 Hello everyone and welcome to this week's Product School webinar. Thanks for joining us today. Just in case you didn't know, Product School teaches product management, coding, data analytics, digital marketing, UX design, and product leadership courses online and our 16 campuses worldwide. On top of that, every week we offer some amazing local product management events and host online webinars, live streams, and ask me anything sessions. Head over to productschool.com after this webinar to check them out. All right, I'm assuming you guys can see me and hear me. My name is Ishan. I am currently a co-founder of an Francisco-based startup. I've been a product manager over the past seven to eight years. And let me set it up, cool. And this is my second attempt at recording it, so pardon my ramp-up energy here. But the goal of this webinar is to walk you through a framework that I've learned from my mentors and refined over time to help make high quality career decisions and really use my story to walk through how you could possibly learn from it. Before we get into it, I want to really be repositive with the fact that this is what I have learned and improved over time. This has been beneficial to me. And there is no case where this is something that you should follow, as I said, use this as an input signal and then make your own decision, which is best for you professionally and personally. So with that, let me walk you through how I want to cover the webinar. I would love to keep it kind of short, around 15 minutes, and mostly I'm going to structure it on four sections. First, an introduction on the goals, my background, an introduction to the concept of the Nostar framework. Next is dig deeper into what I mean by the Nostar framework. Third is talk to you about how I thought about small startups, mid-stage companies, large mature public companies, and then kind of end up with a quick summary of key points that you could kind of use, add to a repertoire of mentor models and kind of heuristics to help kind of better make career decisions for yourself. So with that, let me kind of, let's get started. So what are the goals of this webinar? So what I like to do is a share of framework, which I have learned from my mentors and refined over time, as I said, which is important to make kind of career decisions. So there's two key points here. First is making career decisions doesn't happen on a daily basis. This happens every two to three to four years. So what ends up happening is A, there's not a lot of like written kind of instructions or frameworks out there that you can just use, learn and kind of use and apply on your own. The second is you just don't get enough time and practice to make this decision as well because you're only doing it once every two or three years, right? So how do you actually make these career decisions and build a framework which allows you to do so is kind of the primary goal. What are the non-goals? This is not a webinar about how to interview in kind of companies of different sizes. This is not a webinar which talks about what does a day in the life look like near a PM. This is not about what it means like to be a PM who becomes a founder of companies. So we can cover that in kind of other webinars or in other forums. So those are the goals. Then quick introduction of myself, as I said, my name is Ishaan Mukherjee, the co-founder of Pixylabs Inc. It's an early stage, San Francisco based enterprise software company. We're backed by Benchmark and Google. And what we build is an intelligent kind of platform which allows software developers to kind of debug performance issues and large scale distributed applications. I got into this journey after being a product manager in both enterprise and consumer context over the past kind of six to seven years. Here's kind of a timeline of kind of my progression as a PM and I'll go into a little bit of detail because I'll reference it in each of the sections in the webinar. So I grew up in India, was a robotics undergraduate student in India. Came here for grad school at MIT. Post grad school, I ended up joining a startup for key systems. Key were used to build robots for warehouses. So think of these rumor like robots, which used to pick up the shelves, which had the products that you were ordering on Amazon.com. So joined as an engineer, became a sales or solutions engineer, essentially sitting between the customer and the technology help understand kind of how the design configured systems, these last scale robotics system that we were selling to the customers. And then we got acquired my Amazon for about $775 million post acquisitions. I learned a lot from the DPMs and Amazon's technical product managers about how do you think about building roadmap? How do you think about kind of defining the goals and specifications of deeply technical systems? So I transitioned into Amazon, helping integrate kind of Kiva into the overall kind of Amazon retail roadmap. So I was at Amazon for about a year and a half, learned a lot. And then it came to my second career decision, which led me to kind of the Bay Area, joined as kind of the first PM enterprise PM at a company called Premise Data. We were a company building a global kind of data acquisition network. I ended up kind of becoming the head of product, product, design, and the growth team from a journey from Series B to raising around kind of $50 million at the CDC. A post premise, this is my kind of first, second, third career decision. And I ended up joining a really small team out of Stanford in a company called Lackus Data as the first person responsible for product discovery and go-to-market. The company was doing kind of machine-learned kind of information extraction from unstructured texts. So think of reading kind of Barack Obama's Wikipedia article, extracting that Barack is married to Michelle. We ended up getting acquired by Apple for a healthy amount. Kind of post-acquisition, I was the product lead on series knowledge graph. So if you ask kind of Siri or certain Safari about who is Barack married to, you get this kind of Siri knowledge response, which says Michelle Obama. So I was going to product lead, kind of supporting the engineering organization, building out this knowledge draft infrastructure, which kind of powers kind of gender knowledge Q&A and Siri. So did that, it was an amazing experience. And then recently, along with a friend of