

Product Managers in Startups: What’s their Role? - dreur
http://www.instigatorblog.com/product-manager-startups/2009/10/14/

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nobody_nowhere
Startup PM here. Article is pretty accurate. My responsibilities:

1\. Act as scrum product owner: define features, fill backlogs etc. A little
additional project management/release planning when needed. Keep scope creep
under control.

2\. Market research: talk to customers, investigate competitors, build pricing
models, financial projections, etc.

3\. Code a little when needed. Make prototypes and mockups. Analyze raw data
from the production system and make statistical models. Test and validate when
needed.

4\. Strategic sales & marketing. Go after the big fish directly when sales
gets over their head and the CEO is booked. Position the product and help
sales figure out how to sell it.

5\. Absolutely anything else that's going to further our strategic goals. Get
the pizza. Find contractors for non-core development areas. Paint the walls of
the office.

Shorter answer: whatever it takes.

~~~
pkaler
The product manager should also be doing some Kano Modeling and figuring out
the ROI on features. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kano_model>

They should also own the metrics dashboard. They should now exactly which
features are driving which stage of the sales pipeline.
[http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2007/09/startup-
metrics....](http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2007/09/startup-metrics.html)

~~~
xal
That's the kind of stuff you can do once you reach break even point. If you
concentrate on such things early on you work on the wrong stuff.

~~~
nobody_nowhere
I find the Kano useful even pre-breakeven, but most (good) PMs probably have
an intuitive sense of where their products/features without doing a formal
assessment

------
tptacek
If your startup is all tech people and at least one of you can't do the PM
role, you're boned. If you're the archetypical one-tech one-biz startup, and
the biz person's full-time role doesn't knock out all the PM objectives,
you're boned. If you have to hire a third person to be the PM, you're doing
something wrong. In most cases, if the person doing the PM role for you tells
you he can't do anything else because the PM role takes too much time, you're
probably getting rolled. Unless he's spending all his time traveling to
customers.

The job of the PM (and my partner Dave will laugh at me for saying this) is to
get prospects on the phone and find out what they want from the product. For
straight-to-consumer products, finding the right people to get on the phone is
part of the challenge of the job.

~~~
alabut
" _In most cases, if the person doing the PM role for you tells you he can't
do anything else because the PM role takes too much time, you're probably
getting rolled._ "

Ugh, I've experienced this and it's terrible. It's not just that they're a
waste of resources, they often end up creating busywork for themselves that
draws in others and wastes their time.

I'm not against PMs, I'm against having certain roles purely as a security
blanket. It happens to designers like me too - just this week I tried talking
a startup into offering a contract gig instead of a fulltime perm position
because I'm still not sure if there's enough meat on the bone long term.

------
jlees
Before you launch something, surely _everyone_ in a startup is the product
manager, to one degree or another?

Even if said product is the startup itself, and the customers are
angels/VCs/...

~~~
rantfoil
I agree with this. Do not hire a PM who can't code, doesn't have design
experience, and can't bring business in the door. Big company PM experience is
not an asset here. I was a Microsoft PM before, and it did not prepare me one
bit for the rigors of startup life.

All startups need three things: 1) coding, 2) product design, 3) hustle.
Ideally everyone can do all three. The ideal PM can do both #2 and #3.

~~~
mikeryan
I'm just wondering why you find it necessary for a PM to code?

I've seen this sentiment a lot around HN and find it curious. I've worked with
many Product Managers were fairly technical but weren't going to do any coding
(or architecture).

~~~
maukdaddy
The prevailing attitude on HN is that all founders and early employees at a
startup must be coders. As a technical person with a business background (and
MBA in progress) I find this attitude short-sighted, since technical employees
with business background can bring a LOT of value to a startup vs hiring yet
another programmer.

~~~
anamax
> The prevailing attitude on HN is that all founders and early employees at a
> startup must be coders.

That's not quite right, but code is the product.

> As a technical person with a business background (and MBA in progress) I
> find this attitude short-sighted, since technical employees with business
> background can bring a LOT of value to a startup vs hiring yet another
> programmer.

I'll bite - what value do you bring that exceeds the value of a coder? I'll
assume that you're not coding, so be specific about what that business
background provides.

Note - coders can talk with customers, get requirements, etc. Some of us own
suits and have some VC "greenstamps" to cash in.

~~~
anamax
I forgot to ask. When is that value "full-time" and what should happen before
then?

While this whole line of disucssion has been about "code", I'm interested in
how things might be different when for "not software" products.

------
maukdaddy
Related question:

How do you get a job as a Product Manager in a startup? Every job I find for
startups/small companies is for a "ninja programmer", "code guru", "awesome
programmer", etc.

~~~
sachinag
Most non-technical PMs I know were former founders at startups of their own.
Aside from that (cause that's an expensive and painfully round-about career
path), I wish I had answers for you.

~~~
alabut
" _Most non-technical PMs I know were former founders at startups of their
own_ "

That's one way, another is to grow into it from a related role: programmer,
designer, etc.

------
kenyarmosh
Having worked as a startup "product guy" for the last five years, I think
there are some good answers to the original question.

Several notes:

1) If you fall into the trap of thinking that engineers, technologists, CEO's,
and others can handle this role, you'll just be part of hundreds or startups
that don't have their act together. I've sat down with way too many startups
who both don't have a handle on the marketplace or customer needs and have
poor processes in terms of planning / prioritizing release cycles and
roadmaps. While others in the company should have a grasp of both of these
elements, the key point is correctly identifying the first part (i.e.,
customer needs) and then mapping it to the second (i.e., the roadmap).

2) The person who fills this role should be fairly well-rounded and be sort of
a weird breed in that they actually are comfortable (and good at) talking with
people (customers) and yet can get down into technical details. I wouldn't go
as far to say that coding is necessary but surely mocking up initial
wireframes and UX should be considered as part of the job.

3) Related to terminology, I'd try to stay away from using labels like
"project manager" or "program manager." These are way too broad and make it
seem like the role is more focused on logistics and coordination. Above all,
this role is strategic...keeping the trains running on time is just one aspect
and arguably, not the most important.

------
mikeryan
"Translate vision into execution." what?

Here's what I see a Product Managers Role to be.

1\. Define the Product Features. Take input from all relevant stakeholders
(Customers and execs) and translate this into a set of product features.
Document and distribute. Clarify any concerns between stakeholders.

2\. Clearly define features. An extension of point 1. Work with design and
technical teams to make sure that the features are clearly defined for
everyone working on the product.

3\. Clearly Communicate Features. Document the heck out of the product
features. PRDs, IA, UI Designs all need to be clearly documented. Then
COMMUNICATE these features back to all stakeholders. If someone doesn't
understand a feature its the PM's role to make sure they do.

4\. Prioritize features. Even if you're not working in an agile approach at
some point you will need to draw a line between MUST HAVE and NICE TO HAVE
features.

5\. Product Advocate. A PM is the champion for a product. It's important they
believe in the necessity of what they are building and are willing and able to
champion it internally and externally.

~~~
tptacek
From what I can tell, list of bullet points aside, the difference between a
good PM and a bad PM is that the good PM is constantly talking to customers
and relaying what they say. I was and have worked with the "other" kind of PM
that is very good at documenting and advocating for things, but that's not the
job. The job is being on the phone.

~~~
mikeryan
Yeah where this seems to break down is that there's a very gray line around
what a Product Manager's job is as opposed to a Project Manager's job.

Unfortunately in many organizations these lines blur considerably.

