 Hello, I am Brielle Petznelli, and I'm a senior product manager at EA. You might know it as Electronic Arts, EA Games, EA Sports. If you're a gamer, you've more than likely played one of our games. FIFA, Madden, Apex Legends is really popular right now. And so what I'm going to jump into is how to use a startup mindset when you're a product manager. And that can be in a startup. It can also be in a big corporation or tech enterprise. So I'm going to jump into those things. For the agenda, I wanted to share a little bit about my story. I have a little more unique, perhaps, story for how I got into product management. I wanted to give some advice for what helps when you're looking out for a new company, looking for a new role, some words of advice and lessons learned that might help you as you're looking out into your new journey. And wanted to get into my role in global ops because my position as a product manager is also pretty unique. It might not be the standard B2C presentation that you're used to hearing these types of things. Then I want to get into how I was able and how I am able to leverage my startup experience in the role I do today and the importance of asking why. I'll talk about that as well. And then finally, I wanted to talk about how to be, like, authentic in your role. I think authenticity is a key path in figuring out what you want to do with your career, what your career means to you in the long run and in your life and your goals and all these good things. So let's jump into it. So my first, I would say, real eye-opening experience for what product management was or just what entrepreneurism was was through my graduate program at University of Pennsylvania. It was a unique program and that was an interdisciplinary focus between the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the Wharton School for Business, and also the Design School. So it had this really unique mixed curriculum that allowed me to harness my entrepreneurial spirit, which would help me a lot later in life as I was getting into more creative projects and starting to actually design products. So I paced on there a glimpse into what that environment looked like. If you guys are familiar with product design, you might have heard of companies like IDO and Smart Design and heard a little bit about the philosophies of using a studio-like setting as I have pictured over there. For harnessing ideas and having engineers work next to designers and artists to get a new perspective on what it is you're doing and ultimately look at everything it is you do from a high-level perspective, from a mind-mapping perspective, from a strategic perspective, and not necessarily tunnel visioning into one particular solution. So that was just a whole new way for me to think. And it was very exciting. I learned so much. It got me into an early internship with Bresler Group as a product design firm. It's been around for decades, super successful. And then my first actual product management experience was on the hardware side of things, which might also be a unique story. I know a lot of the presentations that you see with product school are software-focused. My background was actually in product management of hardware goods, and in particular household goods. So if you're familiar with the Kitchen Gadget Company, OXO, I have the logo down there. You might be familiar with some of their baking products and measures and timers I worked in that department. I've pasted actually a picture of the first thing I ever mass-manufactured and managed, which was a silicone funnel. And at the time, as a young, fresh kid straight out of school, I was very proud of that. And you know what? That thing is still sold at like every target I met today. I always pass it in and wave it hello. So that was incredibly exciting for me. So when you think of a start, a mindset, there's a bunch of keywords that pop up here. And after I completed my, or after I was getting acquainted with corporate life, oddly enough, I also had this other entrepreneurial, maybe half of my brain that was excited to design things and maybe lead my own journey into making things that made people happy. I think at the core of it all, I like making things that make people happy. And so I jumped into an accelerator called Dreamit for my first startup. And that was, I can jump into it. That was a hydroponic consumer focused product that was IoT enabled. I then shadowed and worked on other various projects. Some of them came out of University of Pennsylvania. One of them was hold a plate. The other was a, it was called Alpha Audio Tronics. And they were the AirPods I'm wearing now before AirPods were a thing. So a lot of exciting stuff. But if I go back to that last slide, you'll see a lot of keywords that have to do with startups, social media presence and blasting or marketing message out to the universe, teamwork, strategy, what else is on there, cooperation. All of these things are so fundamental. Communication and teamwork is like so core fundamental in a startup to make it successful. And so if you have the luxury of having that startup experience, it becomes such a blessing to then bring on to a larger corporation. And I think one exciting thing about working in a corporation and working with folks who are mostly been in the corporation and then me popping in who's had the startup experience is that I always think outside the box. Like someone who's been in their position for 10 years. I'm going to be like the dumb blue. I call myself sometimes the dumb blue comes in and asks a