An Accidental Product Manager and a Culture of Entrepreneurship

For the past 7 years, I worked on the product team at Lucid. My most recent title was VP of Product Development - my job role in product was quite typical (as far as "typical" defines product management) - working with the executive team on the vision of the company, managing the roadmap, interfacing/communicating internally and externally, running diplomatic [sic] missions between different stakeholders amongst other things.

 Recently, we announced that I would take on the role of Chief of Staff at Lucid, working closer with the executive team and facilitating the execution of the company's strategic projects. I'd like to share my story of the past, present, and add few thoughts to the future specifically around the Lucid context. This is a post about product management, watching an entrepreneurial company grow, and a personal story looking forward to a new role. 

 My first role was running surveys at the company, a challenging and satisfying role in its own right. As our development team in Singapore was building the application, we [very] quickly realized that we needed a "liaison" between our US team and our offshore team in Singapore who were building our internal application. Having worked as a programmer myself, I realized that our ideas needed better communication, our instructions needed to be more specific, and we had to have more structure around our ideation and development teams. 

 What started as a few hours every evening with the developers quickly turned into a full time job - developing a roadmap, working with stakeholders, traveling to Singapore to visit the dev team, working with the local developers on projects, etc. During this time, I very much bought into the vision of the company - to create the premier marketplace for data transaction - and started making product decisions in a typical startup anarchy. Many things worked amazingly, even more things broke and fell flat, and the furious pace of development inspired us all to create a sticky, hard to replicate product. All this, from accidentally stumbling upon a niche role within a tech company.

 Like all product managers across the world, no single day has ever been the same and no single project has ever been the same. And, as all start up environments went, no one day has ever been the same either. Being a product manager in an entrepreneurial company was exhilarating, exciting, thrilling - pick your favorite adjective - all in one, and all the time.

At Lucid, we have used many words to define ourselves. Proudly: dreamers, go-getters, moon-shotters, a team that gets it done any way. Not-so-proudly: rageddy-taggedy, jumping directly from vision to execution, reactive. Whichever definition you choose, we empower, we create, we break, and we create again. Our energy and pace within the product team and across Lucid has helped us achieve truly superhuman feats. In short order, we grew to be profitable, expanded our customer, revenue and product base rapidly and now have nearly 200 employees across the globe. I take the most pride in the fact that we build world class technology and have worked with an entire industry to help realize our collective potential - when we succeed, our partners succeed and vice versa. That’s not just management speak – that’s how we have built our platform, our company, and our culture.

 At Lucid, we have truly built an entrepreneurial culture. Through the company’s progression, myself and many others have worn, and continue to wear, a lot of different hats. And, we have extended opportunity beyond traditional lines. We have a former bookstore owner running our DevOps operations, a former coffee shop manager lead our UI team, and incoming undergraduates and interns frequently create tremendous, tangible value. Many friends and colleagues at Lucid who joined the company for their very first job have worked up to director level and beyond. Taking my own example, I stumbled upon a unique position and was given the opportunity to help build a unique product suite in rapidly growing business.

In that same vein, I now move onto another opportunity at Lucid. Many people have asked me what the “Chief of Staff” title means and what the role entails. Frankly, I’m not sure that I know or even if there is a good definition. What I do know is that my new role will have me work closer with the executive team and help them execute strategic projects. I also expect the role to be cross functional with projects that range from technological to contractual to legal, and internal and external. In short, I don’t believe there will be any rules. Brian Rumao’s excellent post (https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/20141027004513-13106360-what-does-a-chief-of-staff-do ) gives me a few ideas, but again, LinkedIn is a very different company from Lucid and our roles are probably going to be very different. There will be an element of coordination, there will be an element of strategic project execution, there will be an element of communication. There will probably also be no rules!

However the role gets defined, what I can say is that it’s going to be exciting, fast paced and intriguing. As an early employee, I am often asked what Lucid's biggest advantage is and why we continue to be successful. The answer is simple, and the answer is powerful. It's our culture.