5 week Aspiring Product Manager (APM)

YouTube has led to more PM offers than any certification has ?? It is a goldmine for aspiring product managers. Over 50+ PMs in the last 12 months have cited YT as their primary mode of transition personally But how do you navigate through the abundance of noise and land on pearls of wisdom to prepare and build product thinking in a structured way Here are the top 12 YT channel I would recommend to start your PM prep now and become a great product leader ?? 1. Alisa Works : https://lnkd.in/eizVQ599 It’s time to subscribe to one of the main PM influencers on YouTube! Alisa Works shares many tips and insights. She provides viewers with general career content and advice on how to get better at being a product manager 2. John Marty : https://lnkd.in/ewkSQwww Get the best advice from an ex-Amazon product manager! John Marty is an expert in the field and shares many tips on how to get the best PM job in big companies, provides help on how to use LinkedIn 3. Exponent : https://lnkd.in/e_w4VeNW With more than 200k+ Subscribers They give insightful advice on how to ace any interview for major companies like TikTok, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Amazon 4. Harshibar: https://lnkd.in/efc5Ssb7 With more than 80k+ Subs, You will love this Indian-American product manager’s YouTube channel. Harshibar shares her experience in the tech industry ! 5. Dan Olsen : https://lnkd.in/g3g-cHQ9 Dan is a prolific product leader, the author of the Lean Product playbook and someone who i deeply admire for the work he has done in building and scaling companies 6. Mind the Product: https://lnkd.in/esv2qx4d There’s no way you haven’t heard of Mind The Product if you’ve been active in the product world 7. Jeff Su: https://lnkd.in/e8AqffKi Even though he’s a product marketer at Google, Jeff Su’s video content will help anyone in product and the world of tech. He makes videos on practical careers and gives many productivity tips. 9. Product Faculty: https://lnkd.in/emAMwxZu Their channel features product experts from companies like Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft, all around the world giving several insights and tips 10. Lenny Rachitsky: https://lnkd.in/gcBuv-Uw Lenny needs no introduction. In his channel, he interviews PM leaders leading the most successful tech companies 11. Product Gym: https://lnkd.in/gi4SCk8D I love Product Gym because they upload videos regularly. They give tips on networking, growing careers, and coaching. If you’re wondering about how a product launch works, or how to ace your PM interviews, check them out. 12 . TheSwagWalaPM by Rethink Systems : https://lnkd.in/duJgZMq It's my small effort to help people navigate through the PM world. The channel has a lot of videos that help an aspirant build a product mindset ?? So my request to all of the aspirants is to, give these channels a subscribe and like the post so that it reaches the largest set of aspirants :) Yours, Shravan bhaiya #productmanagement #startups

One of my boiler-plate "coaching" pet peeves is when people say "DM the recruiter about job postings." I don't think it's inherently bad to do this, but people rarely bother to tell you *how* to go about DMing the recruiter constructively. So, I made a thing. It's a recruiter outreach guide that I developed last year with help from some of my fave recruiters. This document gives you guidance on how to do effective cold outreach for 3 scenarios: 1) When you've already applied for a job 2) When you're interested in a company but don't see a perfect job posted 3) When you are a student expecting to graduate and have applied for an entry l level role. It's a can't-miss guide...so check it out below. Oh, and if you would like me to do content convering some other outreach scenarios, let me know! I'm planning stuff for later this summer and would love your ideas. ------ Repost ?? if you found this helpful All my posts on one page at #workshouldfeelgood Click my name, follow me, and ring my ?? to get notified when I post. #careergrowth #jobsearch #careercoaching #leadership

How Duolingo built the world's #1 retention product H/t The Product Folks For more company deep dives, check out the newsletter. For instance, here's how Notion grows: https://lnkd.in/exYrSBCK

