 Let me ask you a question. Do you know how to answer this kind of product strategy interview questions? What's the long-term strategy for Uber in the upcoming 10 years? Should Lyft enter the Indian market or not? This kind of product strategy questions became more and more common and they're very difficult to answer because it's no fit framework for product type interview questions. In this video, I'm gonna share with you a mock interview I had with one of my students in the product manager accelerator where we use the Gucci framework I invented to answer this kind of very challenging product manager interview product strategy questions. All right, so let's get started. Hey guys, this is Dr. Nancy Lee, the founder product manager accelerator from DrNancy.com. I help people transition from worker B to product manager and business leader. If you want to learn the most effective way to become product manager and enjoy product manager dream job offer, you should subscribe to this channel and turn on the bell button so you'll be notified every time I publish a new video every Wednesday. Before we get started with today's mock interview, please make sure you download this 50 product management interview questions database at Fan Company so that you can use the same interview questions to do your mock interview. If you like any of the content today, please make sure to smash the like button so that more people will discover this organic content. So Barbara is also one of my students in product manager accelerator. Can you quickly introduce yourself? Then we can get started with our mock interview. Sure, absolutely. I am Barbara Fidehi and I am a senior PM at Bear Force. I joined Nancy's class about a month plus now, have learned tons. I actually took courses with product school, but many of the, I would say worksheets that they provided was not really, really helping me with what I needed for being a better or stronger PM. And I also had been trying to break into fan companies and startups for quite some time. So just by watching one of Nancy's videos on resume building, I was able to align my resume in a way that got me the offer that I have right now. And I wasn't even looking at that time. I had not taken a single course at that time. I just followed the instructions in her video and a recruiter found me on LinkedIn, reached out, was interested. Next thing led to another, I got the offer that I had just by following her resume template. So imagine what could happen if you just take the class. So I'm excited to be here. I've already learned loads and this will be a great opportunity to test out what I've learned so far. Awesome, welcome, welcome Barbara. And thank you. Yeah, it's such a great pleasure to have you. And you have been learning many fan interviews so far. Let's make sure we learn those fan offers. Okay, great, cool. All right, so the mock interview we are having today is assuming, so you're going to find a run interview with either Google or Meta. They will ask you those kind of like a strategy interview questions. And also for the transparency, Barbara has never done any part of strategy case with me before. Okay, so it's our first time, so which is also the same process how we coach our students how to really improve the answers. So I do not have it really directly. This is the very first time doing this. So let's see, all right, cool. All right, so let's assume this mock interview I gotta like guide you through the process and also pretending I am an interviewer. Okay, so let me bring up the interview question. The answer is this question. You have, let's say 45 or usually is shorter than 45, 40 minutes or 30 minutes answers question. Should Meta enter, not entry, enters education industry or not? Okay, so let's get started. Feel free to open the case and let me know how do you think about what the answer should be. Sure, so the very first thing based on what you had taught in module eight is the Gucci framework. And I know you have a video out on YouTube so folks can go watch that. But the very first thing is to define what the goals and the missions are for that company. So when we talk about Meta, Meta is a profound, really great company. Their vision is to bring the metaverse to life and they really want to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. I also know just based off of research that Meta is going into the space for basically helping education, like bridging that gap for education and ensuring that there are other ways to learn in a way that goes beyond just what we are probably used to on a regular basis. So when I think about that, I think this would align with how Meta thinks about different kinds of goals that would align, this would align in my perspective with their strategy. I would say just three things off the top of my head that I think would make sense. About 66% of the world has some level of education and I'm privileged to know this because I come from an education background. So I do understand that not a lot of people have a lot of education at a higher level. About 90% of the world has education, primary education, but the higher you go, there aren't that many people who are educated. I also know that higher education currently is struggling to get students into schools, not just into schools, but into programs, right? Less and less students aren't being interested in actually pursuing a degree at all. And many schools due to COVID have opt into more of an online sort of rigor or study. So I think that's something that we need to take into consideration. COVID is real, it's happening, we're right in the midst of a pandemic and it seems like it will come to an end soon, but it has changed our world profoundly going forward. And I feel that once COVID hit, pretty much most of those schools started going online almost instantaneously. And that's something that we want to take into consideration. So that's what I think about for goals and the mission. The next, okay. So the next thing that I do want to probably go into would be the customer segmentation. And when I look at education as a whole, you have all of these different grade levels, but I'd like to segment it into elementary learning. And I would probably group the middle school with the elementary, because I know elementary is usually from zero to like five, but I would group middle school into that. And then I'll also like to look at the second batch would be more of the high school or secondary school