How a Director/VP of Product Management Can Develop His/Her Team

Just saw a nice blog post by Marty Cagan. If you are a:

  • Director of Product Management
  • VP of Product Management
  • Or aspire to be one of the above (I think that should cover just about everybody in product management, don’t you think?!)

, then check out Marty’s post.

Having said that, there is one point about which I don’t fully agree with Marty. That point is… [Read more…]

How to Hire Product Managers for Startups

Mark Suster (who has founded and built two successful software startups)  recently blogged about hiring at a startup. It’s an excellent post and got me thinking about hiring product managers at a startup.

From my experience of having built Product Management teams at two different successful startups, and having been an early member of the PM team at a third successful startup – I believe all of Mark’s points apply well to hiring product managers at a startup too.

Read on for my comments on how some of Mark’s points apply to hiring product managers at startups… [Read more…]

The Best Source of Innovation?

The best companies (B2B) I’ve worked for during my career were highly innovative, and they continuously innovated. But the source of their innovation was not:

  • Whiz-bang Technology
  • Genius Personnel, or
  • Competitive Research

What was the source, you ask? Well, the type of innovation those companies practiced was… [Read more…]

Tips for Interviewing Product Managers

One of my friends is a newly minted Director of Product Management at a mid-stage startup in silicon valley. I met him for coffee yesterday and we were chatting about how his new job was going.

He has managed Engineering as well as Professional Services teams in the past, but this is his first time managing a Product Management team.

He told me he thought product manager interviews are easy to fake, and even unqualified candidates can easily fake a good performance during the interview. This got me thinking… [Read more…]

Strawberries and Worms: A Parable for Product Managers

When I was a kid, I used to love Aesop’s fables – short stories with a moral. I even learned some valuable lessons from them, lessons that have helped me as I’ve grown older.

For this holiday season, here’s my little parable for those of us in product management and product marketing (it’s not a fable, it’s a parable!)

Drum roll please… [Read more…]