Product Management Event Held at the Product Conference in Silicon Valley. Arjun shared his personal stories about how to transition to a product manager role. He has an engineering background from which he transitioned into product by first being a half engineer and the other half product manager. He talked about the PM role and skills that they need.

1. How to Transition into a Product Management
Role by Growth.ai Co-Founder
www.productschool.com

2. About Me
12+ years in Product Management
• 5 years at Adobe
• 4 years at Yahoo!
• 3 years at startups
• Co-founder, ML startup growth.ai

3. CEO

4. Let’s take baby steps, shall we?
1. Roadmap
2. Prioritization
3. MVP
4. PRD(s)

5. Types of PM roles
• Product Strategy/GTM
• Competitive Landscape
• Heavy on customer
interaction/GTM
• Team/Org Process/Hiring
• CPO, VP Product, Director
• Enterprise PM
• Integration/Implementation
• Support structure in place
• Oracle, Intuit, Cisco
• Consumer PM
• Customer Value based
• Run all aspects of the team
• Facebook, Dropbox, Google
1 2 3

6. Challenge

7. Attacks from engineering

8. Frowns from leadership

9. Mis-Alignment

10. Broken Process

11. The Matrix

12. How
to
transition?

13. #1 Be Prepared
Don’t be late to meetings
Ask thoughtful questions

14. #2 Demonstrate Leadership
Be the domain expert and get things done!

15. #3 Transfer
Move into a fast growing part of the business

16. #4 Relationships
Build relationships with an influential PM
Don’t be a follower

17. #5 Presentation
Dress like you care!

18. 5 Rules to transition!
1. Be Prepared
2. Demonstrate Leadership
3. Transfer
4. Relationships
5. Presentation

19. H1-B
A real challenge!

20. Alone in this transition?
Weeks 9 – 36
Learn Unfinished Material, Pract
Weeks before Class Start
Wait for course to start
Weeks 1-4
Learn Product Managements Concepts
Weeks 5-8
Learn Interview and Presentation Skills
Lonely Not LonelyProduct School

21. “A great product manager has the brain
of an engineer, the heart of a designer,
and the speech of a diplomat.”
Deep Nishar, ex-SVP Product, LinkedIn

22. Team Mechanics
• Missionary
• Think on their own
• Mercenary
• No Ticket, No work!

23. Thank You!

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