A Product Chat with TVO’s Rhythem Raswant
Key takeaway: The ‘extra’ mile is not really extra — it’s table stakes. If they ask for 10, give them 11.
Welcome to PM Nation (PMNation.co), an interview series where we shine a spotlight on personalities behind great products, learn more about how they got into Product Management, and provide insider perspectives into how the craft of Product is evolving. To learn more about why this got started, click here.
For the benefit of our readers, could you tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do as a Product Manager (PM)?
Hi, my name is Rhythem and I’m currently a Product Manager at TVO, where I manage TVO Mathify — a 1:1 online Math tutoring platform to help elementary and high-school students in Ontario learn math better and feel more confident about their math skills. Recently, I have also taken on the role of leading Product for our B2B partnerships across the globe. It’s busy!
I’ve been in product management for over 3 years, and my journey began in India, where I was born and raised. In India, I worked as a PM for a digital auto portal, Zigwheels.com, helping car buyers making well-informed decisions about purchasing their next car. I am passionate about B2C products as it feels incredibly rewarding to be able to create an impact for customers on a wide scale.
So how did you land up in product management?
Accidentally. After my undergrad in engineering, I was still exploring various career paths to pursue. The one thing I was very sure of was that I want to work for a start-up, given my passion and eagerness to learn fast. It was at the time when the Indian startup scene was booming, and the idea of working for a startup was thrilling. I secured an Associate position at Zigwheels, which, at that time, was a mature startup, and I could feel the vibrancy of its culture during the interview process.
As an Associate, I worked with multiple product managers and assisted them in the product development process, learning about analytics, agile and UI/UX in the process. It was there I had first-hand experience creating experiences to solve problems for users. Soon after, I got an opportunity to lead the team building a white-labelled web-based product for car brands like Ford and BMW. The rest is history.
Why is it so hard to get into product management these days?
I consider Product Management to be a practice, which requires actual experience versus only theoretical knowledge. Companies and hiring managers are typically looking to hire candidates who have a proven track record as a Product Manager, as well as who possess skills and experience to manage their products. This makes it hard for those who don’t have any direct product management experience to break into the scene.
Additionally, product management is often considered a jazzy and glittery profession, where PMs are perceived as the CEOs of their products, and hence a ton of people want to become PMs. However, this isn’t the reality. PMs lead only through influence, without any authority, and build products with the help of their teams.
Therefore, I highly encourage aspiring PMs to develop a clear understanding of the role, as well as a clear rationale for why they want to pursue a career in this field.
“If you already working at an organization which has a Product function, try to meet with PMs internally for coffee and ask them not only about their role, skills and journey but also about how you can pivot into their profession.”
For those interested in a career in PM — what kinds of experiences should they seek out?
There are multiple trajectories that aspiring PMs can follow to build a rewarding career. There are numerous opportunities in the form of the Associate Product Manager programs, as well as APM and Junior PM positions at various companies across North America.
I would also recommend taking up roles in customer success, account management or business development, as these teams work very closely with customers, and can help candidates understand the challenges and problems users face, which is an essential part of being a PM.
If you already working at an organization which has a Product function, try to meet with PMs internally for coffee and ask them not only about their role, skills and journey but also about how you can pivot into their profession. Seek the opportunity (or offer) to assist a PM on your team in one of their projects/initiatives, which can pave the way for you to become a PM.
Finally, consider looking for a side hustle — whether it’s building a product of your own or finding side projects on the web. This can help you experience the entire Product process:
- Discovering a problem and identifying users who face that problem.
- Talking to users to refine your understanding of their problem.
- Coming up with a solution that solves the problem and validating it with these users: there are so many cheap ways to do this, like creating prototypes in Figma and putting them in front of the users to get their feedback.
- Building the solution: this can be done through tools available online. One such tool is Bubble, which helps you build complex web apps without any coding. I’d highly recommend using this.
- Launching the solution: for example, by going to the local store, asking friends to use it, sharing it on channels like LinkedIn, Product Hunt and Twitter…
- Analyzing feedback, iterating and improving on your offering!
As a PM, what do you do exactly on a day-to-day basis?
Ask any Product Manager and they will always say that no 2 days are the same. Every day comes with a unique set of opportunities and challenges. Typically I would be doing the following:
- Look at feedback and data from our users. This is important to understand their pain points and prioritize the problems for further exploration. This is often followed-up by either direct interactions with users or deep-dives into existing quantitative and qualitative data, making it a discovery exercise.
- Interact with my Scrum team members (designers, developer and QA): this gives me an opportunity to clear any blockers related to the scope of work we have taken up in the current iteration, as well as share any outcomes and impact of the work we have previously delivered.
- Meet up with stakeholders: this gives me a chance to talk about new problems we’ve discovered, prioritize our next few iterations, and review the outcomes and impact of the work done so far by the team.
- Spend time prioritizing our roadmap: this is an opportunity to ensure the various inputs from our users, my team and our stakeholders are all reviewed and prioritized. It also gives me a chance to groom our Product backlog.
What do you love about being a PM? What do you wish you could change?
There are two aspects that I love:
- I am a believer in continuous learning. Each day as a PM, I learn something new about our users, the industry, a process, a skill, my team or even about myself. That is what keeps me going — a new opportunity to learn and be better every day.
- The other is being able to co-create, with a team, an impactful product that alleviates problems for our users. Everyone on the team brings a unique perspective and we learn together to build together — another rewarding and learning experience.
