This document discusses product management and what makes or breaks a startup. It defines product management as figuring out what the product is, who it is for, the competitive landscape, what features to include, evaluating the product, and determining the product roadmap. While 90% of product management work can be automated, it is the 10% that involves actual decision making that determines a company's success or failure. The document provides advice for product managers, including being your own customer to understand pain points, listening to customers but not taking all their suggestions, starting small with a minimum viable product, and validating assumptions while believing in the product but being willing to change course.

1. LWOW 2016
Product management –
what makes or breaks a
startup
Anna Ronkainen 2016-01-17
Chief Scientist*, TrademarkNow
@ronkaine
*+co-founder,formerheadofproduct

2. What is product
management?

5. Product management = figuring out...
- what the product is and what it is for
- who the product is for
- the competitive landscape
- what goes and doesn’t go into the product
- evaluating the product to make sure it does
what it is supposed to (and users love it)
- what to do and when (“product roadmap”)
- how to build it (with development/mfg)
- how to sell it (with marketing and sales)

6. 90% of product management
work can be automated...

7. Our latest product management hire
can handle all this:
“Can we get feature x?”
“But y would buy our
product if we had
feature x!”
“Our competitor z has
feature x!”

8. ...but it’s the 10% (that you
actually decide to do) that
makes or breaks a company

9. So, how to do it
?

10. 1. Be your own customer:
build products for yourself

11. For aspiring legal
entrepreneurs,
it can make a lot of
sense to first get a
“normal” legal job to
figure out where the
pain points are...

12. 2. Become your own customer:
listen, learn, empathize

13. Listen to your customers, but remember
that they don’t have (all) the answers!
“If I had asked people what they
wanted, they would have said
faster horses.”
– commonly attributed to Henry Ford
(possibly apocryphal)

14. Remember what your actual product is

15. Start small:
Minimum viable cake

16. Final words of advice
- find a specific problem worth addressing
- figure out who your customer is (maybe
even sketch a user persona or two?)
- get out of the building!
- validate your assumptions!
- believe in your product...
- ...but don’t be afraid to change course if it
turns out you’re on the wrong path

17. Thank you!