Transitioning from PM to founding a company
Date: 27 April
Presenter: Mitali Pattnaik, founder of Intro HQ
- Experience: Microsoft, Yahoo, EA (Simm), Google, Yahoo, then started Intro
- Intro: Private LinkedIn, built on top of Slack — currently 1200 companies using it for 65K employees and 1.5MM potential contacts!
- Being a PM for 15 feels nothing like being a founder! Founder is much more complicated
Benefits of being a PM founder (you already know the importance of & know how to do the following):
- solve/focus on real customer problems
- clear product vision & roadmap
- ship code! The difference between an idea and a product: product has users! Otherwise, you don’t have a product
Issues/Risks with being a PM founder:
- solve all issues with product-first mindset (when the solution might/should be elsewhere in the company)
- do everything yourself
- believe that “the best product” wins (this is rarely the case)
Book recommendation: Zero to One (http://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-Future/dp/0804139296)
Measurement tips
- Quantitative: Pick your correct KPIs. For IntroHQ, they don’t care about Daily Active Users (DAU) because they care about coverage — 85% coverage (of a company) and accuracy
5 rabid fans are more important than 500 tepid users
- Qualitative: You will *always* get thousands of feature requests. Find out what problems people are trying to solve.
Q&As
Q: You said that we should avoid fixing problems with a product-first mindset. How should we approach problems?
A: Check the channels you are selling through, and the messaging you are using for each of them. You will solve a lot of problems outside of the product that way.
Q: What tips do you have for working with Engineering in a productive way?
A: Ken Norton Ted Talk: PMs Bring the Donuts. Make sure you are removing roadblocks for them- give props to the full team & take blame yourself.
Q: How did you decide what problem to solve with your company, IntroHQ?
A: She was the Entrepreneur-in-Residence at a shared workspace. There were lots of ideas developing & they started with an HR problem & starting a company to solve it. BUT- she couldn’t recruit or find people to recruit even though she has tons of connections in her network (ex: Could not find ex-Twitter employees that currently are founders)
Q: What is the right way to spend the first 5 days as a product manager?
A: First: listen & meet with as many people as possible. Beginners attitude is good because what the established people may have tried & failed at before, might be the right solution now.
Q: Many founders talk about exit strategies for their companies — IPO, get acquired, etc. Do you make decisions today based on what you want to happen in the future for your company?
A: No. You should plan and make decisions based on 1 order of magnitude larger than you are (your company).