mine, I can help start this company. My role here is to again, really figure out what product we need to build. And there's only one goal, a go-to-market product market. So that's kind of my journey to summarize. I made a career decision from grad school to join Kiva. And then, and Apple made a decision to come to the Bay Area. I made a decision to join Lattice, which is number three. And then recently left Apple to join to help start this company. So we're like four key decisions over a period of eight years. So around going to every two and a half years, I made these decisions. So what I will walk you through is the framework that I built to help make these decisions. So with that, that's kind of the introduction. Now let's jump in the second section. To talk more about the framework, and kind of pardon my branding here. But I just like to call it as my not star. And this is something I learned from a bunch of mentors, specifically kind of the co-founder of Lattice who helped calling this word for me. But the idea is to be very deliberate and think about where you're headed. What is your destination? And then what that looks like and when that happened, the time horizon to achieve that is totally dependent on you. So ideally you want to have an extremely precise, clear understanding of where you want to be in the long term. So here's where I want to be when I'm 90 years old. Here's where I want to be when I'm 60 years old. And go back from there. Obviously it's really hard to do that. However, what I encourage kind of people who that I mentor and I talk to when I encourage myself is really putting in the effort to have some not star. Even though if it's hazy and imprecise and it's not that long term, having something kind of separates you from 95% of people in your peer group. Like really pushing and figuring out what your goals are is important. This is not like a here's what do you see yourself five years from now, 10 years from now. It is essentially kind of thinking, but hey, where do I want to be? And for me at every career decision, ultimately that has been the kind of the forcing function to help me kind of jump off the cliff. I'll talk about what I need when jumping off the cliff. So the concept of not star is to have a hazy, imprecise, but some fidelity version of where you want to be at a certain time horizon. And again, I kind of preference through this whole webinar to talk about like how I use it. So for me, for example, my core idea was always to help start a company, a deeply technical company from the ground up. It was extremely hazy vision when I was in high school in India. The vision has kind of refined over time, but that was the goal. What does that entail? That entail me learning about technology, me learning about how to build technology, me learning about financing, all of these different things which are part of making early stage companies work. So that was my not star. So point number one, really focus on figuring out what the not star is, even if it's like precise, even if having something is a lot better than not having anything. So that's fine. Second point is this model that I encourage, which is once you have something what I realized was inadvertently kind of subliminally on a daily constant basis, you just start exposing yourselves to ideas, networks, people and opportunities which help kind of refine your understanding of the not star and help put you in that direction. So I'm not saying that block calendar to go out and network and go to these meetups. What you're actually seeing, the more you think about it, you start kind of orienting yourselves on that journey. This is like how your not star gets refined on a continuous basis. So I would just encourage you to just think about it and just kind of open yourself to serendipity. And then you start kind of really that becomes your playbook. The second is deliberately writing and documenting what your not star is on a periodic basis. I'm not saying on a weekly basis or not on a quarterly basis. Do it at a cadence that works for you. For me, it is not kind of and have a fixed timeline. But definitely you don't have to make a real decision. I put a lot of time, time thinking about it. Where do I want to be and where am I at in that journey and what do I need to learn? So whether you're doing it at the end of the year, at the end of the quarter, at some point you have to sit down and document and write down what your not star is. So first, have a deliberate effort of figuring out your not star. Second, what you realize is on a daily basis, you will just get a playbook becomes this journey of achieving the not star. And then the third is periodically sit down and document where you need to be. So at high level, that's not a not star framework. Now it gets to kind of I'll walk you through my experience and my journey and hopefully this is helpful for you. So I talked about the four decision points in my career. Was Brad school decided to go to Kiva? At that point I was really I didn't even know what stock options were. However, because I had this not star sign company, I ended up saying no to a sim offers I had out of school, which were John where I had an opportunity to join large companies, one in Germany, where I would have built a really solid career. But it wasn't aligned with where I wanted to be, which was kind of really start a company of my own. So I ended up leaving kind of MIT to join Kiva because it was a nice intersection of technology startup and learning, right? So rubric, but what do I need to learn? So I ended up joining Kiva and I kind of started this journey of like, which is working at 400% company to now we're like a four person company. So I went on the reverse trajectory. That was decision number one. This is number two, leaving Amazon. I had an amazing opportunity to move to Seattle, really build a strong career. I love every aspect of Amazon. I think at that point is about impact you were on this kind of freight trend is growing an incredible pace. That was definitely career. I ended up saying no to it to move to the Bay Area because again, the rubric was what do I need to do to get closer to my North Star? I said, I really need to be in this epicenter, learn how to do product, learn how to manage teams, I learn how to build teams and all of the kind of intangibles and all of the skills and functions. So outside of just the engineering part, which are part