My background as a product manager at Partoo

This is who I am and this is what I like

Hey there! 👋

My name is Maéva, I have been working as a mobile product manager at Partoo for almost 10 months now.
Prior to deep diving into the article let me go back a bit and tell you about myself.

I come from a small French village in Maine-et-Loire. Since high school, I was always attracted by foreign languages and people coming from different parts of the world. All my studies have been international-oriented because all I wanted to do was to go abroad.

I studied International Marketing at public universities, first in Angers for my Bachelor and then in Rennes for my Master degree. During these 5 years I did different internships that enabled me to spend a lot of time in different cities in Germany, a country that I like a lot for its culture and way of life.

After my graduation, I spent 3 months in Paris for a fixed and short work contract as product country manager. The day after I finished working there I hopped on a plane to go enjoy summer time in the great city of Chicago as an intern, which was followed by a 3-weeks sunny road trip on the American West Coast :)

First steps into product management

The internships I did were all bearing titles such as “Product Manager” or “Product Marketing Manager” and since I was working in very big industrial companies, I could really experience the different meaning and tasks of each position! From communication to marketing to technical specs for product documents, it was really something else.

I had my first experience with software products when I joined Bosch Smart Home in Germany at the end of 2016. As an international product manager intern, I was responsible for benchmarking competitors products as well as establishing the marketing concept of a mobile app in a pre-launch phase. I loved to feel empowered (I did my 1st elevator pitch there) and to work with designers, developers and product managers.

Following that, I got a 3-months work contract as junior PM in that same company, but this time in Paris in order to officially launch the whole product portfolio on the French market. It was a really interesting and intense work where I learned a lot about market specificity and communication.

The travel to the USA was the next big step in my life and upon coming back in 2018 I moved to the beautiful region of Alsace in the Eastern part of France, an area that was totally unknown for me, to begin what would be my first long term contract.

There, I continued to work in the Smart Home / Building sector as a product manager for an industrial company called Hager Group (check your home’s switchboard, there might be a chance that it comes from there 😜 ). I spent 3 and a half years at this company where I learned a lot about the smart home industry, how to build and communicate a product vision at scale, different product lifecycles methods as well as the collaboration amongst small and bigger teams. It was very enriching!

Hello, Goodbye

However, after having worked in big industrial companies, I felt like processes were too heavy, communication complicated and I needed a change of scenery. I wanted to gain experience in a smaller company and discover the business model of a SaaS product. Also, having a foot in the famous “French Tech” was something I had been thinking about for a long time. 🤓

I had already heard about Partoo as I was following its CPO, Savinien, on LinkedIn while searching for product resources to expand my knowledge. 👀

One of the funny things I remember from the recruitment process is the attention and time I spent on my application since it was required to make a kind of “unique” presentation of oneself and I already had a strong feeling about the importance of the “fun” value in this company!

My current role at Partoo

I joined Partoo in September 2021 as the first Product Manager for our new mobile application. Since I moved to Strasbourg for my previous job and decided to stay there because it’s a lovely city 💕, it was really great that Partoo enabled me to have a rhythm that works for them and for me. I always spend 2 days per week in our Parisian office and the rest of the time from my cosy Strasbourgeois flat while having the flexibility to adapt plans if needed.

This is all nice, but what do I do on a daily basis ?

Well, I work in a Feature Team on the evolution of the mobile application which is a newborn from January 2022, so there are really a lot of things to do, it’s very entertaining! Inside this team I collaborate with Software Developers, Designers, Data Analysts and Quality Engineers in order to offer our clients the best app possible.

Being a Product Manager puts your ego back in place: you have to be a problem solver and keep in mind that just because you think one way, it doesn’t mean it’s the right one! A key skill that you must have is empathy, you’ll need it a lot in this position.

Ask any PM, they’ll tell you that we never get bored at work! Our role is very central in the sense that we are constantly interacting with different departments. We need to build the product vision, understand the clients needs and make sure they are well communicated across teams, prioritise the next functionalities to bring, know the market trends and competitors, search for continuous improvement, define the specifications of what has to be developed, follow the usage of existing functionalities… It takes cold blood and persuasive sense 😄

More specifically, as a mobile product manager, there is some complexity because of all the constraints you can think about when it comes to smartphones such as the dependency on native behavior and functionalities… The mobile PM must accept that sometimes it’s just not possible to implement a feature the exact way it was asked. It’s a constant adaptation and negotiation with Designers and Developers to reach a common agreement on a new feature. A bit sporty, but a very great and rewarding job when done inside a healthy work environment and with competent people 👥.

Joking time : What network does Luke Skywalker use? *

That being said, you all are aware that smartphones have been part of the everyday life for approximately 10 years, so it’s a really exciting topic. Just imagine that 83% of the world’s population owns a smartphone!

We can really feel like we have an impact on the daily business tasks of our customers because they literally have us in their pocket ;)

“Working hard for something we don’t care about is called stress. Working hard for something we love is called passion.” — Simon Sinek

I work with amazing people who are very motivated and passionate about what they do: we always try to push ourselves to deliver the best product possible and support our customers in a great way. Each department of the company has its own focus, but in the end we are all responsible for our clients’ satisfaction whether we are in tech, happiness, strategy or sales teams. I can really say that I learn new things every day, about my job or any other topic that interests me!

I’m so excited and I just can’t hide it

Working on the mobile application has been a great challenge and I’d say this will be my most exciting project for the months (-years?) to come! Building an app from scratch, re-thinking the best and simplest way to present it during our creative and development process, talking to and testing it with customers…it’s awesome. And I love that we have a lot of clients always ready to help us build a better product, giving us feedback on how to improve.

Just thinking about the fact that we were around 230 people when I joined Partoo and we are now almost 400, it makes my head spin ! 🤩 The Tribe I joined and the Tech team in general has also been growing very fast! We are now almost 70 people, and still hiring :)

And now what ?

Congrats to you if you’ve read it this far, as it’s not so easy to write my very first article on Medium!

I can say that I have gathered a lot of different experiences throughout the years that helped me define what I want to do but more importantly what does not make me happy in my work. I am thrilled to see what’s next, discover new people and projects as well as continue shaping tomorrow’s mobile app for Partoo!

Who knows, maybe in a couple of years I’ll write another article and make a retrospective about my current job ? 🤷🏻‍♀️

*Answer to the joke : Yodaphone
(Yes, FUN is one of Partoo’s 6 main values, trying my best to fit in there ;)