Heads up: This post is 8 years old. My thinking may have evolved since then — read it with that in mind.
June 24th, 2018
Quick note to experienced PMs. I have some questions at the end, if you’ll please comment and give me some advice, I’d really appreciate it.
Elementary school students made animal masks. (EDiversity’s Learning by Doing project at Holm Glad 2 Primary School.)
It has been 3 weeks since my first day at Oyalabs, a startup that will solve all the major problems in the 21st century and take the human race up a level! At least that’s my goal :P Problem is, of course, if we can actually do it, and to get lots and lots of people to use it. That’s my job as the product guy. Like I said, I’ll continue to document my journey here, so what have I seen and done in these past 3 weeks (or 7.5 days, since I only work half time), I’ll get to that later but first…
I can’t believe how much happier I feel compared to just 3 weeks ago!!#
It was right to have written down my feelings prior to starting. Seriously, even just a week in, I was feeling a lot better. Before I started at Oyalabs, I had been feeling inadequate. I knew the job of a primary care giver is super important, yet deep down inside, I couldn’t help but feel… unfulfilled. When I was creating LEGO CUUSOO (OMG! We’re an assignment in Harvard’s Digital Innovation and Transformation course?!), or Makible, or 100 Village, I was filled with energy. When I spoke, I would radiate with this intense drive, purpose, and energy! It drew people to me. My friend and co-founder at 100 Village once said to me: “I don’t know why, but when I talk to you, I feel hopeful.” I don’t know why either, but I know I haven’t been able to talk like that in recent years.
Now, I can feel my energy coming back. (YEAH BABY!)
OK, you’re happy. But do you still got what it takes?#
You know, it’s funny, I’ve been out of the tech scene for over 5 years. Before I left, I was this know-it-all — dabbled in the latest open source languages and frameworks, learned all about agile and lean startup and UX, and I would jumped into a company and immediate tell people how they should do things. Now, it’s the other way around, I’m not even familiar with the tools they use! Airtable? Notion? Hey at least I’ve used Slack. LOL! But it doesn’t matter, through my failed startup experience, andmy trying to effect large scale societal changes with an NGO, I’ve gained a sharper focus. All I care about now is “How do we succeed?!”
How do we succeed? What I’ve seen so far is probably very typical in startups these days. The founder is getting lots of leads, many people and companies want to use us for something related to their needs, giving us their takes on what they want to be able to do with our app. Our small but talented engineering team is asked to do this and do that in an ad-hoc way, and so they just keep pumping out mediocre products and features due to extreme lack of time.
Ken Norton said it best in his blog post on the role of product management:
Product management may be the one job that the organization would get along fine without (at least for a good while). Without engineers, nothing would get built. Without sales people, nothing is sold. Without designers, the product looks like crap. But in a world without PMs, everyone simply fills in the gap and goes on with their lives. It’s important to remember that — as a PM, you’re expendable. Now, in the long run great product management usually makes the difference between winning and losing, but you have to prove it.
A startup without a PM is like trying to build a building without an architect, you may end up with a building, but you may also end up with 2 cabins in the woods, 6 honey buckets and a waterfall. No company can succeed like that. But yes, I have to prove I can lead the team to build the right building. How? Hmm… for me, it’s by looking back from the end goal:
What do we want to achieve?
For us, it’s giving parents guidance based on well researched scientific evidence, so that all children will grow up to be considering, compassionate, capable human beings, who can think on their feet and stand up for what’s right and just.
What do the people want?
A good manager should be painfully aware of all the failures in people creating things that nobody wants. We need to understand people’s behavior, what make them tick? And adapt our products to speak to people’s unconscious self! This is what sets the amateur PMs (including me before my NGO experience) from the valuable ones.
How can we sell 100 million dollars of products a year?
If you can grasp #2, then it’s just an extension to realize how much can you get people to pay you, and create products to feed their appetite. Most people in your company won’t care about this, but as the PM, you need to know this in order to create a cohesive product roadmap down the line.
See? Hopelessly big picture, right? From there, I need to look backwards down to the smallest next steps in front of me. What should the team do next, that would put us on the right path toward that big picture? So time / cost estimation of the next 3 / 6 / 12 months, etc. This is where I’d like to hear from you, the more experienced PMs out there. Well first of all, how do you step backwards from the big picture? And then, how do you make estimations and plan the product roadmap? Tell me your stories of how you started your PM role at your current company.
Currently, I feel swamped with loads of stuff that should / can be down the pipeline. I feel rusty getting back into a fast pace startup environment, but at the same time, I’m trying to adjust my schedule so that I spend 20 hours at Oyalabs, 20 hours for the LEGO Foundation research project, and still have night time playing musical instruments with my kids and reading them stories. I’m trying to restart my 5 am programming for fun routine but this is if I can get off work related stuff after the kids go to bed! I need to go to bed with the kids at 9 in order to get enough sleep for 5 am waking. Anyway, I think setting a good work life balance would be a good culture to have at a company that’s about good life for our children, right?