of the company, I really wanted to experience that. So that's how I ended up making my second decision. There's a key learning there at that point. I seriously considered kind of going to business school, coming from India, going to an HPS or GSB is something that you're supposed to do. And I did apply and I was somewhat successful. I ended up saying no to those as well because I ended up with the idea that having gone to MIT, I do have the benefit. If you think about the NDA, there's a benefit of the network. There definitely is, there's brand name, and then there's all the skills associated with it. For me, it was mostly about in two years if I do product in an early stage company, will I learn more than go into business school? And I decided to kind of join the startup instead. So decision number two was again that after I went through kind of a two, two and a half years experience of premise, I had a kind of decision to make. And then I'll talk more in the pros and cons about small companies about why I had to make a decision. But the idea was, what do I do next? Again, like I asked myself, my nostrils are at the company. Can I start one now? Do what? Yes, no, if no, what do I need to learn? At that point, I can explore my options. Again, the idea was, now is not the right time to do it on my own. I'm not ready yet. Let's go to a smaller stage company, really understand. And I want to focus myself on the finding part of market pay. So I ended up moving to Lattice. Kind of at Apple, it really well, my largest decision point. Can I explore the few alternatives and clarify, okay, I could either build a really successful kind of career at Apple or get closer to my nostril of signing company. And with that, ultimately, I took the leap of signing company. So it's a long gone process over a period of eight years. Kind of a big career decision every two and a half years. Kind of going to that path. So hopefully it helps you understand how I thought about kind of what my nostril started. And more important than the decisions I did take, what were all the things I said no to? And why did I say that? And that actually is why the nostril thing helps. And kind of going back forward, I said it'll help you to take the leap. Here's why it's important. If you're an engineer, an analytical person, you always want to kind of aggregate as much data as you can to build a framework and to make a decision. Like most things in life, you will never have all the data that you need to make this decision, especially when it comes to your career. So at the end of the day, it is about taking a little fit, as people call it. You can take a little fit only if you add constraints. There are time constraints. You say, hey, I want to make a decision by this time horizon, or I want to make a decision where they probably we said there are these artificial constraints. If you add those in great, you have to put in constraint. The most effective constraint that I have found was is this align with where I want to be. And in most cases, I just kind of decided to follow that. It may or may not have worked out, but I've been pretty happy with the outcome. Like, hey, this may or may not work out. This is my decision aligned with what I want to get out of life and what makes me and my family happy. And I found it to be very comforting. So to summarize the non-star section, have a plan, put yourself out there, periodically document, and then use kind of the framework that you're building to ultimately take the legal faith, which is your career decision. So that's kind of what I mean by working on your non-star. So hopefully that was helpful. Now, let me move on to the third section that a lot of my friends and people who I'm meant to ask, which is how do you make a decision, and then what is the difference between a small, medium, and a large-stage company? And there's a lot of, unlike how to make career decisions, there's a lot of great blogs and people that talk a lot about it. So I would encourage you to talk to people, read up, and kind of build your own understanding. I can only share what I have learned. So I've had the opportunity to work in Apple and Amazon, which are large companies. I've had the opportunity to work in kind of companies like Kiva, which is our 400 people. Premise, which is around kind of 40 people. Lattice, which is when I joined about like five, and then we were at 24 when we got acquired. And now I'm at our company, Pixylabs. And we were the first two people. So we're about nine people now. So I've had an opportunity to work in companies of different sizes. And parallel, obviously, being in the community, I've learned a lot from people at Twitter and Slack and Uber and the likes. So here's what kind of how I think about it. First, is you have to deeply understand what a PM does. The second is what are the pros and cons of joining a small, medium, or large company? So first, here's how I think about the definition of a product manager. Then there's a large myriad of definitions out there. But ultimately, there's one commonality across all PMs. A product manager sits between the customer and the technology. And what that means for a specific company is very specific to the sector, to the maturity, to the engineering or to the type of product. For one thing's consistent, you're always the person sitting between the customer and the technology. So that's the number one thing that I talked to PMs about. Are you empathetic to the end customer? Deeply understand the market that you operate in. And are you empathetic to the engineers? And deeply understand the technology from a systems level. You don't necessarily need to be an ex-engineer who understands software development in detail. But you do need to have a system level understanding. So A, you can work with them effectively. And B, you can really think about technology and how it manifests themselves in terms of products and platforms in a strategic manner. So that's my definition of PM. Every company has a kind of code, code, Q definition of what a PM does won't go into detail. Ultimately, you're responsible to sit between the market and the customer. So in that construct, I think the number one thing that PMs look for is having impact. Having impact by shipping great products. I think that's kind of the clearest articulation of what their kind of end product is. So using the definition and their kind of goals, here's