 Hello everyone. This is Prashant speaking today on the topic of flavors of product management. Welcome to product schools event today and a little bit of an introduction about myself. I'm currently a senior manager of product management with Samsung Research, Big Data Lab. Before that, I led product management for Twilio's data platform team as well as like I've worked with citizen site where I was director of product management for their enterprise as well as their data platform site. Before we go into today's presentation, just wanted to give a little bit of a story about my journey into product management. Product managers typically come from very diverse backgrounds as well as very different paths. I know the standard path looks like, okay, you're a software engineer who went to like a business school or something on the lines of you broke into an associate product management role and then you moved to like, you know, PM senior PM and like so on. I think, yeah, I also wanted to do that but you know, fortunately or unfortunately, things don't work out the way that you plan out to be. So I was working as an analyst with the e-commerce company, which was more focused on manufacturing fragrant soils and delivering it to consumers who are like into hobbies like candle making and soap making. But you know, I was more focused on becoming more into like data science. I joined as a data analyst and was getting myself up killed into like data science. But inadvertently, I focused on like two things which helped me this transition. One was like focusing on like business outcomes as well as like, you know, what do our customers care about. And second was like spending more time on like, okay, how do we get this insight? Okay, I inadvertently focused more on data engineering and data platform, which enabled me to like get my next role, which was not in data science, though I was like more focused there. So there was a yearly stage company which reached out to me saying, Hey Prashant, I think, you know, we are looking for a data product manager who comes from like a data background rather than like an application development or a software engineering background. I was like, okay, this is something very new at that point for me at least in 2018, 2019 time period. And that is where like, I was like, okay, yeah, let's hear and see what they are doing. And that's how I get my first break into product management. I'm pretty sure every single one of you will have like, you know, very similar stories or already I have like very similar, you know, stories. So which is what we are going to like talk about today. At the end of this presentation, I want every one of you to take away three things. One is learning about these different PM specializations and flavors of product management, what I call us. And the second piece is like, how do you break into these specific flavors? Okay, you want to be a product manager, you want to be a billing product manager. What does it take to like, you know, break into these flavors. And the last piece is like, I think more personal, which is more like a decision framework. It's just the right choice for you. Should I be like, you know, an outbound PM? Should I be like a data PM and so on. And we'll be going through a framework, which will help you to make that decision. Okay, with that being said, and with my introduction, let's dive deep into like, you know, the different PM flavors, which is what we are all like interested in today, right. So first step is like, you know, understanding that all, whenever someone talks about specializations, it varies very differently between different industries, as well as like different styles. This is like my subject of view of how I was like, you know, I was looking at roles, evaluating roles differently. And they're also like, you know, you can go more finer, more greener, as well as like, you can also like go more generalist in this as well. So with all that being like said, it pretty much comes to your specialization and your interest on how you can like define these roles. Okay, so this is where the dimension is coming. Okay, which is where like some part of it's subjective, some part of it is like, okay, these are roles that are already in the market. And there are some PM roles that are going to like possibly only arrive in the future. Okay, so overall, like in my view, you could like categorize PM specializations through like domains, which could be based on either a platform PM or core PM. I think this is a very common way to like differentiate between PM roles platform will be going through like what are the different parts in the platform PM as well as like what's a core PM. Or the other way is through like, you know, what sort of PM responsibilities you focus more on, like outbound versus inbound, then there are like other roles which are like based on growth PM, which are more on the lines of, Hey, I want to like, you know, drive adoption to our product or not get as many customers as acquire customers for my app and like so on. Then you could also like, you know, divide by business model, obviously a product management for B2C app, which helps you with your weight loss is going to be very, very different from an e-commerce app or your enterprise software app in which you are like, you know, selling healthcare software, for instance. And then there's also like product stage or company stage, which talks about whether it's like a yearly product or something that's like stable maintenance mode or something that's like growing and so on. And as I said before, you know, not everything can like fit into these buckets. Some of these are like, you know, more, more re-specialized or unique to the specific industry that they are from. Or it could be like something that's more like a specific function focused. We'll be talking about like some of those roles as well. So there's just a high level overview of like, you know, how you can like segment these roles. So let's start with like the platform PM, this is the core PM. Okay. So core PMs are what we like typically call as like, you know, the standard product management, like, you know, you focus on a specific customer, focus on their paint points and workflows and try to like, you know, come up with like a solution that solves like, you know, the specific paint point that we work about. So these are like typical, like, you know, you have like a product ownership at like senior levels and like so on, where you focus on like, okay, hey, my core customer is a sales rep. So these are the main problems