In 2012, when I joined ZoomInfo as the VP Product, Growth & Strategy, they were stuck at $9M ARR. When I left 5 years later, we were at over $80M ARR. Here’s the 5-step GTM playbook we used to get unstuck and build the foundation to scale: Step 1: Develop contrarian products that satisfy unmet demand - Most companies can't convince themselves to radically innovate - In 2012, data companies were selling CSVs, no one was investing in product - We took massive risk and doubled down on building products to streamline data delivery - We started to "look different" from the space - Sometimes it's better to "look different" than "be better" Step 2: Focus on SMB or lower end of the market - Market disruption always happens at the low end - As a small company, it’s difficult to compete for your competitor’s best customers - Instead aim your efforts at the customers your competitors would give up without a fight - We focused on the SMB and lower mid market with a self-serve product at a low price - Everyone else was fighting for the more lucrative enterprise customers Step 3: Increase Prices, Decrease Churn, Add Features Rapidly - We rapidly developed features that gave GTM teams ammo for upgrades - With new products, we could add a new line item in the invoice and post growth with relative ease - New features also gave us the reason to reach out to customers to talk about upsell - All this was predicated on our ability to develop a sustained product roadmap with a strong understanding of the impact on GTM and our ability to attach growth initiatives to every small feature release Step 4: Intentionally Design Market Expansion for Virality - Nonlinear growth comes from getting the inbound engine started early - At first, we went after the spray and pray approach with some automation, which worked well - However, our revenues exploded when we started getting strategic with TAM and went after market niches, especially the ones that were ignored by other B2B data vendors - This allowed us to dominate multiple small verticals and as we got popular within those verticals it resulted in word of mouth - virality, inbound inquiries and increased retention contributing to the non linear growth Step 5: Cultivate a Leader's Mindset - Startups are often fighting just to stay afloat - this creates chaos, panic & unrest in organizations - By switching the mental model from a survival mindset to a leader's mindset, you can switch from a perpetual struggle for revenue growth to attempting to decimate competitors - You switch from being a price follower to becoming a price setter in the long run - This mindset provides a purpose, a better decision making framework, and results in a much healthier business and work culture TAKEAWAY: Markets are always evolving, and every market can be disrupted. Any business can get unstuck. The specific plays required to disrupt the B2B data market would be different today, but the ZoomInfo playbook's principles are timeless.

“How do I crack the ?????????????? ???????????????????? ???????????????????” PM interviews are notoriously difficult. But if senior PMs are making $400k, the challenge ???is ??worth ??it. ?? There’s no way to jampack everything on PM interviews, so I whipped together a crash course for you in 20 min in ??????????’?? ?????????????? ?????????? → https://lnkd.in/gic4Mg6x Here’s the quick and dirty rundown: ?? 5 Types of PM Interview Questions: 1. ?????????????? ??????????/????????????: How would you design a dating product for Facebook?, What’s your favorite product and how would you improve it? 2. ?????????????? ?????????????????? How would you define success metrics for Uber? Instagram posts are down 10%. What do you do? 3. ?????????????? ????????????????: How would you design surge pricing for Uber or Lyft? 4. ??????????-???????????????????? ?????????????????????????? Tell me a time you disagreed with Design or Engineering? 5. ????????????????????: Tell me a time your product failed. What did you do? ?? For Product Execution, there are 3 types: 1. ???????? ??????????????: How do you measure success for this product? 2. ??????????-????????: X metric went up but Y metric went down. What do you do? 3. ???????? ?????????? ???????????????? (??????. ??????????????????): You’re the PM for X. Y metric dropped by Z%. How would you figure out what happened? The questions are very open-ended, which triggers that initial fear of not knowing where to start, but there are actually very reliable frameworks to use. After all, for PM interviews, it’s less about the final solution and more about how you get there. I’m running out of word count, but do watch today's Youtube video for PM interview questions and frameworks! ...and I also announce the ???????????? ???? ???? ???????????? ?????????????? from Taiwan! tl;dw - I accepted a role as an Instructor with SAT Knowledge (basically the Masterclass of Taiwan) to teach product management, product thinking, and mastering your tech career. I'm also doing media work as a host and guest to elevate tech for Taiwan! Watch the end of the YT video for all the context! ?? ?????????? ?????? ???? ?????????????? ???????????????? ???????????? ???????? → https://hi.sat.cool/o845K (The course is in English, but the website is in Chinese. For English speakers, you can Google Translate the page to navigate it.) This is just the first update of many updates to come!! Stay tuned ~ #productmanagement #productmanagementinterviews

Feeling energized after presenting my talk at the Women In Product 2024 conference! There were over 1000 attendees at the conference today, and the energy in the (chat)rooms was ????????????????????????! In my talk, I shared real-world examples and practical tools to help attendees: ?? ???????????????? ?????? ?????? 10 ?????? ?????? ???????????????? ?????????? ?? ?????????????????????? ???????????????? ???????? ???????? ?????????????? ?????????????????????? ?????????????? ?????????????????? ?????? ????????????????-?????????? ?????????????? ???? ???????? ???????????????????????? Remember y'all, security is a ???????? ?????????? ???? Enjoy the deck and see you at the conference ?? #womenInProduct #24WIP #cybersecurity #applicationSecurity #OWASP

