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?

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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

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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

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CEO  

Mktg  

Social  

Sales  

US   EMEA  

ROW   Bus  Dev  

COO  

RecruiRng  

Finance  

Eng  

Team1   Team2  

SysOps  

15+ PEOPLE FORM AN ORGANIZATION

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•  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

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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

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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

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•  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

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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

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•  “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

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•  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

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•  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)

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

RichMironov  

@RichMironov

[email protected]  

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