A few thoughts on “How can I become a product manager?”

Published in

Yoopies

6 min readJul 16, 2020

I’ve been wanting to write about product management for a long time, but it’s only until recently that I found the right topic in order to publish my first post. I had that eureka moment, last week during one office hour when I had the chance to advise people who’d like to start a career in product management. One of them asked me a question that I’ve heard at least fifteen times this year: “How can I become a product manager?”.

Absorb and learn
Apologies for the cliché, but truth be told, there is no unique path, so to best answer this question, I’ll share a bit of my own experience. I dived into the world of product management around 5 years ago, when my former boss at a creative studio agency, Clint Agency, asked me to manage a project for a startup. To be honest, at the time I had no idea how to best manage the project, I had no experience in AB test experiments, and even worse, I wasn’t even sure what an MVP was… With a little experience, I focused on listening carefully, asking (a lot of) questions, and searching online for every new word and concept that I encountered. Basically I tried to put myself into a full “sponge mode”.

Today I am much more confident, however, the learning never stops. One of the best parts of my job is that you ‘learn to learn’ every day, meaning I’m still in the process of becoming a product manager even now.

The first thing to keep in mind is that the most interesting part of this job is that you “learn to learn” every day, from everyone and from every situation.

You’re already doing product management!
One of the most interesting aspects of being a Product Manager is realising that most people are doing some sort of product management already. It can be as simple as doing project management in your personal life:

Coordinating holidays with friends or family
Organising your wedding
Planning a move to a new house or a relocation to a new city/country

Product management is first and foremost about being curious, organised, and passionate. These are the skills good Product Managers use every day in their job. The good news is that everybody is naturally fairly curious about life. Remember when you were a kid and asked your parents tons of questions, ‘why is this like this’ or ‘why is this like that’? Project management encompasses similar behavior: asking questions about a situation and taking it a step further by wanting to improve it.

As a side note, whilst innovation is key, you can’t be a good Product Manager if you’re not also managing essential operational tasks. Indeed, without the hard work and challenges that come with these tasks, you can become easily distracted from 1.) your product and 2.) your customers. And you don’t want that.

Internet is your (best) friend
It’s pretty common to acquire all sorts of knowledge via the internet. A lot of resources are freely available for anyone to use — making it easy to read, watch, and use examples or relevant ideas found online. You can then test your learning, analyse the results, and repeat… again and again.
Every time you need to complete a task you’ve never done before, this mantra is your best friend. This continuous learning cycle will allow you to become a better Product Manager than yesterday and will always help you in your future role.

Diversity
When we are recruiting Product Managers at Yoopies, we’re more interested in the mindset than strict hard skills, a top-notch education, or 10 years of experience. We think that the easiest part of the job is to learn a new product tool or a method. We actually hired 2 PMs from varying career backgrounds, including Business Development and Customer Support roles, and that’s why they are amazing: they have a fresh vision and bring something different to the table. They have expertise in other areas outside of Product Management and it means they are able to add this knowledge and perspective in their day-to-day work. Bonus: they can share their expertise with other relevant business teams in your company.

A few tips if you have no experience in Product Management:

Start a side project about something that you enjoy: this could be a newsletter about music, creating a website, selling something that a member of your family is making, starting a podcast about a topic you’re passionate about. You can find a ton of tutorials on Youtube to help you kick off a successful side project. Don’t be shy, just go for it!.
Work on a case study for an app that you like or think could be better. Set yourself a goal to improve its user experience and better fit its user needs. For example, you could reshape the dashboard of your old fashioned bank (eg. classic bank to Revolut/ N26). Treat it as a real project: do the user research, dig into the data regarding the banking ecosystem, organise user interviews with your friends and family, create mockups, design, and even specifications if you want. A project like this will greatly help you organise your thinking process to understand the “why” behind a product (probably the word a product manager must use the most in his/her career). You can also create a portfolio that shows your work.
Read! Newsletters, stories, posts, and books about product management and the global startup ecosystem. It’s not about learning theory, it’s about spotting and leveraging the tips & advises that you’ll implement in your work — see a non-exhaustive list at the end of this post.
Contact product managers (over Linkedin/Twitter) and ask him/her if it’s possible to have a coffee chat or a call → try to understand the challenges he/she might encounter in Product Management, their mindset, and vision of product management (of course you can ping me as well! ;))
Join a product Slack community → this is the best way to have access to a lot of resources and easily discuss with product managers Also, it’s a great way to keep up to date with relevant webinars and meetups.
Register to a product management program. You can find several types of product-oriented training. e.g in Paris: Maestro (Maria Schools) or Noé.
Monitor the market: have a daily routine of discovering and using new apps, tools, and websites → For the last 5 years, it has been my weekly routine to check the App Store rankings and try out new apps. It is an incredibly useful exercise in order to discover interesting updates and features — especially with regards to user onboarding (a big challenge for Product Managers). Extra Tip: make sure you check Product Hunt every day.

By following these simple steps, you’ll be showcasing your curiosity and will positively impact your journey to becoming a great product manager!

Conclusion

There’s no direct path to become a Product Manager, anyone can become a PM.
Always ask “Why” to learn from the others.
Don’t forget: you’re probably already doing Product Management (managing your wedding or vacations).
You’ll find everything you need to know/try/create/make on the Internet.
Diversity in your experience (professional and personal) and in your mindset is a precious asset.
Don’t be afraid to dive in now with a side project!

A few key resources to go further:

Newsletters to subscribe to:

Books to read

Posts to read

People to follow on Twitter

Shreyas Doshi (Product at Stripe)
Rahulvohra (Founder of Superhuman)
Sarah Tavel (ex Product at Pinterest)
Lenny Rachitsky (first PM at Airbnb)
April Underwood (ex CPO Slack & Twitter)
Jeff Weinstein (Product at Stripe)

A few thoughts on “How can I become a product manager?”

Written by Clément Falchier