for a sales rep, which I'm like solving. And this also involves like, you know, working with product management. This is what like, you know, Lenny Ratchetsky talks as like, you know, three things for a PM, which is pretty much common to like every single role, like it's like, you know, shape the product, sync the people and ship the product. Okay. So core PM is like focusing on a specific product. And we go through like, you know, what pretty much like majority of the product management content is about the platform PMs are slightly different in the sense like, instead of like, you know, focusing on instead of focusing your efforts on like, you know, one specific product, you are focusing on a platform. How do you define a platform, right? Which is like, you know, and think about it as like a large scale system that enables your company to build more products. It could be something like your AI platform or a data platform. Or even like it could be like, you know, external products like, you know, Facebook or Salesforce, who have a platform on which other platforms are built upon, which other products and platforms are built apart. So Salesforce as their own marketplace, where people build apps on top of Salesforce, which can like help you with like, you know, automating things with the Salesforce and so on. Similarly, it could be like something like a data platform, which could be more focused on, hey, how do we like store, transform and process the data within your ecosystem, so that you will enable like other teams could like make data products, or you could also enable like AI ML teams to build like machine learning products based on your data platform. Okay, so that's the difference between the platform PM and the core PM. And an important caveat that I want to like bring here is like platform PMs need not be always internal PMs, not focused on internal tools. They can be both internal or external, just like code, like a core PM could also won't like a specific to within, which is very exclusive inside a company. And but the overall, you know, the differentiation is like platform roles focus more on scaling the system, whereas core PMs are focused more on like, you know, a specific workflow and a specific customer and solving for them. Okay, let's go to the next piece in the platform and four PMs, which is like, okay, there are like a lot of platform PMs. So can be like, you know, core PMs and the roles can be very different based on like what sort of scaling that you are involved with, or what sort of problem that you're solving. For instance, there's also, there's a marketplace PM role. Okay, there's a e-commerce personalization recommendations role, as you can like see in the bottom of the slide, as well as like, you know, the standard platform rules, which are like, you know, data platform, ML platform, AI ops, ML ops, developer experience, PMs, there's also like billing subscription PMs who manage like subscriptions for the entire, entire arc, as well as like account PMs. Okay, you're like managing a single, you know, Google sign on for like multiple of Google products, similarly with AWS, Amazon and so on. And then you also do have like, you know, certain things like integration PMs or third party PMs. How do you integrate or partner with like other apps? Okay, your Salesforce or your Android platform, how do you integrate with like, you know, other things like Google sign up, or it could be even an external company, like how do you put like a zoom integration with G suite and so on. So the domains are like the key differentiator between like different roles. I think more than platform and the core PM, in which it's more diverse on the scale, the domains are make, make like things more interesting. These are like what we could like call us like flavors, each of these specific flavors have like, you know, their own challenges, their own interesting parts, as well as things that are like you see, okay, yeah, this is something that I would love to spend more time on. Maybe you'd love to spend more time on recommendations, or I like to build infrastructure for, you know, AI apps, or I want to like build distributed systems. Obviously, some of these roles are more technical, some are like, you know, more, you need to be like a subject matter expert. And some are like more about like, okay, I need to be more well versed in the domains of this area, like building and so on. The next piece that we should be going is like on the business model, which will be like the B2B or B2C. Obviously, when you're a PM for DocuSign is very different for like a PM for like Snapchat or Facebook. Similarly, Amazon or Walmart will have a very different experience compared to like someone who's in like an enterprise space like Oracle, ServiceNow, Salesforce, and so on. So which is where like, you know, the reason for the difference is because of the business model, for instance, enterprise is going to be more sales driven, okay, because your customers are going to ask for, hey, we have this custom system, we are a healthcare fortune-finder company, we need this from ServiceNow. That's not going to be the case with Facebook, where it's going to be more data driven, where it's about like, okay, hey, what, how do we like, you know, identify whether these, whether our users are interested in something like Facebook dating and so on. Okay. And next is like company stage, which is where I think, you know, it's also a critical piece, right? Because what you're going to do as an enterprise PM with ServiceNow is going to be very different from what you do with a pre-IPO company like Stride. Similarly, what you do in a yearly stage company is going to be very different from like what you do in like a big tech company. So it's like, you know, fortune-finder, which could be like non-tech, could be like Nike, you're like a platform PM with Nike's e-commerce side, or you could be like personalization and so on, or you could be like working for a manufacturing company. Also, it also depends on, you know, who funds your company. Like, you know, VC companies have very different experience because they have like specific growth metrics that companies typically go after, whereas private equity companies may be more focused on efficiency as well as like the optimal way to like do things. So this is also a very important slide, as well as like a very important way to like determine which companies you're interested in. Okay. The next thing is like based on the products or the company stage. Okay. What is zero to one? Zero to one is more focused