Why You’ll Eventually Need A Product Manager At Your Startup

Why You’ll Eventually Need A Product Manager At Your Startup

Rich Mironov 28 July 2015

© Rich Mironov, 2014

Early Stage

•  Veteran product manager/exec/strategist •  Business models, agile, organizing product teams

•  6 startups as “product guy” or CEO •  The Art of Product Management •  First Product Camp, first agile product owner track, blogging since 2001

ABOUT RICH MIRONOV

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•  What do product managers do? •  Why (small) startups don’t have them •  Growth creates problems •  You’ll need your first product

manager at 12-30 employees

AGENDA

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market information, priorities, requirements, roadmaps, epics,

user stories, backlogs, personas, MRDs…

product bits

strategy, forecasts, commitments, roadmaps, competitive intelligence

budgets, staff, targets

Field input, Market feedback

Segmentation, messages, benefits/features, pricing,

qualification, demos…

Markets & Customers Development

Marketing& Sales

Executives

Product Management

WHAT DOES A PRODUCT MANAGER DO?


5

WE CAN PRODUCT

MANAGE OURSELVES

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CEO CTO

Dev Dev/UX

Dev/Build

STARTUP DON’T NEED ORG CHARTS OR FORMAL PROCESSES


Pitch, funding, biz model, vision, BD, sales, markeRng, PR, legal, office space, payroll…

Architecture, code, hiring, customer

pitches, hiring, code, resolve tech disputes…

Front end, code, UX/UI, mobile client, code, “how it

works,” user support

Back end, code, cloud, data & APIs, code, security, code, performance, code…

Code, repository, build, code, backup, plaXorms, testbed…

SUCCESSFUL STARTUPS GROW


CEO

Mktg

Social

Sales

US EMEA

ROW Bus Dev

COO

RecruiRng

Finance

Eng

Team1 Team2

SysOps

15+ PEOPLE FORM AN ORGANIZATION


•  Departments •  N2 employee conversations •  Current customers’ expectations •  Multiple deals from sales/BD •  Focus on immediate revenue •  What’s the status of x or y or z

(and can we ship it NOW)?

PROBLEMS AT SCALE


GOOD IDEA TRAIN

•  Pulls into product station every day •  From customers, sales, CEO, eng, competitors, surveys…

•  Unloads hundreds of “good ideas” each day •  Most are not new, inconsistent, not worth displacing current work

•  Eng can implements 2-3 good ideas per week


My urgency somehow creates resources •  “CEO says it’s really important.” •  “We already promised it to a big prospect.” •  “How hard could it be? Probably

10 lines of code.” •  “We’ve been talking about this for months.” •  “Engineering should be more productive.”

MAGICAL BACKLOG THINKING


•  Requests always >> capacity •  Fulfilling all requests is bad •  Can’t A/B test everything •  Bottom-up feature lists

don’t create strategy

PRIORITIZATION LAWS OF GRAVITY


1.  One backlog despite pressures and promises 2.  Represent broad set of customers/users 3.  Details and facts: what does it really do today? 4.  Curate the product/target segment 5.  Work the issues, speak

the truth TITLES DON’T MATTER

SOMEONE NEEDS TO MANAGE THE PRODUCT


•  “We’re proud to say that our startup does not hire product managers”

•  “I’ve never seen a product manager do a good job.” •  “We have growth hackers,

product owners and customer champions”

CAN BE A RELIGIOUS ISSUE


•  Goal is to get more (of the right things) done •  Lightest/leanest tools, fewest meetings •  Templates don’t

replace judgment •  Be a mensch, not

(just) an MBA

“JUST ENOUGH” PRODUCT MANAGEMENT


•  Sounds sexier than it is •  My key hiring criteria

1.  PREVIOUS product management experience 2.  Technical enough to be respected 3.  Co-located with engineers 4.  Product taste 5.  Subject/segment expertise

•  First-timers need a mentor

NOT EVERYONE WANTS TO BE A PRODUCT MANAGER (OR SHOULD BE)


CONTACT Rich Mironov, CEO Mironov Consulting 233 Franklin St, Suite #308 San Francisco, CA 94102

RichMironov

@RichMironov

[email protected]
