Bia Vieira, Product Manager
Joined in Apr 2021, from 🇧🇷
What led you to become a product manager?
My first contact with product management (ish) started back in college. During my sandwich graduation, I had the chance to be part of a global innovation project led by Stanford University called ME310/SUGAR — where we would solve real-world challenges by using Design Thinking to understand user problems and translate them into new features.
This was by far the (professional) thing I enjoyed doing the most while in uni — and this is a very strong statement coming from someone who studied for 7 years! So when I (finally) graduated, I was sure that I wanted to pursue a career in product development.
This experience lead me to work as a product analyst in a Brazilian fintech, where I learnt how to introduce new products to the market: with a lot of pilots and UX research. Which was very good for my understanding of the product lifecycle, since my first contact was more focused on the development part.
After that, I felt ready to move to a more comprehensive challenge and here I am, writing my PM chapter together with Lalamove :)
What does a typical day look like?
Happy flow
Wake up → shower → breakfast & catch up with latest news → office → clear email/message backlog → PDD/PRD/Refinement/Review → lunch → coffee → PDD/PRD/Refinement/Review → yoga → dinner → shower → catch up with my BR crew that is now awake → read/watch something → sleep → repeat
Unhappy flow
one/some steps might be skipped — or some wine added 😅
Name three people or things you feel inspired when creating a product.
People — from end-users to friends & family, we need to remind ourselves that we are building something that real people will use. They have needs, they have a life, they have dreams and they have goals. Our job is to make those easier.
Social Media — while some people might feel it’s a waste of time, I think that LinkedIn and even (surprise) Instagram can be powerful tools with great content if we know where to look. I can learn a lot by catching up with what people are doing today, and by being part of creative product communities
The apps on my own phone — what can be better to learn how to build meaningful features than by watching (and judging) the ones you use everyday ? Not coincidentally, the ones that I like the most also have the most inspiring Product teams — such as Spotify, Airbnb, Nubank, Netflix (among others)
What would your self-portrait look like?
Grayscale, wine glass, sunset, big window, comfy clothes, and a messy hair bun
Anything you want to promote or plug?
Creative mornings — if like me, you feel inspired by other people, check out this worldwide initiative that gather the creative community together once a month to learn / debate a different theme (with a mug of coffee, of course)
