The Sweet Science (& Art) of Product Management with Andrew Grochal

In our new content series, “How to Build Products & Influence People: 4 of Boston’s Top Product Managers and Their Stories” we spoke with some of the leading PMs in Boston to learn how they’re driving real change within their respective industries, but more importantly, within their own organization.

Up first: VP of Product Management at CarGurus, Andrew Grochal. He’s working to make the car buying process as simple and straightforward as possible for online customers.

Andrew started his career off in consulting at Bain & Company, but later found himself working for a small Boston startup where he was tasked with getting a product management team off the ground. He didn’t know it then, but this initial exploration into product management would turn into an unexpected yet exciting and satisfying career pivot. Andrew believes that a lot of the best product managers are the ones who are able to expand their focus beyond the science of the role and into the art of it — building and maintaining strong relationships with the people they work with and their customers.

This is part 1 of 4 in our “How to Build Products & Influence People: 4 of Boston’s Top Product Managers and Their Stories” series created in partnership with growth marketing agency Ideometry. Tune in tomorrow for another installment.

First off, could you give us a brief rundown of CarGurus?

Andrew: CarGurus is an auto shopping website, and we aim to be the most trusted and transparent auto marketplace out there. If you’re shopping for a car, we want you to come to CarGurus and find the right vehicle for you. Our business model centers on car dealers paying money to be featured on our website.

You started your career off in consulting working at Bain & Company. How did you end up in product management at a tech company?

Andrew: Before I was at CarGurus, I worked for a tiny cybersecurity startup in Boston. We had a lead developer, a lead salesperson, and me. I picked up everything that not only went into selling the product, but also the product management side of things as well. I had no experience in product management, but one day our CEO approached me and said, “We want you to help get the product management team off the ground, what do you think?”

I asked for a day or two to think it over, and I immediately looked on LinkedIn to find anyone I knew who worked in product management. I started reading blogs, and began plugging in novice Google searches like, “What is product management at a tech company?” I spent a day trying to absorb everything I could and learn more about the day-to-day responsibilities, and to me, product management sounded fascinating and exciting.

Before this opportunity came about, I thought I would work in business development and then maybe partnerships, and eventually leave CarGurus to become the head of business development at a smaller company.

But then my mentality began to shift to, “Could I carve out a career in product management and really enjoy it?” After talking to people in similar roles, I became more and more excited about the opportunity and started to think, “Hell yeah, let’s do this.”

At CarGurus, where does the Product Management role sit within the organizational hierarchy?

Andrew: In 2015, before there was a product team, engineering was filling the role of product management. They were working with product optimizations, future level positions around what to build, how to build it, and what made it into the MVP.

In 2016, it was just me for the first few months, and I wasn’t really even doing product management. It was more just trying to assess what product management could look like within our company.

Now, within product, we have three main teams. My team is the dealer team that focuses more on the B2B side of the business. We recently hired someone to head the consumer side, and then hired someone else to set up the international side for products. They’re focused on our success in the states and how we could bring it to international markets.

Those are the three main teams, and each one probably has 3–6 PMs working underneath them. By the time we start to layer in data analysts and UX designers, it takes us to the next level, so our product team is about 30 people if you count everybody. The Chief Product Officer runs the entire product function. That’s who I report to, along with 5 others.

Today, we’re live in seven countries, and we have to learn, adapt, and understand the shoppers and the dealers because we can’t just copy what we do in the U.S. market and hope it works.

What do you think are the ideal cross-section of skill sets for a PM to have?

Andrew: The first is the ability to communicate well with different types of people. As a PM, you spend a lot of time working closely with engineers, marketing folks, consumer customers, dealer customers, and finance people. To be successful in a PM role, you need to be able to shift gears effectively when working with different departments.

The second quality I want to highlight is being data-driven. Every tech company is floating out analytic functions, and a PM needs to be able to sift through these functions effectively.

To be successful in a PM role, you need to be able to shift gears effectively when working with different departments.

One more quality that is important to have as a product manager is empathy. One of the PM’s core responsibilities is communicating with their customers, understanding their needs, and prioritizing their requests. That means getting out of the office and having the desire to sit down with customers, learn from them, read what they’re reading, and see things from their point of view.

