What Early Startup Life is Like as a PM by Zava Product Owner
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Main Takeaways: - Get comfortable wearing many hats - Everything is unknown/based on assumptions - question everything you, think, you know - Re-think everything if/when you pivot
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What Early Startup Life is Like as a PM by Zava Product Owner
- 1. www.productschool.com What Early Startup Life is Like as a PM by Zava Product Owner
- 2. FREE INVITE Join 35,000+ Product Managers on
- 3. COURSES Product Management Learn the skills you need to land a product manager job
- 4. COURSES Coding for Managers Build a website and gain the technical knowledge to lead software engineers
- 5. COURSES Data Analytics for Managers Learn the skills to understand web analytics, SQL and machine learning concepts
- 6. COURSES Digital Marketing for Managers Learn how to acquire more users and convert them into clients
- 7. COURSES UX Design for Managers Gain a deeper understanding of your users and deliver an exceptional end-to-end experience
- 8. COURSES Product Leadership for Managers For experienced Product Managers looking to gain strategic skills needed for top leadership roles
- 9. COURSES Corporate Training Level up your team’s product management skills
- 11. Bit about me
- 14. Why join an early stage startup? Impact Agency Less bureaucracy Speed Greenfield project Adventure Learning opportunity
- 15. Why is there a PM?
- 18. The only product person Product manager UX researcher Designer Product marketer Product analyst QA Compliance, legal, and any other domain that comes up...
- 19. How seed stage companies are created
- 20. The founder CEO
- 21. Founder CEO 1 Founder CEO 2
- 22. Founder CEO 1 We want to change the world for the better. I’m a serial entrepreneur with a successful exit. We’re the only team that can win this market. We already have £50k in orders even though we haven’t built the product yet. Founder CEO 2
- 23. Founder CEO 1 We see an interesting opportunity to help businesses. I’ve quit my old job to focus full time on this. We have a 90% chance of the business failing. We need to finish building our product so we can start selling to customers. We want to change the world for the better. I’m a serial entrepreneur with a successful exit. We’re the only team that can win this market. We already have £50k in orders even though we haven’t built the product yet. Founder CEO 2
- 24. How to love your CEO Best salesperson Brought in the money Motivating Responsible for telling investors bad news Responsible for everyone’s jobs Think how hard it is!
- 25. How to love your CEO Best salesperson Brought in the money Motivating Responsible for telling investors bad news Responsible for everyone’s jobs Think how hard it is!
- 27. A good product manager takes full responsibility and measures themselves in terms of the success of the product. — Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz The success of the product = success of the business
- 28. ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅✅ ✅ ✅ Do my customers have this new problem? Will solving this problem help the business? Does my solution solve this problem? Can I build this solution?
- 29. ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅✅ ❓ Which customer are we targeting? What exactly do we offer for them? ✅ ❓
- 30. ✅ ✅ ✅ ❓ How are we going to reach them? What problem do they have? How are we going to make money? ❓ ❓ ❓ ❓ ❓
- 31. ❓ What exactly do we do now? What do we change in a pivot? ❓ ❓ ❓ ❓ ❓ ❓ ❓ ❓
- 32. The search for a viable business Growth
- 33. The search for a viable business Growth
- 34. The search for a viable business Growth
- 35. Don’t try too hard! Be strategic Learn Vs trying over and over Know when to give up
- 36. In summary Prepare to be a Jack of all trades. Learn to love your CEO. Build a business, not just a product. Question everything, especially in a pivot. Don’t try too hard!
- 37. www.productschool.com Part-time Product Management, Coding, Data Analytics, Digital Marketing, UX Design and Product Leadership courses in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, New York, Santa Monica, Los Angeles, Austin, Boston, Boulder, Chicago, Denver, Orange County, Seattle, Bellevue, Washington DC, Toronto, London and Online
Editor's Notes
- Been a PM for 7 years. Started in a large company - PayPal. Been in smaller startups.
- Talk about some well known companies. Most stories from here. This is where I’m focussing in on.
- Most companies are to the right. This is where I’m focussing in this area, a viable business. These are normally seed stage companies (funded by angel investors). Why am I talking about this? I see a lot of talks about product theory, prioritisation, agile, product discovery. They are quite functional. You don’t see people talking so much about the environments, what people can be like - I think they’re all really useful as half of PM is centered around people. I will talk a lot more about what the environment of a startup is like, get some insight into the workings, so if they take the plunge you know better what to expect. Going to a startup is something that is on many PMs minds. Many PMs are entrepreneurial, thinking of starting companies. Joining an early stage startup can be a way of learning a lot more about what it is like to launch a company - but can also help you cut your teeth. But more on that later.
- Impact Agency Less bureaucracy Speed Greenfield project Adventure Learning opportunity
- Protypical startup Founders don’t know tech, product or design. If they did they would be the PM. If you’re hired it’s because they don’t know what they’re doing - you’re there to help.