on, okay. You don't have a product, you're trying to identify who your customers are and what sort of pain points that you need so that you can build a product for them. Then there could be products which have like the first version out, they have achieved a product market fit, and what should we do next? What do we like now add more features to it and so on. Similarly, okay, you have a successful product. You have like good amount of features and you solve your core user problems very well. What is your, you know, next set of users you're today making for like sales reps? How do you make to like account access or sales managers and so on? Then one to end is again expansion, like what, you know, the previous use case that we talked about Facebook, okay, we're doing well with like first billion users that we have. How do you get the next billion users? And there are things like, okay, I want to do more maintenance. Okay, the product is mature. The product is like stable. How do you like ensure the cash flow is like continuously going through and you make your experience for the users like, you know, as stable as possible. Then obviously you have like, you know, whenever you talk about maintenance, there's also about like sunset or upgrade, which talks about like, okay, hey, we want to like sunset this particular feature or this particular product or we want to like upgrade users into a new platform and so on. So this is a very important product stage as well. Similarly, let's talk about outbound PMs and inbound PMs. I think it's very few companies which do that, but usually pretty big companies like, you know, enterprises like Google Cloud, ServiceNow, Oracle, they have like this kind of a way of doing product management, where the inbound PMs more focus on working with engineering and customers to bring the right product to the market. Whereas outbound PMs work more closely with like, go to marketing, like marketing sales and the inbound PMs to get the right product launched and promoted successfully. So this is also one way to like differentiate PM roles. Next, let's go into like, you know, growth PMs and e-commerce PMs. Growth PMs focus on the customer journey. Hey, how do we acquire customers as cheap as possible? This could become like, you know, you are running experiments, you are running like different campaigns to get users as well as your customers to join your consumer e-commerce or B2B SaaS companies. In certain companies, these roles may like, you know, diverge quite a bit with like, you know, ATTEC PMs or MARTEC PMs. I know this could be a little bit controversial because few people like keep MARTEC and ATTEC PMs as like very different roles. I would combine everything here under the growth and e-commerce PMs for the sake of brevity today. Let's talk about the miscellaneous roles which we talked earlier in the slide was like, you know, not every PM would like fit into that box. There could be something like data privacy, security PMs, things that are related to business transformation, what like, you know, fortune factor companies who are moving to cloud, what do they need to do? MNA integration, okay, Salesforce acquired a company today. What happens like Slack? How do you integrate those products? How do you integrate the platform, the sign-on and like so on? Then very industry-specific roles and like healthcare or logistics PMs which related to like, you know, e-commerce as well as like, you know, other industries, it could be like something like Caravana where you're focused on inventory of your used cars that you're available in the market and so on. So it's very, very tough to categorize every single PM role into a box. This is just a high-level framework that I'm sharing with you so that you can like more focus to like, hey, this are the options. How do I go into these roles? That's the next phase of product management, right? You come in, you get like some experience, then you decide, okay, where do I want to be, right? So which is where I think these are like probably a little bit, you know, two to three years into your PM career rather than your first one, primarily because of like, you know, the way the domain PM roles and other PMs are structured. So the domain PM roles, what we will call as data PM account or secure data security API platform, PM, AML products, PM and like so on. These are like some sample titles where they really value your domain experience in a specific area. If you have like a data security and a privacy experience, you are going to get this role, even if you're not a PM compared to like someone who's like a PM for a core product working in like, you know, a very different app. So some folks who can easily transition to these roles are like, you know, lateral career roles more specifically, primarily because they require like specific domain experience would be like engineering manager, security, people could come from even compliance lawyer or someone from a customer support team who understands the challenges and like account authentication or other developer experience items. Okay, typically domain PMs are go through like, you know, internal transfer or applying for specific roles which are like very suited in their area of expertise. Next piece that you have is like, okay, next use case is like, I'm a PM in a routing team in Uber. I want to move to data platform or vice versa. How do you typically do that is like, you know, more focus on internal contributions like, hey, I want to like spend more time with the platform team to understand all the data engineering works behind the scenes so that I can I can put this price or, you know, some sort of an ETA that can be delivered in my app or cross team collaborations like work in like more, you know, platform related projects or internal transfer is the best choice in in this case as well or your other options to like, you know, if you want to be like, hey, I'm too focused, I want to go like more generic is like go for fang you typically have like generic interviews and they mostly focus on people who are like, you know, they mostly put you on roles, which could be like very generic as well as they very clearly differentiate between very, you know, deeply technical roles as well as and so on. And another way to like easily switch between PM roles, you're working platform roles, and I want to move to like, you know, more individual product roles would be early stage company early state startups, where they're like more flexible where they believe, okay, your experience can like transition more easily. I mean, my