bunch of questions that might even be obvious, but sometimes sparks something, believe it or not. And will spark a new idea or a new way of thinking because I'm thinking of it from a different perspective. And that's why I like bring different types of people together when I'm doing the initial phase of design, the initial phase of of what it is I want to jump into if I'm looking at a new product category. So long story short, after all of those startups, I somehow got into gaming. It's really funny. I am sure most of you have heard that famous speech by Steve Jobs about connecting dots. I think EA was a total dot connector for me because I grew up a gamer girl. Which means I like to think of myself as this image, but more realistically, it's this image because I definitely spent perhaps way too many hours playing the Sims amongst a bunch of first person shooter games when I probably should have been doing other things. But you know what? I'm no regrets because gaming, how do I put it? Like it harnesses a confidence in you, any young person. It harnesses creativity and then you can use these things to go out and build the amazing things you want to do in your real life. I think there's a stigma out there that kids spend too much time in games, but it's all about balance. I played just as much soccer as I played video games and I was just always go, go, go. But on top of being a gamer who was super into EA games, I also did a case study in college on EA. It's just really funny. I looked back at it actually right before my first interview and it kind of made me chuckle. It was this huge report that I did in college. And anyway, point being, I was super excited when I got the interview at EA. I had actually been, there's a picture of me in our main hallway. I had actually, believe it or not, gotten really well, let me back up. I got really great advice from a friend when I was figuring out what my next thing would be. And after startups, I was a little burnt out if I'm going to be really honest. I had been doing it for like eight or 10 years and I just wanted to do the next thing. I wanted to work on something that was at the intersection of art and technology. I really focused in on like myself and what do I want to do? I realized at the point in my career where I'm like in my later 20s, I want to start doing something that it's not just a job, it's not just money. It really ties to who I am and what I want to accomplish. And I wanted to be at that intersection, that art design technology intersection I keep talking about. So one of the good piece of advice I got was don't cast a tiny net, cast a huge wide net. When I was looking for my next thing, I kid you not, I think I applied to 300 jobs. I looked back at my spreadsheet later. I applied to so many jobs because I wanted to find the right opportunity and increase my chances of getting an opportunity that I was in the middle of creating a bot to fill out applications for me. So I get a bit of hit rate when all of a sudden I got recruited and I don't even know if I ended up even filling out an application to EA, but I did get recruited and I was so excited. When I went, when I got to my final interview and I got to campus, I just had this feeling sometimes in life, when you're looking for your next opportunity, you go off a feeling. Something's going to feel right inside. And I had been through many interviews by that point in time. Maybe I was an interview pro, who knows? But I had been to many interviews. I even got offers of acceptance. And I just still wasn't feeling any of the opportunities. When I walked on EA's campus and met people and was talking, something just lit inside me. And I was like, oh, my God, like I, if this interview goes well, I'm almost positive this is the one I'm going to take. So long story short, that worked out. And now I've been at EA for, I have a computer dying over here. I've been at EA for, for three years. So another thing I could say is when you are trying to figure out what area of product management do I want to be in? What type of company do I want to be with? Sometimes people think that you get impacted at a startup and you can, you get, you do have impact. You also have impact when you work at a huge company. So there's different ways and layers that you can, that you can have an impact. And here's a cool picture of one day, I think it was May the 4th, where we had Stormtroopers guarding the doors and EA and the campus and man, I missed the campus because obviously we're all working from home right now. I can't wait to go back. But it just, it just makes me feel like a kid when I walk in. I keep saying light, light a fire inside me, but it really does. And that's also fueled by the people. I love the people I work with. I think that's so important. It's like, when you're going to an interview, do you have a natural conversation going with this person? Are you on the edge of your seat and nerves? Does a person make you nervous? But also, is the information easy for you to just spit out in your interviews? Does it come naturally to you or do you really have to come up with a methodology that's kind of made up? When you're going through these things in an interview, it just, you're eventually gonna, you're eventually gonna tie the pieces together and it's just gonna feel right. And in the game industry, I was just, it was easy, peasy, lemon squeezy for me to come up with case study scenarios too, to invent things off the top of my head super fast because it's an area that I realized I am passionate about. And so