- Take control of the “tech” guys Make sure we deliver things on time. Take our ideas and make sure they don’t get lost with the tech team. Talk “techy” with the tech team. Work through the roadmap we set. Deliver the big vision we promised to investors.
- Working through a problem roadmap. Focus on problems, not solutions. Getting close to our customers. Strategic. Work out what works. You need to work towards this, whilst showing them that the stuff they believe is delivery. High expectations on what can be done - you need to work out how to manage them. Product evangelism. Like many things, this is a great chance to practise skills. In a larger organisation, your boss might be doing this, or there might already be an understanding. You get to set all this in a startup. 2 pieces of advice. Build trust, think about how much trust you have and how much you want to change things. Don’t try to change too many things at once.
- Jack of all trades, master of none Be ready to do everything Nothing well Learn other roles too.
- Idea Leonardo - Angel investor A-team
- Talk a little about founder CEO’s. Can be tension with PM. Also talk about delusional, crazy CEOs. Classic CEO steve Jobs. Visionary, reality distortion field.
- I’d like to do a thought experiment. Half of you imagine you’re a wealth angel investor and you need to choose a company to invest your money in. Half of you image you’re going to go join one of these founders in a company.
- We want to change the world for the better. I’m a serial entrepreneur with a successful exit. We’re the only team that can win this market. We already have £50k in orders even though we haven’t built the product yet.
- We see an interesting opportunity to help businesses. I’ve quit my old job to focus full time on this. We have a 90% chance of the business failing. We need to finish building our product so we can start selling to customers. Strong selection bias for people with big visions who can sell a dream. Imagine a wonderful future that doesn’t exist. Convince investors to give them money. Convince smart people to join their team. Convince customers to pay a company with no track record. When you start complaining that they’re delusional -> They have an imagined future that needs to be so convincing, there’s elements they might not remember is real from still to come. When you start complaining about things they’ve promised customers which you can’t do -> It’s called lean startup. I’m not saying all startups are like this, but there is selection bias for these types.
- Best salesperson Brought in the money Motivating Responsible for telling investors bad news Responsible for everyone’s jobs Think how hard it is!
- Best salesperson Brought in the money Motivating Responsible for telling investors bad news Responsible for everyone’s jobs Think how hard it is!
- The thing to remember, at the beginning of a startup journey, everything is an assumption. And it’s a house of assumptions. You need to get in there and quiz everything to avoid things sneaking up to get you. They’ve raised money, which means they’ve sold people on an idea. They may have done some due diligence, but the fact that they’re getting you to build it means they might well have done limited market testing. Work back from what they’ve asked you to focus on to test all the business assumptions. If these aren’t sound they will impact the product.
- “A good product manager takes full responsibility and measures themselves in terms of the success of the product.” You’re not there to manage the technology team. You’re there to ensure the product is successful. Let me illustrate with an example.
- Imagine being in a large organisation and you’re working on some new feature ideas. Most of your assumptions are stable. Do my customers have this new problem? Will solving this problem help the business? Does my solution solve this problem? Can I build this solution?
- You are brought in to manage/ launch the product. Which customer are we targeting? What exactly do we offer for them?
- How are we going to reach them? What problem do they have? How are we going to make money?
- I learned this the hard way when I came to work on a B2B2C product. An employee benefit product. As more assumptions come down it will be hard to think about which elements you focus on. This could potentially lead toward a pivot. Just remember, that if you go towards a pivot, you need to rethink everything. When I was at Squirrel, we realised our original plan was look increasingly unlikely, so we decided to do some exploration of alternative options. One of these was to pivot the business model. We’d decided to start as
- Lots of learnings. You’ll try many things. Most of what you need to know is unknown. Huge opportunity to learn.
- Lots of learnings. You’ll try many things. Most of what you need to know is unknown. Huge opportunity to learn.
- Lots of learnings. You’ll try many things.
- Strategic Going to get harassed by customers. Lots of things will break. You’ll be helping customer support. Learn When you fail at something, look at what you can learn from it. Did you execute it poorly? Do you have poorly tested assumptions? How do you update your view of the world with the new learning so next iteration you will succeed. Simply trying harder won’t work - you need to learn from what you’re doing. Know when to give up Sometimes you should give up going in a particular direction. You’re increasingly unable to make a particular direction work, and need to change direction. Timeboxing things can help with this. E.g. if you try particular direction for 1 or 2 OKRs, and repeatedly miss, this is market feedback that you’re not doing the right thing. Have fundamentals changed? Knowing when to change direction is important - as the business is still so early, you’ve learned more about the domain space, and should be better positioned to know what opportunities there.
- Prepare to be a Jack of all trades. Learn to love your CEO. Build a business, not just a product. Question everything, especially in a pivot. Don’t try too hard!