8-person startups rarely have a product manager, but most 30-person startups need one. What symptoms should we watch for?

1. How Product Managers
Make Your Business Scale
(Or Why You’ll Eventually Need A
Product Manager At Your Startup)
Rich Mironov
22 October 2014
©
Rich
Mironov,
2014

2. ABOUT RICH MIRONOV
• 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
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3. AGENDA
• 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
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4. WHAT DOES A PRODUCT MANAGER DO?
market information, priorities,
requirements, roadmaps, epics,
user stories, backlogs,
personas, MRDs…
Marketing
& Sales
Development Customers
product
bits
strategy, forecasts,
commitments, roadmaps,
competitive intelligence
budgets, staff,
targets
Field input,
Market feedback
Markets &
Segmentation, messages,
benefits/features, pricing,
qualification, demos…
Executives
Product
Management
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5. 5
WE CAN PRODUCT
MANAGE OURSELVES
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6. STARTUP DON’T NEED ORG CHARTS OR
‘FORMAL’ PROCESSES
CTO
CEO
Dev/UI
Dev
Dev/Build
Pitch,
funding,
biz
model,
vision,
BD,
sales,
markeRng,
PR,
legal,
office
space,
payroll…
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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…

7. SUCCESSFUL STARTUPS GROW
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8. 20+ PEOPLE FORM AN ORGANIZATION
CEO
Mktg
Sales
US
EMEA
ROW
Bus
Dev
COO
Finance
RecruiRng
Eng
Team1
Team2
SysOps
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9. PROBLEMS AT SCALE
• Departments
• N2 employee conversations
• Current customers expectations
• Multiple deals from sales/BD
• Focus on immediate revenue
• What’s the status of x
(and can we ship it NOW)?
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10. 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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11. MAGICAL BACKLOG THINKING
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.”
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12. PRIORITIZATION LAWS OF GRAVITY
• Requests always >> capacity
• Fulfilling all requests is bad
• Can’t A/B test everything
• Bottom-up feature lists
don’t create strategy
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13. SOMEONE NEEDS TO MANAGE THE
PRODUCT
1. One backlog despite pressures and promises
2. Represent 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
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14. “JUST ENOUGH” PRODUCT
MANAGEMENT
• 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
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15. NOT EVERYONE WANTS TO BE A
PRODUCT MANAGER (OR SHOULD BE)
• 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
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16. CONTACT
Rich Mironov, CEO
Mironov Consulting
233 Franklin St, Suite #308
San Francisco, CA 94102
Rich@Mironov.com
RichMironov
@RichMironov
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