you're not gonna be stumbling on your words if you're at an interview for an area you're really passionate about. You're gonna be like, look, I've actually been thinking about this for years and let me like draw you diagrams. So I would say like one lesson learned is really dive into what you're interested in. When I, again, when I was in between, I started to explore my passions. What do I want to do next? I started taking, I did a code boot camp. I did, I started taking lessons in animation because I wanted to learn animation again. I had a background in that when I was a kid. And it brought me to the world of going to meetups for VR, AR, XR, et cetera. And I realized, wow, like I'm really into VR. I'm really into gaming. There's something there. It was just clicking. And so a lot of those meetups were also awesome because I got to meet people in the gaming industry. So I went on a bit of a tangent but I just wanted to make the point that putting yourself in the place where you're surrounded by people with the same interest, putting yourself in a place where you're naturally in love with the product, it's just going to make it that much more exciting. It's going to make it that much more natural. This is something you're going to be working on every day. And some days I'll be honest, like I love what I do, but there are definitely days where I'm in a mundane detail. But I know that when I connect it back to the overarching picture of what I want to do in my career, I'm super happy. And I think working at a company that lets you be experimental in your product development, asking lots of questions, designing new products, which I'm very fortunate. I'm able to do that EA. Fortunate enough that EA is also a company that will let you explore their areas of the company. So if you have a real keen interest on learning new things and rolling up your sleeves, maybe a creative industry is for you, or maybe any industry is for you, but there's a specific type of technology that you really want to get better at. Maybe it's machine learning. And it doesn't matter where you do machine learning, you do it at a banking company, you just want to learn that skill set. I say be a little selfish and do it for you, but also be the opposite of selfish and work for a company that's really going to be blessed by having your presence there, by your amazing, unique skill sets and the gifts that you've been blessed with. So I put this picture here. This is Apex Legends. This is the crew and the characters. I put this here because the other thing that's really important to me, and this was in the startup world as well as working at a big tech company, is having an awesome community. And that's something else I've found that I really love at EA, is it really fosters a sense of community. I think a lot of the big tech campuses do that these days, where there's clubs and just organizations for different interests, different types of people, different types of creative prowess, different interests, different sports, what have you, community is so important. And that is so my second, the second startup I was working on, was basically just me for the most part. I was using technology at my own apartment. I was basically using software to scrub Amazon and find really awesome opportunities to make money through products. So I would find random products to work on, redesign them and sell them on Amazon. And it was cool. It made money and stuff. But being a merchant just wasn't what I wanted to do in the long run. I was talking to people online all day long, which now is the norm. But at the time, I wanted to be in more face-to-face interactions. And where I'm going with that tangent is being part of a community is really exciting and huge. And some people have a life outside work. EA really fostered a sense of family to me. And a lot of my extracurriculars ended up being back with EA. You know, joining coworkers and team dinners. And I did a lot of side projects, like putting our trainings together, our off-sites together. I got to get a lot of side creative projects going on. That just really excited me. The community piece was such a big part of it. And so I encourage you to find an area that fosters community. It's just going to excite you. If you can't get enough of your job to the point where you want to hang out with the people afterwards at work, you know you're in the right place. So that's why I put that there. I recall when my first manager who hired me at EA was saying on a piece of paper, you look good in everything. But there are people who might even be more qualified than you if I'm going to be honest. However, you have a unique experience in that you've run companies, you've found the companies, you've had to do public speaking. And you've also been an artist of Burning Man for many years. So I put a picture here of one of the temples that I helped work on in 2019. It was called the Temple of Direction. But if you're familiar with Burning Man, it's a gathering in the middle of the desert that happens once a year. And it's just known for its like awe-inspiring, bigger-than-life art. And it's a totally off-grid festival. So you have to go there, prepare with your own electricity if you want it, and all your food and materials and all these good things. And then just be blown away by beautiful art and music and all these great things. But the funny thing is I have to corral. Every year I do Burning Man. I have to corral resources. I have to coordinate people from all over the world that will meet just one week to put