levels. They're not quite yet in college, but you're preparing to get into college. And then the last leg would be the higher education, which is, it could be just undergrad, but it also could include things like master's programs or other specialized programs that are available at the universities. Yeah. And I, okay. So my thought about those three segments, when I look at the traditional education, because I do feel that there are serious issues right now in traditional education. And each one of those levels are impacted differently and have different kinds of issues. So they would have different kinds of unmet needs. Let me say like that. And so... Can you tell me more regarding different kinds of unmet needs in those different segments? Sure. So when I look at the unmet needs from a higher education level, those kinds of students, the cost for higher education is too much. And that's the primary reason we see a lot of students not want to go to college. The other major critical issue is many students are not used to learning in that style or in that way of learning. They've done it for the past however many years of their younger education life because their parents kind of said so, right? But once they hit graduation from high school, they want the opportunity to explore things differently. And traditional higher ed education just doesn't allow that flexibility. It does in some way, but it's still limited. Especially when things in the past was always in person, right? Online classes were kind of more so like an afterthought. But with COVID that has made the shift to online classes more possible. But then you see that there is still a disconnect between the student and the professor. So a lot of times when online classes, people are taking classes, but they're not really paying attention. They have other people doing their assignments for them. I mean, they're not really gaining anything, any of those skills to learn and to move forward with in life. So I think that is something that we need to help bridge the gap on. And that's probably something we probably should focus the most on because I think that's probably the most impactful. I believe it's something about like maybe 20 something percent of the fees that higher ed institutions collect from tuition will decrease by 2025. So this is something that we can have a huge impact in right now. Okay. So you mentioned about the unmanaged for higher eds. Do you have any unmanaged for other segmentations? Yes, absolutely. So when we talk about high school, high school is kind of weird because everyone is hitting puberty and they're getting older, girls are boy crazy, boys are boy crazy. I mean, you can go different ways by this, but really high school is a place where you're laying a good foundation for your college experience in terms of education and growth. And a lot of times when you look at inner city schools, there's really not that technology available unless you go to like a private school or you're going to a public school in a more affluent kind of area. So there could be, there's definitely an opportunity there. I think students want to learn. I think many people want to learn, but sometimes the rigor and the style in which things are teet or taught makes it difficult for people to assimilate that learning as quickly as possible. I also think that during that high school phase, there's a lot of video gaming going on, right? So a lot of people are very just stimulated differently. Let me say it that way. And maybe we can probably, I should hold off on that because I was already moving into solution in mind for a second. But yeah, really the issue is people are stimulated differently. And when we think about those students, they also want to learn, they want to put their best foot forward, but sometimes they don't know how. I feel like it's difficult sometimes for students to really be able to learn in that kind of environment. When there's a lot of things going on, there's a lot of distractions. Yeah, in my summary, it sounds like the unmet needs for high schoolers are that there are so much distractions and the body also changes. So it's very hard to make the focus on learning. So they need to find some better way to learn. And also you mentioned public school and private schools are also different because of different resources that are lacking between different schools. Very good, okay. So tell me more about the younger segment, elementary and middle school. So the younger segment, from my perspective, when we talk about their learning, it just depends on the type of child, right? So you've got kids that may be in special needs groups, you've got kids that special needs in terms of like, maybe they have ADHD or Down syndrome or some other kind of thing. And we need to cater for those kids differently. But at the same time, you've got regular kids who are just boys, right? Boys are boys, girls are girls. And from their perspective, learning is fun, right? Learning is fun. I've got kids, I've got two boys and a little baby girl, they are six and under. And if I tell my son, he's got to do, for example, Kuman, he's not excited. He doesn't want to write and just add and subtract and spell his words, he's bored. He wants things that will keep him very engaged and very focused. And he's incredibly smart, but I have to think about creative ways for him to learn because the traditional way just doesn't cut it for him. And even between my two boys, they're quite different. One's more outgoing, another one is more quiet. And I feel that they both learn very differently, but it still requires a lot of creative stimulation. And also it requires hands-on experiences with them. Yeah, true. All right, so you talked about all the unmet needs. Now let's continue to think about should meta enter this education industry or not. So keep going, how would you think about this case? Given we know the unmet needs now? Yep, so we've talked about goals, we've talked about unmet needs, we've also talked about customer segmentation. And the next thing I want to focus on would be competition because meta coming into the education space is not gonna look like a higher ed institution, right? I'm thinking about what kind of difference they would bring to the market space. So when I look at that, I start to look at what kinds of companies would they be going against? So you think about things like Microsoft, Microsoft huge in the Xbox business and that's something that pretty