The speaker line up for #ProductCon New York on May 29th is ?????? ??Jaime DeLanghe, VP of Product at Slack ??Robert Brunner, Chief Designer at Beats by Dre ??Sneha Rao, VP of Product at The New York Times ??Penny Szeto, Head of Product at Amazon Games ??Christina Goldschmidt, VP of Product Design at Warner Music Group ??Purvi Shah, VP Data Platform at American Express ??Ibrahim Bashir, VP of Product at Amplitude We’re sold out of in person tickets but you can still sign up to watch the conference online for free https://lnkd.in/gamVZ-Vw #productmanagement

? New resource: a PM Performance Evaluation template Throughout my 15+ years as a PM, I’ve consistently felt that ladder-based PM performance evaluations seem broken, but I couldn’t quite find the words to describe why. Early on in my PM career, I was actually part of the problem — I happily created or co-created elaborate PM ladders in spreadsheets, calling out all sorts of nuances between what “Product Quality focus” looks like at the PM3 level vs. at the Sr. PM level. (looking back, it was a non-trivial amount of nonsense — and having seen several dozens of ladder spreadsheets at this point, I can confidently say this is the case for >90% of such ladder spreadsheets) So that led me to develop the Insight-Execution-Impact framework for PM Performance Evaluations, which you can see in the picture below. I then used this framework informally to guide performance conversations and performance feedback for PMs on my team at Stripe — and I have also shared this with a dozen founders who’ve adapted it for their own performance evaluations as they have established more formal performance systems at their startups. And now, you can access this framework as an easy to update & copy Coda doc (link in the comments). How to use this template as a manager? In a small company that hasn’t yet created the standard mess of elaborate spreadsheet-based career ladders, you might consider adopting this template as your standard way of evaluating and communication PM performance (and you can marry it with other sane frameworks such as PSHE by Shishir Mehrotra to decide when to promote a given PM to the next level e.g. GPM vs. Director vs. VP). In a larger company that already has a lot of legacy, habits, and tools around career ladders & perf, you might not be able to wholesale replace your existing system & tools like Workday. That is fine. If this framework resonates with you, I’d still recommend that you use it to actually have meaningful conversations with your team members around planning what to expect over the next 3 / 6 / 9 months and also to provide more meaningful context on their performance & rating. When I was at Stripe, we used Workday as our performance review tool, but I first wrote my feedback in the form of Insight - Execution - Impact (privately) and then pasted the relevant parts of my write-up into Workday. So that’s it from me. Again, the link to the template is in the comments. And if you want more of your colleagues to see the light, there’s even a video in that doc, in which I explain the problem and the core framework in more detail. I hope this is useful.

All PM templates from my Google Drive are now free for everyone ?? The extended edition: XLXS: https://lnkd.in/dK2UfvkZ PPTX: https://lnkd.in/dzkx2uYC PDF: https://lnkd.in/dgbjzjVg - And here you can find: 27 free FigJam PM templates by Maryna Kucherova ????: https://lnkd.in/ec3GDrNA A massive collection of free PM templates by Matt Mochary: https://lnkd.in/d4kBJteS Other free PM templates (primarily Miro): https://lnkd.in/daYWye9Q - Hope that helps. What should I add to that list? - P.S. You can download my collection of high-resolution PM infographics by subscribing to my newsletter: https://lnkd.in/d5bHGj5j

Product discovery is often over-simplified. Most think it's about "talking to customers". It's much more taxing than that. 4 reasons why I found interviews tricky: 1. WHO you talk to matters a lot: Interviewing poor-fit customers can consume precious time. They can also put you on a costly detour. 2. The hardest part comes AFTER the interview: distilling the feedback and insights down into some cohesive action. Or choosing to de-prioritize them. 3. Customers can shield a problem with a proposed solution. It takes tact to sidestep that to get to the root cause. 4. The interview ROI varies: There will be users who can't articulate their problem, aren't in the mood to talk, or don't own the area you're quizzing them on. It's not all roses and daisies. The "distill" process is crucial. Both PMs and PMMs need to apply that well. Moreover, the post-interview process warrants structure. For example: ? Micro-feedback e.g. bugs, edge cases, etc. can be sent to QAs for validation. Once validated, they'll be added to the backlog. ? Macro-feedback regarding a larger business need or upcoming industry constraint would have to be brought up in a strategy session with more stakeholders. ? Issues related to perception or product awareness can be worked with product marketing and/or customer support. ? Clear gaps in the product (or competitive threats) can be put up for discussion in roadmap planning sessions. And so on. So, yes, understanding the customer is crucial for product teams. However, one needs to be mentally prepared for the firehose of information they'll be exposed to and balance that with execution.