Product management – what makes or breaks a startup

LWOW 2016 Product management – what makes or breaks a startup Anna Ronkainen 2016-01-17 Chief Scientist*, TrademarkNow @ronkaine * + co-founder, former head of product

What is product management?

Product management = figuring out... -  what the product is and what it is for -  who the product is for -  the competitive landscape -  what goes and doesn’t go into the product -  evaluating the product to make sure it does

what it is supposed to (and users love it) -  what to do and when (“product roadmap”) -  how to build it (with development/mfg) -  how to sell it (with marketing and sales)

90% of product management work can be automated...

Our latest product management hire can handle all this: “Can we get feature x?” “But y would buy our product if we had feature x!” “Our competitor z has feature x!”

...but it’s the 10% (that you actually decide to do) that makes or breaks a company

So, how to do it ?

1. Be your own customer: build products for yourself

For aspiring legal entrepreneurs, it can make a lot of sense to first get a “normal” legal job to figure out where the pain points are...

2. Become your own customer: listen, learn, empathize

Listen to your customers, but remember that they don’t have (all) the answers!

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” – commonly attributed to Henry Ford (possibly apocryphal)

Remember what your actual product is

Start small: Minimum viable cake

Final words of advice -  find a specific problem worth addressing -  figure out who your customer is (maybe

even sketch a user persona or two?) -  get out of the building! -  validate your assumptions! -  believe in your product... -  ...but don’t be afraid to change course if it

turns out you’re on the wrong path

Thank you!