a project together. None of us have met in person. We have to truck resources. We have to order resources. We have to order materials. We have to truck them in. Then we have to get to this compound that has no electricity, figure out how to put it together, and then make the artwork light up. Wow, people. There's a lot of logistics involved. And so what I'm getting at is these types of experiences, like honestly, have been one of the best experiences to prep me for a product manager role. Like how do we roll up our sleeves and solve a problem? Okay, this thing's not lighting up. We have minimal resources. Being cross-disciplinary, working with a mechanical engineer, working with an artist, it's just all these things kind of come together. And so what I would also encourage you all to do when you're looking into your PM journey is really harness your inner self in your hobbies. Your hobbies might end up dictating your job. And if you could do a hobby as your job, like I think that's honestly everyone's dream. Am I right, people? I think that's what everyone dreams to do is do. Honestly, love what they do every day and have it be their passion. Maybe your dream is not to work, but to be completely honest, if you're doing what you love, probably you shouldn't feel like work anyway. So I get to do this. I'm so lucky I get to do this in my actual job. I get to create new technology solutions with people all over the world. We have to... So my team is totally global. We have to coordinate and solve difficult problems and short amount of times sometimes. Sometimes, again, pre-COVID times, we would only get to meet with each other once a year in person. And that was like our hackathon. And so it gets super challenging, but it's exciting. And it really keeps you on the edge of your seat. So this logo is supposed to represent company operations. That was what I came up with. So a lot of the talks that you'll hear with the product school are going to be around working on consumer-facing software products or at least a lot of the lectures I have attended. That's what they're on. What's unique about my role is that I work on, I would say, mostly internal-facing products, not all the time, but sometimes. So if I were going to translate like what my organization does in a nutshell, I'd say we develop the technology, the processes, the practices, the management expectations that powers our studios. A lot of people ask me, what game do you work on? And my answer is I work on all the games because what I am focusing on in global company operations is how do the inner workings of everything we do day to day pan out? How does it pan out for employees? How does it pan out for our end users? How does it pan out for the folks who are working on our games day to day in our studios? If you think of VA as, I guess you can compare it to maybe like Netflix, it's a publishing company. So there are many studios that are like under, there are many studios housed with under our corporate ban or whatever you want to call it. But when you watch a Netflix video and it will say, so and so studios, but it's a Netflix series, I would think of EA the same way. So we have many studios that work with the EA brand and they also are global. So a lot of the challenges that I work on on our day to day products, and I started mostly working on internal facing products, are thinking of ways that, how do we promote something and it has to be translating a bunch of languages at one time or has to process a bunch of currencies. These are things you have to think of when you're working for a global enterprise. How's the marketplace going to work when we're talking like hundreds maybe of different currencies? So it is a very challenging area. I feel that when we're working on our product roadmaps, I'm constantly having to think what's going to work tomorrow. I like to do research. I like to like stay on top of new technology in my industry. Although I don't like to think of technology as a crutch to a solution. I like to think of it as more of a tool. And one of the things that has helped me most in my job is going back to the drawing board. And I think this might be in my next slide. Yes, going back to the drawing board and asking why. So I'm going to flip ahead real quick to this diagram. I feel when you're reading about becoming a product manager, you're going to be sold a lot of jargon and you're going to be sold a lot of methodologies. You might be told, hey, when you go into your interview, you're going to have to know this methodology and that methodology. And if I'm going to be honest, some of the methodologies be us because that you really being a product manager and I think especially at this senior level, they're constantly on your feet. They're helping people. It really comes down to people. I flash this on the screen because one of my favorite shows is Silicon Valley. It's on HBO. And if you actually live in Silicon Valley, it's really real, maybe a little too real. But it's a comedy that kind of makes fun of what daily life is like working in a tech company and this in particular for a startup. So one of the CEOs brought this diagram, the conjoined triangles of success. And anytime anyone would come to his office, he would be like, but the conjoined triangles of success, like this is what you should be doing. Life isn't always about following methodology. I remember I was freaking out during my PM interviews. I'm like, oh my God, the star method, the square method, the circle method. I couldn't for the life of me memorize them. And I