much everyone around me that I know of are playing video games has an Xbox. And they also have talked about going into this metaverse learning sort of space wanting to bring that 3D dimension of learning to the education space. Now at what level I don't know yet, but that is something that is of interest to them. Another video gaming platform called Roblox, I'm probably saying that wrong, but Roblox, yes. They are also a huge video gaming platform and are also interested in entering the digital learning online experience. And those will be, I believe, the huge, huge competition that meta would be going up against. When you look at Microsoft, Microsoft is a long standing company, second largest and also the second most revenue generating company in the world. So they have a very profound, strong name that is widely accepted and also trusted. So having someone like that come into the game, it really changes things for meta. And I feel like meta's gonna have to differentiate themselves from that space or in that space and kind of show how they can be unique from some of these other gaming platforms. Let me ask you this question. When you talk about competition of meta entering the education space, you mentioned lots of them are gaming companies. So because they are kind of engaging with the audience, so they have their unique advantage. But is the education industry using any of the competitors we need to be aware of? Sure, outside of like video gaming platforms, we still have to be aware of things like regular traditional school. I think it's gonna be important that we don't lose sight of that. There are a lot of schools struggling and it's gonna be hard for them to stay open if they don't do something different. And you still have these online certificate programs and ways of studies that are also becoming very, very popular. And I would say almost taken away from regular traditional education. So people are leaving high school to do a certificate. People are leaving college to do a certificate. And you've got to think about those things as well. There may be some other type of competition and I'm drawing the blank. But I mean, just thinking about other ways of learning, it may not be regular traditional learning like we have it today. There are things like culinary classes or courses and other training type of ways of learning. I forgot what they're called, but I remember in high school, for example, if you didn't do your regular science, English, math type of courses, you had these other type of courses like cooking and singing, those types of things, those types of trainings, those type of learnings, those kinds of teachers and programs still exist. And that's another side of the market. I see. Let's suppose the outside of the market, you actually lead to it. What do you think of the content creators in the space such as YouTube? Do you think YouTube could be a potential competitor of meta in the education space? Or they're kind of related, so tell me more. Absolutely. I had Google data as my number three. I didn't even get to that yet, but definitely Google, yes, but I want to narrow in on YouTube just because of the shared amount of knowledge that is on there. And I do feel that a company like Google or Alphabet could turn on a dime and make some of these things happen, just like Facebook, just like Microsoft and some of these other companies. So yes, they will be a huge competitor in this space. Sure, learning is different, but it's still very creative and very, very engaging, right? So I find myself, when I'm curious about something, I just go to YouTube and I go learn. That's how you discover my channel? I could do not. And I will tell you this, you have no idea. So before I got married, I barely knew how to cook, barely, which in my culture is really not a good thing, but I barely knew how to cook. My husband's the married, loved it. Okay, but fun story. I was on YouTube almost every day, learning how to cook from this girl in Nigeria, and she cooked some of the most amazing dishes. I never tasted her food, right? But she had everything on YouTube and I just followed it. And now, Nancy, you can't even touch me when it comes to cooking, like it's that good. But that's just another way of learning that made it very fun and engaging for me. And I didn't have my mom yelling down my back to go learn how to cook. I just watched YouTube channels and I learned how to cook. So yeah, that would definitely be another competitor in this space. Yeah, when you think about those competitors, I wanna link a little bit more towards the unmanly. So sounds like currently the competitors are mainly towards people who want to make things more engaging. Sounds like it's more for the high schooler or younger kids, right? Can you, and also some who provide content such as existing traditional educator and also YouTube more like newer newbies, like myself a YouTuber, also educator, see myself as an educator. But you also mentioned something which is cost, right? So one of the pain point was cost. Do you think currently is there any like competition out there who is helping university drive down the cost or is like blue ocean, nobody else is working on those new issues? Well, let me think about that for a second. So, and while I'm thinking about that, please restate the question. So my question is for unmanly, right? You touched a lot on the other two unmanly, but you didn't get time to talk about the first unmanly to talk about for the university segment. They said it's too expensive, right? So in this, for that direction, do you think any existing competitors META should be aware of? Or maybe META shouldn't enter the high school, sorry, that university segment because it's just expensive. Nobody else can make it happen anyway. They're making cheaper anyway. What do you think? No, I actually believe that there is plenty of opportunity to make education much more affordable and available. I mean, even think about regulation, right? So the government's already been talking about slashing student loans and finding ways to give back to students who have high student loans. So I think that's something we should consider in our analysis. There's definitely an opportunity for us to make things affordable. Even from an educational perspective, I do remember saying earlier that there are these certificate programs that are coming out and are literally taking away from regular traditional learning. And I think that's something that