what I think the pros and cons are for the small, medium, and large companies. So first, the small, medium, and large companies. So if you're joining a startup, the pros are the base. You're going like crazy. You get to do a lot. So there's a lot of exposure to breadth. So base and breadth is what makes it so exciting from an impact perspective. You're working on zero to one problems and you're doing that at base, which is unmatched at any other company. The second thing is the reward. There's a lot of risk, but the reward is that you are part of a successful company, like Uber or Lyft or MongoDB or Elasticsearch, but an enterprise. So the pros are base, breadth, and just the reward that you get by taking the risk of joining a stage company. The cons. The cons are the lack of structure. So in most cases, you're probably if you're the first of the few PMs, definition of what your mandate is is not clear. Most people revel in that and that's what they look for. They like the ambiguity, but for a lot of people, that's something that it doesn't help them grow. So the first thing I talk to people is if you're early in your career, if you're looking for mentorship and guidance, so early stage companies might not be the right thing for you. That's con number one. Con number two is with risk, everybody can tell you that startups are risky, that they might not work. That is quite intuitive, but the core thing to ask yourself is are you joining a pre-product market fit company or post-product market fit company? If you're joining a pre-product market fit company and if you're the first part of person and you're responsible to find product market fit, don't join the company. The founder is responsible to find product market fit. So I would always have a nuance to understand to go where that company lies. So I would say those are the pros and cons of the small company, the mid-stage company. So think of some company which is in a pre-IPO, growing like crazy, like think of Slack two or three years back. The pros, you still are moving really fast. You still have a ton of impact, probably a lot more impact than you were in the startup. And then you're starting to, if they have really good product leaders who build the product function, you have really good mentors. So I know a lot of great companies who have kind of product leaders who've got trained in Google or Facebook, and they're the ones who're building other product teams. You actually get a lot of good mentorship. The cons. Cons are kind of like you're not in an early-stage company. You're somewhere between being superstructured and being a lot of ambiguity somewhere in between. So you have early-stage process, a lot of people are getting hired. So there's a lot of kind of organizational like what's happening. I don't think it's a con, it's just something that you should be present about. A lot of people do really well in that kind of one to ten phase, not zero to one, not ten to like a million, the one to ten phase where they come in and have a real impact there. So these are all intuitive things. Like the main thing that I want to talk about, one thing is if you're interested in kind of stage companies, look for who you're going to work for. Because if you have somebody who can give you great mentorship, that is probably a priceless once in a career opportunity. Joining a successful high-growth mid-stage company with somebody who is willing to invest in you. So this is my nugget on kind of mid-stage companies. Large companies, it's all about impact. I won't even go into the cons. It's companies are large, daughter process, again intuitive stuff. It is about the impact and is that impact kind of career defining for you? Right, if are you at Amazon working on Alexa? Are you in Google working on search? Are you on Facebook working on WhatsApp or Messenger? If you're working in a large organization, but you're having the impact, which is gigantic. That is all that matters. There's a lot of negatives associated with large companies, a lot of other positive. But ultimately it's about is the impact career defining for you? So that's kind of how I broadly talk about the pros and cons. To summarize, small companies be very, very nuanced in your understanding of where they are with broad market fit. If they're pre-broad market fit, and if it's your job to find it, don't jump the company. If they're close to it and are scaling, understand the risks, but take it if it's the right for you. For mid-stage company, see if you can get great mentors. If you can, it's an amazing opportunity. Something that I encourage a lot of people. If it's a large company, really think about the impact that you want to have. If you have that, everything else will follow. If you don't, it might be the best fit for you. So that's kind of how I talk about small and hybrid companies. This is mostly based on my experience. So hopefully this webinar was helpful for you. Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn or here on this forum if you have any other questions. I'd like to summarize in most of my communications. So the first one is when you think about the non-star framework for yourselves and what that means for you, think about one thing. Have a goal. It's okay if it's not precise. Constantly keep refining it and periodically document it. Then once you have that, you have your destination, the path that you get there. Here's point number two. If this is mapped out, you increasingly get less about the non-star but enjoying the process. You start to love the process. Doing that is what actually gives, at least you need joy. Not daily, but when I'm down and thinking about, all right, I'm heading in the right direction. I'm on the journey. I'm getting there. So that's kind of point two. The third thing, do realize that when you're making career decisions, is decisions come across once every two to three to four to five years. They don't come down often. If you go into them without a framework, you are exposing yourself to make kind of suboptimal decisions. So I would encourage you be deliberate, actively build a framework because once you are making a decision, it's up to you. You have to make the best decision, which is the best for you and your family. And if you don't build a framework, you might give up on time, which is the most important currency. So hopefully that was helpful. All the best for everything. Keep it touch. See you guys.