was like, oh my gosh, I'm not even going to make this. I know in my heart that I understand product design and development and I can, I'm sure as hell have managed it, but I don't know this formula. So again, asking why in your day to day is so key. If I was going to say, this is the method you need to know, it's so simple. The method you need to know is just asking why. Let's say you're putting a PM role and you're in this very specific product. Okay, you're making the chat widget that's going to power our video player. I don't know, I'm making this up. Instead of just saying, what are all the user needs I'm going to compile to make sure this chat widget is amazing, really step back and say, why do we have a chat widget? Do we need it? Let me think outside the box. Aren't chat widgets in every single social media app, can I leverage one of those? Or wait, why are we even talking about chatting in general? Let me back up and see why. And the right company and a good company is not going to get upset with you for asking why. They're going to encourage it and want you to ask that. And this is honestly one of the most, this has been one of the most beneficial lessons I've learned at EA because I don't even think I was asking why enough. And it has helped me so much in my career to ask why, almost to the point of it being comedic. When you're putting your goals together, your KPIs, putting together your product roadmap, you can get into like little specific scenarios. Okay, we want 30% of users to use this red icon. Well, why tying that back down to another level where you say by having 30% of users use this red icon, it's going to promote better social engagement and better social engagement ties to our company mantra. And our company mantra is tied to, by kind of unraveling the layers like that, you're going to be more effective in your job. It's going to make your job more exciting. And it's honestly also going to help you tie your job to yourself and your personal life. If you're just always stuck in the spreadsheets and the mundane thought, you're probably not going to stay excited about your job. And to stay excited, you really need to tie it back to your goals and your personal goals. And as I mentioned before, I wanted to be at the design of art, the intersection of art design and technology. And so asking why my role really brought meaning to it as well. So it's funny because when I think about, okay, why is the gaming industry interesting to me? I'll play it out for you as quickly as I can. But really I feel, and this is not anything EA pays me to say, this is honestly just me, I feel that by working in the gaming industry, sometimes the media is very negative and it consumes us. I personally feel in the entertainment industry and tech industry, we have a unique opportunity to influence, I would say primarily youthful audience, a young audience in a very positive way, in a way that can motivate them and inspire them. And I don't know if I could do that in every role. Like I don't know if I could do that if I were no offense, I mean, I'm not trying to be weird or anything, but for me personally, like if I was working at like, I don't know, a chat widget at a bank, I don't know if that would like really align to me personally. So figure out what it is that you align to personally and outside of just asking why in your day to day job, ask why every month, ask why every quarter, ask why every year, ask why am I doing this? You might wake up one day and say, wait, why am I doing this? And by asking why and potentially leaving what you're doing now, you're going to end up being so much happier. So I really encourage you to ask why. Isn't that like the easiest method to memorize? It's so much easier. Oh, and this is Zach Alfinakis. So by asking why, hopefully all these little equations and bubbles roll in your head, like Zach Alfinakis and the hangover. And hopefully this was helpful to you guys. I am so passionate about product design and product development and product management and all these things. It's not a skill I've mastered to any degree. I don't think it's still anyone ever masters. It's like a journey. It's like music. It's not a destination, it's a journey. I am learning new things every day. There's always going to be new things. So let's connect. If you have questions for me, feel free to reach out. Feel free to ping me through LinkedIn using the product school link. I'd be more than happy to connect. And this is how we all support each other, right? We connect, we share experiences. So a lot of awesome people have mentored me. That's something else I did forget to mention that I wanted to bring up in my agenda. Find a place where you can find amazing mentorship. It is, oh my gosh, it is so, it's such a game changer. I always like to be in a room with people who are way smarter and more experienced than myself. I'm going to learn so much. I don't want to be the smartest person in the room. It's always going to push me to think another way. It's always going to push me to want to excel. I learned so much from my mentors and some companies even have like mentorship programs. But anyway, what I'm getting at is I'm more than happy to connect and pass that on, pay it back. So many amazing folks have mentored me. So many amazing folks at a product school have even answered my questions after their lecture. And so I'm more than happy to answer yours. Feel free to reach out. And it was so great to meet you all online. And good luck with everything. Good luck with your career journey. Thank you.