product-accelerator

BoskyMukherjee·Feb 10, 2021

Posted in:Advice Favors Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Tech

I founded PMDojo last year with a hope to make careers in tech more inclusive and accessible. I have started this journey to help people pivot into Product Management by leading a 10-week Apprenticeship style learning program where people collaborate as a team to solve a real problem in the market and launch a product in 10 weeks with personalized mentorship, learning from talented peers and several perks. And yes they don't need to pay thousands of dollars like bootcamp programs but a fraction.I am looking to chat with anyone who has experience with corporate sponsorships and how this works so that I can remove this last barrier for our participants.Is there anyone who has experience in this who would be willing to have a quick chat with me?Cheers,Bosky

Iynna·Feb 10, 2021

Hello Bosky, First off all amazing iidea and congratulations on your achievement. PM is such a highly coveted career path that there is definitely growing demand.With regards to corporate sponsorships, the idea is to have large firms sponsor/subsdise tuitions for participants, correct? With that, you should think about what's in it for them? Why should they? Is this a great pipeline for PM talent? Or is this part of some CSR? Some of the key things I have learned doing this work in the previous nonprofit chapter I was running (AnitaB.org behind the grace hopper conf) was that 1) It is crucial to know what those companies' agenda is and what pain points you solve for them. Yes, very much like an entrepreneur would pitch to a customer it's essentially a sales pitch.2) Along the same lines of this B2B sales strategy: you have to understand where the budget comes from (CSR/ESG or HR/team development, or D&I initiatives and sometimes depending on the companies some of those are in the same buckets) so key for you to uncover, and ultimately be very strategic about the design of your program ie. are you actually giving the skills required to be a PM or will the company need to train them3) How competitive are you? To put it bluntly, how better off is someone graduating from your program vs someone with an MBA at a top school (tons of those are coming out looking for those type of work). Be very knowledgeable about your competition, because there are tons of other programs out there that are doing the same thing.4) There are tons of companies out there so figure out where you fit, are you looking for smaller companies looking for PMs or the McK, Google etc. of this world

BoskyMukherjee·Feb 10, 2021

Hi @iynna thank you so much for these wonderful insights.Would you have a few minutes to connect on a zoom call? I would love to chat and also see if I can help you in any way. Super helpful.Regards,Bosky

Iynna·Feb 11, 2021

Hi Bosky,Of course - glad it helped!I don’t have the bandwidth for a call, but happy to answer any Q’s in this thread so others in our community could also see!Best of luck!

BoskyMukherjee·Feb 11, 2021

Sounds great @iynna