“I am a believer in continuous learning. Each day as a PM, I learn something new about our users, the industry, a process, a skill, my team or even about myself. That is what keeps me going — a new opportunity to learn and be better every day.”
So what’s one common myth about being a PM?
A common myth is that one needs to be a subject matter expert in the domain or industry they are trying to break into. This isn’t always true. Of course, there are certain specialized PM roles which require some level of competence — for example, a PM role managing a data infrastructure product would require a certain level of prior experience in that field. However, most PM roles require skills that are transferable, such as communication, empathy, persuasion, critical thinking and so on. I didn’t have any prior experience in EdTech before joining TVO, but I was able to demonstrate my understanding of solving user problems and building relationships.
What is the difference between product management and project management?
I think the biggest difference is in the focus of the two roles.
Product management is strategic and focuses on the outcomes for the users and the business. Product managers are responsible for developing the vision of the product and focus on the What (the problem they want to solve) and the Why (the problem needs to be solved).
Project management is tactical, and focuses on delivery (executing the How). Project managers are centered around timelines and budgets to ensure their teams hit their goals.
However, product management often overlaps with a part of project management, as product managers to need to plan and manage the delivery of their product.
How do you develop a vision for a product?
I like to start by thinking about the needs of our users, and their problems that we are trying to solve. It is not bounded by any timelines, resources or expertise. I just spend time thinking about the ideal experiences that will help make things easier for our users. This, of course, should be done together with your team and stakeholders so that everyone is aligned on the direction of the product.
What skillsets are essential to being a PM? What skills will PMs need in 5 years?
Let’s start with communication, which I believe is one of the most important skills of a product manager. A good product manager is capable of exchanging context and information clearly and fluently across different levels, from fellow team members to senior leaders. Having a clear narrative and being a good storyteller are considered valuable strengths. Also, communication is a two-way street, so PMs should be both good listeners and speakers. Listening to your users, stakeholders and teams can help PMs absorb unique perspectives to prioritize and plan effectively.
Relationship-building is another important skill in the PM toolkit: healthy relationships with their users, teams, stakeholders and managers help PMs execute their responsibilities better, and be more successful in their roles.
Building relationships brings me to the next skill I really value as a PM: influence and persuasion. Since PMs are mostly individual contributors and don’t have any direct authority, it is imperative for them to be able to be persuasive, win people over, and align everyone around common problems to solve.
What’s the most important quality a PM should have (or develop)?
Product managers should Always-Be-Curious (ABC). To uncover and solve problems, be excited about your work, seek to obtain a clearer understanding of your business context, and strive to create incremental value for your users and business. To do this, PMs need to develop an enduring curiosity about the world they work in.
“…PMs need to develop an enduring curiosity about the world they work in.”
What’s the toughest product problem you’ve ever solved?
It’s not so much the toughest problem, but an ongoing challenge I face as a Product Manager: defining a focus for a product. It’s very easy to get side-tracked. During my career, I have worked with lean teams with very limited resources, and so it becomes very important to understand, break down and prioritize problems and initiatives which make optimal use of the available resources to deliver maximum value to users.
What’s the best way to shine in a PM interview?
I love going the extra mile and learning about a company and its products: listening to CEO keynotes, reading press releases, talking to their customers/users (respect privacy here) and researching the company website are just a few of the things you can do to develop a good understanding of the company and its industry, and speak knowledgeably about it during your interview. It not only showcases the effort you have put in to know about the company, but also gets you excited about the interview and the position.
In the past, for the purposes of an interview, I often created a presentation to showcase my understanding and thoughts on a company and its products, as well as to share my perspective on what might be good opportunities for it to pursue in the future.
How do you figure out if you’re the right fit for a prospective PM role?
I definitely look at the problem that an organization or product is trying to solve for its users or customers. It is very important for me to be passionate about the problem that I’ll be working on.
Another factor that I really value is learning in my role and getting feedback from my peers. During my interviews, I always ask about how and how often feedback is communicated, as well as about how the team learns.
It’s time for the Lightning Round! What’s a good book, movie, TV series or video game you’d recommend right now?
Almost everyone in product management would recommend reading Inspired by Marty Cagan. It’s considered a bible for product managers. I am currently reading it and love how Marty has explained every key aspect of Product in such detail.
In addition to that, I would recommend subscribing to Product Talk — a blog on product discovery by Teresa Torres. I love her approach on this topic and her blogs are quite informative and practical.
Favourite place for a coffee chat?
It is quite ironic that I have met so many people after asking them for a coffee, but I, myself, am a tea person. I like Café Landwer in downtown Toronto because they have amazing coffee and equally amazing green tea (win-win). I also like its cozy ambience, which makes it an amazing place to have a great conversation.
Favourite dish to pick up after a long day?
A Cali burrito bowl from Wilbur Mexicana with their ghost pepper salsa and margarita. It is my favourite restaurant in Toronto.
Where do you dream of traveling to next?
I can’t wait to travel again. I am a beach-person, and once things get better I would love to go to Miami for a sunny vacation. Also, I am a big fan of dance music festivals, so I can’t wait to go to one of those summer festivals in Europe.
What’s your hidden talent?
I’m a DJ. I’ve been really passionate about DJ’ing for a long time in my life. The COVID-19 pandemic came with a silver lining for me as I got more time to practice. One of my mixes got featured on the SoundCloud channel of Tomorrowland, which is one of the world’s biggest music festivals. Nowadays, I follow a monthly schedule of either uploading my sets to my YouTube channel, or hosting a virtual DJ party.
Rhythem, thanks for your time!
My pleasure!
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