Did you become a PM by pitching a new product?

sandyz·Sep 02, 2020

Posted in:Product Advice Tech Career Growth

Hello!Aspiring PM looking for my big break following the advice I've gotten repeatedly from experienced PMs: Find a problem in a product you love and find a way to solve it.My idea has the potential to add revenue and streamline workflow for users thus making the company more money in their fees.Here is what I have done so far: Developed value propositionRough competitive analysis Identified potential partner for future integration Pitched a few users in the target market and have received positive feedback. I know this hypothesis will require deeper user research and experimentation for validation. My goal is to pitch it to the VP of Product at the company (no open PM role). What would you suggest my next steps be to flush out the pitch?How can one mitigate the risk of company simply running with the idea without you?

Lola·Sep 03, 2020

I haven't tried the approach of pitching a product to a company but I did recently find this website which seems well designed to facilitate the process might be a helpful medium to try this out in https://crash.co/

sandyz·Sep 04, 2020

Thanks @lolaodelola. It definitely seems like a really cool concept. I'll check it out.

yijenliu·Sep 03, 2020

My suspicion is it may be overkill. I’ve spent my career in product leadership roles and am happy to pow wow with you.

sandyz·Sep 04, 2020

I would love to hear your perspective @yijenliu. Flying a bit blind, it is tough to figure out how to strike the right balance.

yijenliu·Sep 04, 2020

What you created looks like a business school case study or an investor pitch - in other words, focuses on business aspects. Usually a PM isn’t being assessed on your ability to build a sustainable new business. Instead, the key qualities I’d look for in a PM are:- Ability to empathize with the user, which shows up in the form of a good eye for design what works vs doesn’t, ideas for how to improve a part of the user experience- Business acumen, which shows up in the form of ability to use metrics to aid decision-making, thought process around how to scale things or make things profitable, ability to communicate well to many audiences- Ability to command respect from engineers, which shows up as willingness to get into details or challenge engineers on technical decisions and the ability to understand how things work at a high levelThink of product as a venn diagram between user experience, technical and business - where user experience is the most important. You might encounter a criterion for the ability to code if you’re dealing with a highly technical product (eg Google search, AWS).So what might prove the case better for you is to do a deep dive into a part of the existing product experience you would change and why, with focus on user experience.

Iynna·Sep 03, 2020

Hi @sandyz I read this and it made me think of you/your posthttps://builtin.com/product-management/things-all-product-managers-should-do-nerdwallet-vp-productthe advice seem generic to me but I think very accurate esp the last one!

sandyz·Sep 04, 2020

@iynna Thanks so much for sharing this article. I loved the read. I was lucky enough to see a PM who lived by them in action and saw how it differentiated him from the other PMs. Nurturing relationships, digesting feedback offered by the unique lens of internal teams and managing expectations through open/honest communication is exactly what I hope to someday contribute to a product team.