experience other companies want like more specific experience. So it's better for you to like, you know, take this kind of an approach when you're switching between PM roles, it's very unlikely for someone who's like a platform PM to move directly to a customer facing consumer PM very challenging in my experience. Lastly, I know I want to talk about like tailored advice, which I would like say for early career, folks, you know, focus more into like breaking into early state startups. I think it's the competition is a little bit relatively less, as well as like these companies have a challenge to attract senior talent, because the founders are going to be like product visionaries, you are going to be more focused on execution, which senior level PM candidates may not be something that they want. So, but you will also be like, you know, taking these roles, you will also feel like you're very under qualified, primarily because the scope of the roles are going to be pretty huge. So be very careful. So to set the right expectations, it could potentially like open up like, you know, a lot of roles, you could get promoted very faster. You could achieve senior PM roles very quickly. So it's pretty much as I said, lower compensation, but it's successful, very fast growth. And then the next piece would be like, you know, more focused on inbound and outbound. I know outbound, we have like talked about like, you know, quite a few product school webinars as well as like product content is like more tailored towards like, hey, reach out to these people on cold email and like so on. So I won't be spending much time there, but I want to focus more on the inbound piece, which is like, you know, I think there's a lot of generic content these days about like how to craft PM interviews, how to do discovery and like so on. I would like say more tailor your content towards like some of these domains, which will definitely help you to get these roles, especially if you're an engineering manager, if you're someone who's like from a customer success background transitioning into PM, do spend a lot of time talking about like, okay, yeah, your domain and so on. That would like definitely help you to like craft these roles. Last piece, we want to talk about like the last five minutes on like, you know, which of these is the best for me, which suits my style, right? So the first question becomes like, you know, what is your destination? Where do you want to go? Okay, I think a lot of PMs want to be like, you know, GM executive or CEO path, basically, whatever you like call that. I think that's probably very common aspiration for PMs. Next one could be like, you know, I want to be a manager of PMs, which is also goes towards the GM path, but then I don't want to go away from product management, because GM could be like GM of customer success as well, or any role in which you manage PNL, whereas people management could be like more like director of product, I want to just focus on my area. That's it. Okay. And there's also like people who don't like people management. I want to be more into IC, like principal PM or staff for principal PM. And that's pretty much like your where you want to be because I just want to focus on one product and influence my organization rather than like, you know, influencing working on like a large team on like multiple areas. And some people just have like very simple goals, like I'm nothing wrong with it. It's like make maximum money for your experience, which is a solid goal as well. So don't want to like, you know, put anyone down because the reason is like comp for certain roles, which could be like, you know, you could be like less than a senior PM in a hot company, where you could be making more than even senior director products and like other companies. So definitely, you know, it's a very solid goal. So or the last one is also entrepreneurship, very popular with like PM aspirations. I think the GM path is like more owns like, you know, P&L more can be like a non-PM as I talked about GM of customer success management could be director of product. And, you know, where you can like join terminal ICs would be like only very few companies like Facebook, Amazon, Google, they would like, they have like, literally positions called terminal positions, where pretty much you can like, spend your entire career being an IC and moving into like different roles or orgs within the company. Or if you want to like go on your own, think about bootstrapping, VCs or private equity, non tech and like work in like those companies, if you want to work in like a private equity company, or if you want to like start a company which is private equity back, go and work for private companies to like learn more about that. Similarly, non tech, you want to work for like a fashion industry or something, please go and like work in that industry first, before you can like start something over there. Lastly, you know, it's somewhat like personality fit. Okay, I'm like someone who likes to work with like, you know, a lot of people obviously, you know, working in bigger companies makes sense. I'm someone who works, want to work on like, you know, scaling things or growth, relative things like, okay, Airbnb, Zoom and so on. And obviously, different companies as I like marked here, Twilio in 2020, different companies go through like different phases during different timelines. Certain companies could be growth earlier, then they could become like more enterprise. They're like Cisco's during 90s was like growth. Now it's like more enterprise. Similarly, you want to like work more with like, okay, I'm gonna work more with small and medium businesses. I want to work with like FANG and like so on. So please choose your organization more accurately. And lastly, I want to just talk about like, no, who do you want to work with? I think that's like the last slide we want to like talk here is like, what do you want to do in your life is like, more subjective, but who do you want to work with? It's like something that you enjoy. If you don't like working with engineers, do not, please do not choose like, you know, platform pms platform roles. Similarly, you want to work with sales, please choose enterprise roles. Similarly, it's very subjective. So customer success, B2B and enterprise and so on. So that is like, I think pretty much majority of the flavors as well as like, you know, what, how do you break into like these types of pms as well as and what do you want to do in the end? And this thanks a lot for coming to the presentation today. And yeah,