Incoming Product Manager
I’d read somewhere a ceo has only three jobs. Define where the company is going, have the money to reach there and hire people who’ll ensure the company reaches there.
People matter a lot and a product manager at early stage even more so. He’s going to be my co-pilot, flying the product while I’m dealing with ceo things (which also involves putting out fires)
So Shreya has been lining up a steady stream of product manager candidates and one seemed pretty good (in his talk). But our funnel tests for rejecting — so we called him for an in depth product overview and he sat through 2.5 hours.
Still I wasn’t satisfied and so I wrote out a case study. You can find it here. The guy wanted a confirmation on his CTC before he attempts it.
Our funnel tests for rejecting.
So we dug in and said we need case study for defining the CTC else the range offered in our job post is the range of possibility.
After a little bit of chasing the tail, the man dropped. Maybe he didn’t really need all that challenge that he was asking for when it was all just talk.
Meanwhile, I was talking to another candidate who’d spent some time with IAS preps and having reached a stage, figured it was time. Good articulate and spirited candidate but after an hour an half long session i’d not been able to figure his intensity. And Intensity matters. There are people who ask for fun while at work (table tennis, friday parties) and there are people who derive fun from the work.
So we sent out the case study, he agreed to give it a go and he did return back. He had done half decent job and even followed up with us couple of times. So I went into the call to understand his thinking on the case study. He practically had understood all the higher level issues around the two products I’d asked for and even understand some monetisation and product strategy related issues. But the moment I dug deeper, there were unconnected dots.
I need people in this role who are able to research the market, understand the evoluation of a problem and value responses to that based on state of tech and eventually where the edge is currently so that it can be formulated into a coherent product strategy that is granular and each dot of micro hypothesis connects to other such that a logical chain finally leads to an exactly mapped product feature tree and eventual roadmap- which itself needs to be tracked for arrival of any data to the contrary. Constant thesis producing and data seeking machine to validate/invalidate the thesis.
This is where intensity comes in. A person has to want to do this and peeling layers and layers of how and why should be part of his DNA. This and most other things at a startup are not a job. You gotta be invested to your core into what is being done — because the startups meaning is your meaning too.
But it’s unreasonable to expect someone to give 80 hours to an assessment.
So we gave him the offer to fly in and out at our cost, pay for his stay in mumbai for a month and offer him consultancy for 6X10 for 4 weeks. Six days a week, 10 hours a day for 4 weeks. Paid assessment. Such that for this month we won’t spend more than one 12th of his annual CTC expectation. He could appear for any other interviews, he can abandon any week and he’ll be paid pro-rata.
I need a proof how hard he can charge at the problem I’m offering.
It’s a fair deal and he’s accepted it.
I believe he’ll evetually get the offer from us. He’ll be arriving next week. I’ll keep this updated.