The Story of the Inaugural Product Games
Nov 20th was the culmination of several months of hard work by the Product Games Team at INSEAD. It was only in late June when the three of us (Shaina Trotta, Sanaz Mortazavi, and I) had the opportunity to meet with Deputy Dean Peter Zemsky to discuss technology initiatives at INSEAD, and the idea of holding a first-of-its-kind global product management competition was born.
Building Vision
We spent the first few weeks creating a shared vision and a distinct value proposition. Intuitively, we knew that product management was emerging as a preferred career option (competing with tech strategy consulting and investment management) for top business schools across the world. We also realized that there were few opportunities for business grads to actually experience product management in action. Building upon my experience in product at EDGE, we drafted the initial problem challenge and structure of the competition. Shaina also spent considerable time in aligning the skills tested with the latest industry norms. We also did some secondary research. Notably, BYU had previously organized a product competition. Intuit’s PM exercises were also available online. We also contrasted our initial draft with existing industry challenges and case competitions to understand where we stood.
A big break for us came when we got in touch with INSEAD alum Jens-Fabian Goetzmann, then a Product Manager at Microsoft. Jens helped us clarify our vision and fine-tune the competition structure.
Testing our Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
We had raised seed money from INSEAD and the natural instinct was to build significant web presence before approaching prospective partners. We curbed that instinct and proceeded to first validate our value proposition with prospective students and partners — speaking to MBA participants in several schools and sharing the proposed product challenge and competition structure with prospective partner companies.
We also surveyed business school students to assess interest. Finally, we asked people to sign up to receive more information on the competition. When we saw overwhelming interest expressed through sign-ups, we were sure that we were onto something.
Identifying the right partners — Visa and Prodigy Finance
After speaking to several companies, we found the right vision alignment with Visa and Prodigy Finance. Arvin Singh, an INSEAD alum at Visa, believed in our vision and agreed to be our champion at the firm. Visa became the presenting sponsor for Product Games and also endorsed our vision of bringing in partners from the fintech ecosystem to the competition. We also got a generous purse to afford a US$ 10,000 winning prize with Visa’s support. Visa concurred that the competition could bring in unique perspectives which could benefit the fintech ecosystem.
Mindy Venema at Prodigy Finance also found that the Product Games’ vision of creating learning opportunities for students aligned with her firm’s mission. Prodigy Finance, with its aim to improve access to education financing opportunities, generously supported travel for participants. Prodigy Finance also made available two of its senior product managers (Gavin Stevens and Keelan Naidoo) to mentor finalist teams. This mentoring opportunity was highly appreciated by the teams.
Co-creating the challenge with Stripe
We were extremely fortunate to have Stripe as our Knowledge Partner. In Elsa Said-Armanet, we had a great counterpart at Stripe. Elsa came with experience in strategy, business development and partnership operations, and her rich experience informed our decision-making.
Stripe not only co-developed the challenge with us but also co-owned the challenge, taking responsibility of evaluation of the preliminary entries and providing feedback to finalists. The challenge itself proved to be the heart of the competition, and we were flooded with great feedback from participants on how much they enjoyed it.
Selling the Product: Soliciting entries from the world’s top schools
At the end of August, we had a great set of partners, a well-developed challenge and a web presence. However, the competition would remain unsuccessful if we didn’t have a great set of participants. To ensure good participation, we built an organic and an inorganic campaign.
We enlisted the support of our colleagues Francis and Dosanna to run a targeted social media campaign. By the end of the campaign, we had succeeded in attracting nearly 70 entries from 25 of the best business schools in the world. We also reached out to almost every single tech club in the FT top 50 schools. At the end of the first round of Product Games, the organizers and the Stripe team closely reviewed the entries, and selected four teams — one each from INSEAD and Wharton, and two from Stanford—for the finals.
It was a great testament to the quality of participation that the judges spent several days mulling over the entries to choose the final four.
Putting it all together — the final ceremony
November 20th was memorable to say the least. It was fantastic to host participants from INSEAD, Stanford GSB and Wharton at the INSEAD Asia Campus in Singapore. The finalists came up with some outstanding ideas. The judges acknowledged that they had a really tough time selecting the winner. The Wharton School team, Karthika Periyathambi, Piyush Keshri, and Daniel Ting, won the competition.
We also had a very insightful panel discussion on the future of money transfer with senior members of Visa (Arvin Singh), Stripe (Elsa Said-Armanet) and Transferwise (Jessica Chen Riolfi) on the panel.
Reflection: What did we learn?
Organizing Product Games enabled us to learn a lot. We are proud to start a new chapter in the business school tech landscape. It’s difficult to summarize learnings from something which has consumed a large part of one’s time in a few lines but here’s an attempt:
(a) The lean startup philosophy could be applied in real life applications outside product — we conceptualized, iterated, and achieved fit for Product Games.
(b) Diverse yet cooperative teams deliver more. Our small and tight team oversaw and covered a lot of ground. We brought in different perspectives — overlapping in vision, differing in thinking yet focused on the vision. We disagreed but committed. This helped in fast-paced decision making and rapid execution — in effect, we delivered more than the sum of our parts.
(c) Choosing the right partners is critical. In Visa, Prodigy Finance, and Stripe we had great support from some fantastic people. We owe a ton of thanks to them and realize that we were very lucky to have them as partners.
The path forward: Passing the baton and gratitude to everyone who helped make it a success
We will be passing the baton to Apoorv Singh and Lala Wang for the next year and wish them the best. Before I close, I would like to extend our gratitude to everyone who helped us during the course of planning and organization of the event:
Participants — We were overwhelmed by the quality and quantity of participation in the competition. Nearly 70 teams from 25 schools submitted entries. The participants are the reason we consider the event a success. A special thanks to the finalists from INSEAD, Stanford, and Wharton who flew to Singapore for the final event.
Partners and Judges — Arvin Singh and Katherine Bell from Visa, Mindy Venema and Amelia Martinez from Prodigy Finance, Elsa Said-Armanet from Stripe, and Jessica Chen Riolfi from Transferwise
Mentors —Jens-Fabian Goetzmann from 8fit, mentor to the organizing team; Gavin Stevens and Keelan Naidoo from Prodigy Finance, Jorge Mazal from Duolingo, and Krzysztof Marcisz from TripAdvisor, mentors to the finalists
Student team— Apoorv Singh, Lala Wang, Francis Myladoor Thomas, Ali Shahid, and Dosanna Wu who took up different parts of execution and delivered them to perfection
INSEAD — Deputy Dean Peter Zemsky, Pascale Balze from Digital@INSEAD, and Maria Caillaux and Avelyn Chiah from Student Life
Follow us on Facebook or at productgames.io for updates