is very, very important. That's really changing the game for higher ed institutions. People are learning in a different way. And I think it's gonna be important for Meta to embrace that, understand that and find a way to make learning more engaging for people and make it more practical, right? Because the reason why we do these certifications is because they are directly linked to the kind of work that we are looking to get. So if there's a way Meta can fill that need, then we're in business. But yes, from a financial perspective, education at the higher ed institution level, it's just way too costly. For some universities, there are a few that are completely very reasonable. I'll shout out one Missouri State University, incredibly affordable, but then again is in the middle of nowhere, right? A lot of these higher ed institutions are charging so much because of, maybe they're a huge basketball school or they're a huge football school and you're paying really for the experience. You're not really paying for your education. So if we really just focus on the education in and of itself, is it really that expensive? I doubt it. Okay, cool. Yeah, now we explore different kind of competitors. Can you spend more time talking about the pushy part of framework as the last part? The I, Integrated Ecosystem, how it's related to Meta? Okay, from a Meta perspective, again, just to recap on what the mission is, is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. And when I just think about that and their vision about bringing the Metaverse to life, think about their biggest platform, Facebook. Almost everybody and their mom is or has been or will be on Facebook at some point in time in their life. And I think that this is something that is inevitable. Facebook, by default, is helping people come together and share memories and connect with one another but also learn from one another. I mean, there are several different groups on Facebook that people can join to build each other up, encourage one another to learn different crafts, to attend different seminars and be part of different forums where they can learn from one another and grow or teach. And so you have to think about how Facebook is structured and how that plays into the ecosystem for Meta as a whole. So having this kind of a platform to be part of the Meta group of let's say companies, I think it's quite brilliant. Yes, I know Meta's had a few issues in the news, news light of recent and it's not anything to ring home about but just knowing what they've done with Facebook, I think there's some learnings there to draw from and make that part of what they're trying to do here with the education space. So I do think, I think this is something that will play to their strengths, right? They don't have to be another university, right? Off brick and mortar university, creating some sort of an online platform and allowing people to experience different types of learning in a different, very, very innovative way. I think that's amazing, knowing that you don't even have to be there in person, seeing a teacher face to face but you all can engage and collaborate in a very just different way. I think that is what I'm excited about. I think there's so much possibility in that arena that it just hasn't been, it hasn't been tapped. And I think that's something that they should explore. Can you elaborate what it means by learning in a different way? So definitely when you're looking at from like a digital perspective, right? You're online, but there are different ways of taking in that information. Maybe you are doing some sort of a virtual reality and learning class and you've put on like your 3D glasses and you're sitting right there and you're watching the screen and you're feeling like you could touch a heart because you're learning about something in biology. I don't know, I'm totally making this up but just thinking about that kind of possibility and knowing that maybe you feel like you're touching something, but you're not and you can point to the different pipes or valves in your heart. I just think that that is mind-blowing and this also feeds back into one of the unmet needs. Think about kids who are more visual when it comes to learning, right? I'm like that, I don't really care for pen and paper, right? But if I could see something, I could see that picture and it's moving and I'm seeing different angles that helps me retain that information better. And I think that that's probably another way that they can look at this. Very cool. Okay, so what's your final conclusion? Is this a summary? Yes, that was a summary to say, heck yes, get in there. But I do feel that they have definitely the infrastructure, the financial resource to be able to make learning more affordable but also more engaging for their users. And I believe that sure, this will increase their revenue, it will allow them to reach more people that probably would never open Facebook, right? Not everyone's gonna use Facebook, but there are gonna be people who want to learn and see learning in a different way and can also partake in that. So yes, my answer is yes, it's my vote, yes. Yes, okay, great, yes, yes, yes. So very good performance. Okay, Barbara, so let me provide you some feedback. At the same time, I think we might have a room for one more person to do quick mock interview. So if you already received link from my team and you can get it, all right, so. And hold on, let me see. All right, so anyone else who received the Zoom link from my team, and we can spend the last like a few minutes with you guys after we spend time with Barbara to provide feedback, so let's do this. And let me provide feedback to Barbara right now. Okay, great, so this is gonna happen. Let's, how we provide feedback, let's do this. Let's tell you regarding what I believe you did very, very well. I think a very strong customer empathy. You really know the education space well. You also, it is not just knowing well the way you tell stories shows lots of like knowledge and empathy regarding what's going in the space and lots of answers are very creative. For example, towards the end, you said, hey, help, yeah, like, help, yeah. Barbara needs to enter and you can increase the usage of Facebook and those are very, very creative ideas and how it's relevant to the topic. I also like how you segment the customer. So based on different like grades and I do like the way we segment because those grades, the users in those grades