An Interview with a Product Manager who is working his Dream Job
Strava is a health and fitness tracking app, which is building a community for athletes. A community that is for athletes, by athletes. Initially designed to track cycling and running events using GPS data, Strava now can be used to track almost any activity.
Want to record your swim that you took in the cold waters of Lake Superior, yes you can do that. Want to record your epic hike up to the top of Mount Washington? Yep no problem. Maybe see your times on the Olympic cross country ski trails at the Canmore Nordic Center? Duh that’s easy. How fast am I compared to those world class 10K runners that I saw in my hometown? Just run the course, track it and you will get the answer. Virtually any activity that is GPS trackable can be recorded, and shared with your community of friends and other athletes.
Other features of Strava:
Leaderboards(Friends, Overall, Age Groups, Sex)
Community Challenges
Community Clubs
Route Creator
Athlete Metrics and so much more data
This week I got to sit down and have a face to face chat (with an LED screen and about 1800km between us) with Erik Sunde a Product Manager at Strava based out of Denver, Colorado.
Erik’s career path towards his role as a Product Manager is highly compelling to me in that it follows in the same path that I am now embarking on. Erik’s education background is in business but when he graduated in the 2008 financial downturn, there really were no jobs for him. Being flexible and adaptable he ended up landing a role with Anadarko Oil and Gas based out of Denver. Erik ended up becoming a very successful GIS Analyst working with many stakeholders including the “Hard skills” people, the Geologists and Engineers. This is where I come in, as a 20 year Geologist I find myself, via the EDGE UP 2.0 program being rapidly. accelerated towards a career in Product Management. Going through these steps and meeting someone that has already successfully made the transition has me very motivated to succeed.
When learning that Strava was opening an office in Denver, and being a passionate runner, Erik took this opportunity to leverage his Hard skill set and ended up being offered a position with Strava. Initially working with large GIS data sets as an analyst for Strava Metro, Erik’s natural drive and soft skills were recognized by a manager at Strava. As Erik put it, this was his journey to PM.
So now that you are here, what is a Product manager Erik?…..after a short pause and chuckle(yes it is hard to define, ask anyone!) Erik responded that it’s the ability to work upwards with stakeholders, working with leadership teams and understanding their vision and priorities of the product. Once it is at a point of buy-in from all involved there are still other stakeholders that need to be involved which can include legal and marketing. Ultimately it’s about getting a successful feature out to users.
Here are a few direct questions:
What are the best traits to have as a good PM?
“Having a growth mindset, there’s a lot you don’t know, the best way to learn it is by doing it, be comfortable being uncomfortable”(E.Sunde, personal communication, April 26, 2022). This is someone who is really open to learning, someone who is very curious. I can totally sense this by talking to Erik.
“Crafting the ability to work with stakeholders with competing priorities and try to find the path forward”. This requires strong communication skills and being able to facilitate the process for all stakeholders.
Also “Take responsibilities for losses and share in the wins” This to me is the sign of a true leader, Erik really emphasized this point to me.
“Story telling”. When Erik discussed this I knew he was a Great PM.
Lastly “document everything, get good at making plans and documenting” This makes sense, if everything is documented, people can’t come back on you later and ask why you did something……it’s in the document.
What are some things to watch out for?
“Don’t hold opinions too strongly they can often come back to bite you as a PM” I really like this comment from Erik. This is saying it’s okay to look at another idea and be okay to accept that it would be the better route to go. You are okay accepting that there may be a better idea and not be hurt by that.
I asked Erik about failures and set backs that may have occurred to him but he responded that it’s hard to fail when you work with incredible team mates. Very complimentary of his team when he says “they make it easy to be good”.
Having said he did inform me of a few things that didn’t work out as successes. Some features that were implemented on a project ended up being “wonky” and didn’t function the way they thought they would. They tried something that didn’t work, accept your loss, back to the drawing board and keep moving forward. There will be failures as a Product Manager. However you can grow from these failures and keep moving forward.
In his day to day role Erik says that they are constantly working on designing features for users that will provide even more value to them. The job is not about building a product, releasing it and then becoming stagnant and flat. It’s about how can we improve it even more, what else would the users like to see? Again Strava is made by athletes for athletes, so I find it fascinating to talk to the person that had something to do with the creation of the features that I find most useful or motivating for me. I am talking to the person that made these features that I am more than happy to spend my money on being a premium member of Strava.
Now the coolest part of Erik’s job at Strava is the feature of Strava Metro. This is a system that allows Strava to share their data set(the biggest) of cycling and running activities with city planners. This allows city planners to utilize the data provided by real world users before they go and build a bike path where no one rides. They could take advantage of the data set before making decisions. The absolute beauty of this is that Strava gives all of this data away for free, they do not charge anything. What this does is show cities that the users(the cyclists) are giving back to the community by helping in the design of the cities bike transportation. It also means that Strava does not sell or make any money from sharing someone’s data, it only benefits others.
What I also learned(and I did know) is that Strava does zero advertising, but hearing from someone on the inside really made it hit home. I am a serious Strava power user and for all my searches online, I have never received any directed advertising on Youtube or web searches by Strava. Erik stated that the closest thing they do for advertising is the Strava Challenges that are ran in collaboration with a company. These are activity challenges sponsored by the other company that provides an actual real world value(discounts) for an athlete completing the challenge. So Strava does not to any advertising and doesn’t sell my data? Where can I renew my subscription?
My biggest takeaway from talking to Erik was his response when I asked him “is Strava the ideal place for you to be?”. As I yammered on trying to piece together my question, he just had a big smile on his face and he nodded his head affirmatively. YES he loves to work at Strava, it’s his dream job. Erik commented that yes there are other jobs he could do(other PM roles for other companies) “but after doing this job here(Strava) there is nothing else that I would want to do”. That is someone who has found his Dream job.
One last thing, “If it’s not on Strava, it didn’t happen”
References:
E. Sunde, personal communication, April 26,2022.