I think possessing those three qualities would position any PM candidate for success.

What would you attribute to the recent rise in popularity of the Product Management role?

Andrew: It’s incredible to see how many people want to go to tech companies after business school, whereas 20 years ago the hot thing to do was to end up on Wall Street. There’s a lot of growth and potential in product management roles. The position is a hybrid of data skills, analytic skills, business skills, and technical skills. Coming from a tiny start-up that didn’t have a PM team when I first joined, I’ve had a blast seeing these product management-focused events, like Unbox, in the spotlight.

That’s what makes events like Unbox so valuable…There’s just so much value in getting together with other PMs and learning how to be better in your specific role.

I think many people are thinking about how they can transition into product management because they’re so essential to the success of any business. Product management is very different from company to company. That’s what makes events like Unbox so valuable—hearing what’s working and not working well for people, sharing best practices, trading war stories, and so on. There’s just so much value in getting together with other PMs and learning how to be better in your specific role.

If you had to guess, what do you think a PM role will look like in 5 years?

Andrew: What it means to be a PM has certainly evolved over time. Different companies have taken the role in different directions. At some places, there’s a product team that operates like a machine. Other companies have a single product manager that works independently. More companies are experimenting with the model of how product management should operate. At CarGurus, we didn’t just say, “Were going to implement different teams into the system.” We thought to ourselves, “Okay, let’s see what works for our company and consider how we can continue to improve operations.”

I expect to see less “type and run” systems, where PMs are cogs in the machine, and a bit more freedom and creativity in these roles. That’s what we’re seeing here at CarGurus, and I know that more tech companies are thinking about adaptations to build models more focused around productivity. It wouldn’t surprise me to see product management as a whole continue to move in that direction.

What’s one piece of advice you have for aspiring or current PMs?

Andrew: As a product manager, there’s an art and a science to the position. I think a lot of PMs feel a sense of urgency in their roles and spend a lot of time focusing on the science. They might try to understand all the different methodologies of product management, which has its benefits, but I would suggest trying to focus a little more on the art of it, because Product Management is really all about managing relationships and people.

In the early days of getting our PM team off the ground, I spent hours trying to think about how to build good relationships with the engineers, the sales team, and our customers. Instead of micro-managing the engineers and trying to control every facet of their job, I spent far more time getting to know them as individuals. I’d often stick around for Game Night that many of the engineers attended. I rarely knew the game they were playing, but I saw it as an excellent chance to talk about their day-to-day happenings and learn what I could do to make their jobs easier.

What’s your PM tech stack?

Andrew: It’s probably a lot of the same product tools other PMs are using, but I think we’re starting to experiment a little bit. We use Jira to track and manage. We use Slack to communicate, which works pretty well for us. We use a data analytics tool called Looker, which is a good tool for people who aren’t able to write complex queries. It’s what we use to get access to our data. Beyond that, it’s a bit more of an informal work environment, so we try to see what’s working well for one team and see how it could work for us.

Any shoutouts you want to give in the PM community?

Andrew: Maggie Crowley who’s over at Drift. I’ve never actually met her in person, but she has a podcast and a pretty excellent Twitter account. I find the content interesting and I’ve learned a lot from her podcast that’s helped me in my current position.

It’s sort of funny to give a shout out to someone I’ve never actually met in person, but I’m an avid listener. For people looking to learn and try different models and not just the standard way of doing product management, you should definitely give it a listen.

An all-day event tailor-made for product managers. Register now for Unbox 2019, September 20 at Marriott Copley Boston. Unbox is a day for product managers to learn from each other and hone their skills to build great products. There is little formal education for product management, and at Boston Product, we’ve learned that the best way to help people improve is to get them in a room with other high-caliber PMs.

Ideometry is a Boston-based full-service marketing agency serving a global client base. With a full suite of creative, development, and strategic services, Ideometry helps startups and Fortune 500 companies alike get the business results they’re looking for. If you’re doing something interesting, we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us at ideometry.com or email hello@ideometry.com.