Back in early July, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Forrester’s Tom Grant for his weekly podcast on the Heretech site.
About half way through the podcast, Tom asked me:
You recently wrote about Product Management in technology startups. Where do you see is the point when a very distinct Product Management role pops out in the natural growth of a startup?
A summary of my response (and Tom did let me speak for quite a while uninterrupted!):
I think any venture-funded startup should have someone with a core focus of Product Management. If someone is giving you $5,000,000 to build something, to me it makes no sense to say, “OK, we’re giving you this money and you don’t need to have a person who can find the right fit of the technology in the market and bring that together in an efficient way.
Because I’ve seen too many cases where a CTO and a CEO are leading a company, and the CTO really is technical, and the CEO is very business focused, and yet they fail because they don’t understand how to bring those two worlds together and how to bring products to market in a scalable, efficient way.
After the podcast was published, I got a couple of emails wondering if what I was saying was simply self-serving, given that I work in technology Product Management myself.
I didn’t feel there was anything self serving, because I wasn’t telling people they should hire me :-), but rather they should hire experienced Product Management right from the start. Given what I know today I would agree with that whether I was in Product Management or not.
In fact, I wonder why VCs don’t actually stipulate that part of the funding they provide be used to pay for experienced Product Management services (whether full-time/part-time/contract) to help ensure the what is being built aligns with market needs, delivers real value and continues that way?
A lot of young companies make the mistake of building something fast and seeing what sticks, instead of understanding what is of value and then heading in that direction.
Well, later that month, July 28th to be exact, at the AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford University, Bill Campbell, former CEO of Intuit gave his view on this topic during an interview with Michael Moe.
Click the image above to open a window and view the full interview.
Play close attention starting around 2:45 into the interview.
Michael Moe:
So, I think many people in the audience know that before you got into business in Silicon Valley, you were in the coaching business. So let’s just say you have a first round draft pick; after the founder and CEO, who would be the first draft pick? Would it be head of sales, a CTO, human resources, finance? And why?
Bill responds:
The more I think about it, and it depends on who the founders are by the way, and when I say who, it depends on what functions they represent. Generally in Silicon Valley they would represent technology. A guiding thing for me would be somebody like Mike Homer, probably the best Product Marketing guy, somebody that understands how to apply technology in the market.
You know, as strange as that sounds, you need someone who can work with brilliant engineers and try to take this creation, this technology creation and turn it into a product, and make sure it is for somebody, that somebody can use it; some kind of service or some kind of product.
And so, I know that sounds like a strange answer, Product Marketing, some people call it Product Management, but somebody who can really understand the dynamics of what goes on in a marketplace, apply technology to that marketplace, see how the technology can work, and continue to advise brilliant scientists so they can adapt their products to make sure customers are happy.
Alrighty now. Glad to hear my views on the subject match those of someone like Bill Campbell. Or vice versa. 🙂
So I wonder, are the VC’s listening to people like Bill when he says the first hire for startups should be someone who understands the dynamics of the marketplace and how to apply technology to it?
This person is not likely to be a technologist or strictly a business minded person. Find experienced Product Management who can bring the two worlds together to create products (and not just “technical creations”) and give your startup a greater chance of success!
Saeed
Also see: Bill Campbell says, It all starts with great products!