are very, very different and your online needs also does a very, very well. Very straightforward, very clean and I like it. Now let's talk about room for improvement, right? So this is assuming it was like all the fan companies and Meta and Google. When you open this, I like you talk about the goal and the mission of the company, which is really good. But when you talk about the different kind of like competitions, different things, I want you to map them into different kind of segment because you are a little bit all over the place, right? So, and then I post you, do you think of this? Oh, yeah, do you think of this? Oh, yeah, right? So it's easier when you answer those competition, you map them already. You already talk about different segment, different online needs, right? You can say, okay, so in competition really depends on what segment talk about, talk about education, the competition, existing competitions, people who provide in practical knowledge, those certification schools. Now for like a middle tier, which is like a high school, high schoolers and there's lots of people playing Xbox or Rob locks. I hope I pronounce the company very well. We just did a free commercial of the company. R-O-B-L-O-X, the company, something like that, right? So you need to map them into different segments. So it's easier for you to think about it, all right? And towards the end, when you talk about the integrated ecosystem, where a meta can play into the whole system, your answer was also a little bit scattered. I want to think about it regarding the value chain, right? So for education, there are like content providers and teachers, there's also students who is learning, there's also people who in the middle who has a platform, right? So they don't do anything that the technology platform or may not be technology, any kind of platform in the middle who facilitates the process, right? And that's the entire value chain. What's in the value chain, what's missing is in the other top, so meta is let's say content. So meta probably already has content because there's lots of Facebook videos, existing Facebook videos, and also already have the, and also talk about the learners. There's a lot, almost everybody has Facebook, so potential learners are also there, right? So you can talk and technology, different things, and also VR technology is going to the platform they can facilitate those kind of learnings. So when you answer those kind of questions regarding integrated ecosystem, talk about the entire value chain instead of jumping around, because whenever I poke you, you start saying, oh yeah, that's a yes, that's exactly what's great, right? So but your answer wasn't structured if I don't poke you, right? Okay, so you have those ideas, but so make sure you follow the framework we covered in module eight, where we teach you how to think about all the example framework. But I think it's very good, very good. I like how confident you are talking about the education industry, especially all the empathy you had. It's pretty good, congratulations, very good. Okay, so another thing is, Barbara, do you have any advice regarding how to lend a PM job offer? Because you already lend one just by following our free template. So do you have any other advice for other people to lend a PM job offer? And also your background, maybe you should tell us as your background first. So yeah, yeah, maybe you can tell us as a background how any other advice you want to give people with similar background with you. Sure, so I came from pretty much a predominantly healthcare background. Most of my experience at work has all been in a healthcare company. It was really an EHR platform. We were building for an EHR platform. And I had been working on the reporting in analytics side, building business intelligence platform. Let me see like that. And also doing more like technology data syncing between different platforms that we were connecting with. So the sharing of patient data. And that's how I got into product management. I don't have like a structured product management experience, but I do have lots of experience writing requirements. I was a business analyst. I did things like that. So I'm very strong in that area. And the more I did that, the more I started to learn a bit more about product management, took some product school courses. And I did enjoy it and I got a PM role just by studying. So I feel like if you're a PM, you have to first, number one, you've got to love studying and learning, right? Because there are so many products in the world and there are new ones coming up each day. Just think about the share number of startups starting every single year and number of companies that go IPO is because they have a new product and new service that's coming up that they need a PM for. So every time you see a new company, just know they need PMs or there are PMs that got them to where they are. Now in getting into a product manager role, I had to learn a lot about different frameworks that Nancy teaches in these module courses. And if you are green, brand new, you don't know anything about product management, yes, take it. But also if you are experienced as a product manager and you are not sure about what it is that you think product management looks like in the product management industry, this is also something that I will highly recommend. I also believe that it depends on what kind of industry you're coming from. So a lot of times in the healthcare space, product management looks very, very different. Also in the financial accounting space, product management also looks vastly different from if you were going into a big tech kind of company. So I would say you need to study, you need to be able to communicate both in writing and in speaking and you need to be confident. So I was kind of shaky on my experience. I took this course. This is just me studying an hour, couple of hours each week with Nancy's materials, attending office hours, doing everything she's taught you step by step, right? Don't try to deviate and be a hero. Do it step by step. It's proven it's tried. Don't just do it step by step and you'll definitely see results. But honestly, this has been one of the biggest blessings for me. So thank you, Nancy. Thank you. I do appreciate it. Thank you very much. By the way, you sound very confident when you do walk into view. You are. If you get three. It's working. It's working. Thank you. Cool. All right. Thank you for joining us.