate Context
● Challenges to Innovation
● Proposed Solutions
● Q&A
Agenda
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11. A Bit About Me
● Born and raised in LA (La Cañada)
● B.A. from UPenn
● Broad set of experiences and odd jobs
● San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia
● Startups, software products
● Philosophy and history of technology
● Music, debate/forensics, extreme sports
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12. My Background
“Lit and philosophy nerd”
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13. My Background (con’t)
“App Bubble”
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14. My Background (con’t)
“All-In-One HR Platform”
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15. My Background (con’t)
“Dev Workflow”
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16. Breaking into Product
● Talk to other product managers
● Read up and have an opinion
● PM your way in
“Talking to Other Product Managers”
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17. Breaking into Product (con’t)
“Talking to Other Product Managers”
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18. Breaking into Product (con’t)
“Studying Product Management”
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19. Breaking into Product (con’t)
“PM your way into Product”
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● Market: All open roles
● Users: Hiring managers
● Product: You
● UI: Resume, Interviews
● “Funnel” & CR: Next rounds
● Iterate!

20. My Products
● Operating at Scale
○ 2.5M Pageviews/day
○ 10M transactions/mo. 20

21. My Products (con’t)
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● WIP: New EDP
● Innovative
● Apps are built FAST

22. Discussion: Innovating in a Corporate Environment
“It’s pretty damn rare”
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23. Innovating in a Corporate Environment (con’t)
Out of Scope:
● “How to be an innovative
person”
● How to build a product
In Scope:
● Characteristics of Corporate Env
● Effects on innovation
● Actually managing your product
● Questions
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24. Corporate Context: Legacy Products
● Multiple Product Suite
● Run the existing business
● Develop the new product
“Balancing Act”
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25. 1) Innovation can carry risk
● Consequences to existing business
● PR: Hard to “fail quietly”
● Real-life ramifications for users
Innovation Blockers: Legacy Products
“Innovation is Risky”
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26. 2) Innovation gets deprioritized
● “Keep the lights on”
● Testing takes time
● Inertia takes the day
Innovation Blockers: Legacy Products (con’t)
“Innovation gets deprioritized”
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27. ● Feature branches
● Research, prototype, validate, repeat
● Tools at your disposal
Innovation Solutions: Legacy Products
“Features and timelines handed down”
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28. ● Marketing / user feedback
● CR% boost = $$
Innovation Solutions: Legacy Products (con’t)
“Features and timelines handed down”
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29. Corporate Context: Large Orgs
● Corporate PM usually means large company
● Unique roles (PM vs PMO vs PdM)
● Unique domains (SEO vs. Tickets vs. Checkout)
● Different development speeds
“Larger teams”
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30. 1) Narrower Roles
● Hard to make your value to users concrete
● Constant handoffs
Innovation Blockers: Large Orgs
“Narrower roles”
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31. 2) Larger orgs move slowly
● Large codebases
● Forgotten features
● Dependencies
● Delivering value quickly is not natural
Innovation Blockers: Large Orgs (con’t)
“Larger orgs move slowly”
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32. ● Over-communicate
○ Know your peers
○ Play on expertise
○ Avoid missed requirements
○ Integrate roadmaps
● Manage your time
○ Work on (mostly) what you know
○ Iterate
Innovation Solutions: Large Orgs
“Over-communication is key”
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33. ● You’re not the only “shot-caller”
● Mandated timelines
● Mandated features
Corporate Context: Competing Priorities
“You’re not the only shot-caller”
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34. ● Solve the wrong problems
● Pivoting becomes impossible
● Hard to generate consensus
Innovation Blockers: Competing Priorities
“Solving the wrong problem”
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35. ● Framing roadmaps around your users
● Speak to something tangible
● Data (sometime) takes the cake
Innovation Solutions: Competing Priorities
“Ground your roadmap with a goal for end users”
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36. Q&A
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37. Connect
Ben Golombek
benjamincgolombek@gmail.com
linkedin.com/in/benjamin-golombek
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38. www.productschool.com
Part-time Product Management, Coding, Data, Digital
Marketing and Blockchain courses in San Francisco, Silicon
Valley, New York, Santa Monica, Los Angeles, Austin, Boston,
Boulder, Chicago, Denver, Orange County, Seattle, Bellevue,
Toronto, London and Online