 Hi, I'm Pia Spinder and I'm a product manager with a strong focus on growth for the last two and a half years I have been working at Canva and before that I've worked four and a half years at Facebook Started my own print-on-demand business graphed oak comm which received awards for out and outstanding product experience And today I'm very excited to be here and speak with you about my learnings and how to become a great growth product manager Here's a quick overview of the day I will introduce the topic briefly what is a growth product manager how to become a successful growth product manager and concluding with a quick summary First the introduction My personal story is really about creativity and data I think I'm one of the growth product managers with the most experience in experiments aka B testing There are many areas of product managers. I don't understand that well, but overall a led around 500 experiments across facebook and canva and my own business I think the reason is partly because of my upbringing My mother is a custom designer and artist and a crew up quite creative, but I always had a big passion for data Looking back, I think the combination of creativity and data is very helpful much later in my life So for example, all the experiments I create every day And the success of ones are Involving data and creative decision-making and you need to be a creative creative problem solver for that For example, I was able to outline Customer journey funnels myself with data and match visually the user experience to that and through that help to solve business and customer programs with engineers designers or other people in the company My professional story is that I started in islands to help facebook page owners to have a great experience Channel back feedback to the headquarters in california They are launched as well my first very first experiment Then I moved to california the u.s. To help the long tail of business pages to be successful I grew facebook pages events Offers marketplace and launched even facebook jobs and ran even more experiments In parallel I started my own business craft over come Received some awards from product hunt and also helped to scale the business from zero to one million dollar revenue In less than two years and served over 30,000 customers to date In 2019 I had a quick stop over in austria where i'm originally from as you can hear from my accent probably And there I helped to launch experiments in the big bank to and help to make more data-driven decisions as well in this business Since 2019 I started working at canva in the beginning. I helped grow canva presentations To one of the fastest growing products within canva as part of that I helped the group to not only run lots of experiments, but also teach many people and members of the group to do it themselves Since 2020 I have been working as a product manager in two important areas at canva the authenticating experience and the main landing page Canva.com Initially I started working with a small team focusing on authentication and eventually the steam crew And now I'm managing two and in short I dedicated the last eight years of my professional life To in product focusing on experimentation and growing the business through that What I didn't tell you is that I always wanted to become a product manager focusing on growth and experimentation And it wasn't that easy First the first learning is when when to listen and when not to listen to advice to become a product manager Many people will help you and don't be discouraged if someone tells you it is difficult to become a product manager In fact, I think it's important to understand if I could become a product manager. It will be very easy for you as well Second it took me time to become a product manager. I thought multiple times of quitting my job I was in To get the role straight away But I realized that at facebook I was doing already a lot of the work a product manager does And there are different ways on doing product work That's why I launched my own business to learn more holistically how to manage a product in business It helped me significantly in applications afterwards Having made these learnings And eventually I think as you can see I became a successful product manager You can create your own path on helping you become a product manager. You don't have to be a product manager already Third and last Focus on an angle that aligns with your passion Do you want to run a laminate shop if you hate laminate? Probably not Therefore I choose focusing on growth and helping business for data-driven decision-making This is what I'm really passionate about There are many different avenues within product managers you can go down I'm passionate about the focus on growth because you can create so much value For customers and companies like canva facebook or others If you increase active users or revenue just by a tiny percentage the impact can be Amazingly big. I think this is a great responsibility. I ensure in my work For all the reasons before I think its initiatives and platforms like product school dot com are very important to democratize The way of becoming a great product manager and reduce barriers to become a product manager For example for me it was very difficult To become a product manager because at the time there were no initiatives like product school in place And really love seeing these type of initiatives and platform emerge I think that's really great and will help the product graph to Get more foundations and make it easy for others to enter as well like yourself What is a growth product manager? In in short the role of a product manager really involves loving data, basic design skill and focusing on growth Which is either the revenue or focusing on active users There are some Of the characteristics of a growth product manager also acknowledge that any product manager will have to do the same And this is based really on my own experience only It's what i'm doing more of in my day-to-day as a growth product manager And this again is really based on my own experience First I work a lot on funnels trying to understand how I can help close the gap of users turning from one step to another For example people landing on a on a specific part of the product and then engaging more or being acquired Particularly I work often at one stage of the funnel for example acquisition to retention or awareness to awareness to acquisition With the end goal of influencing active users and revenue To go up and also create a positive user experience in parallel All decision on whether Something work or doesn't work I inform through a B tests and experiments We really want to learn whether something worked or didn't work before allowing more people experience it I think this is a principle for many tech companies in the industry Of course data is not everything But why would you release a change if it doesn't help measurable help users or the business? Next I need to make sure that Everyone is aligned and get a lots of learnings in the product space So it is really important that the quality and the speed in which experiments are released is high So I need to make sure that we're making doing this while keeping the user experience as great as possible for every feature And change release in the product Last I need to make sure to help Engineering data research and designs. They connected to keep focusing on growth of active users or revenue Correct the course if necessary Also manage a team or right now even two teams and make sure that everyone has a good time while working on the future of the product Next I will share how to become a growth product manager and be created it I thought that maybe some of you are already working as a growth product manager So I came up with seven questions which I thought can be helpful for you to evaluate how well you are doing Each question can be scored an answer from a scheme from one to five one being the lowest point five the highest score In the end you can compute your own score and see whether you're where you're standing If your score is higher you are on the way to become a great product growth product manager If your score is lower there's some opportunities for you to learn the craft Or even find like mentors or sponsors This helped me to set me up for success in the past and I hope it will be of help for you as well So the first question is Do you already work or study in a field which relates to growth and product related problems? Uh, you could be an engineer work in a customer work as customer success or be a student For example, I worked in product operations, which is similar to customer success At facebook when I started to think about becoming a product manager Uh, I had to help the page owners at even bigger scale. So You don't have to be a product manager to become a product manager. You might be already working in this field It helps not only for a growth product manager But also for any product manager to be excited to look at data or at least imagine to build up this muscle further One example here is google analytics, which I used to look at the performance of my own business Translate this then into problems I need to solve for my own business and its users and then make the actual changes in the interface Especially in the beginning of my career I used ccroll a lot to help make data-driven decisions I learned this while working at for facebook and was lucky enough to be empowered by my phone manager She invested heavily in me to allow me to get these data skills and if you are In the position to learn more data skills. This is like really really valuable, especially in the beginning as a product manager or growth product manager Third depending on the size of product you're working on retention files can be very important to understand Even if you only solve a small piece of the overall success In the product and company improving retention and closing gaps in the final can determine the success and failure of a company One of the leaders that really inspired me while working at facebook was alex schultz For metamal who speaks about the importance of retention and retention curves The next one thing is that was always valuable At any company where suggesting changes in the product with actual mock-ups And designs I started with sketches with pen and paper and then use different design tools later Personally, I know I love to use canva of course because I work there and it's also like a great tool to use and I put like screenshots of potential changes which I can share then with my team or Engineers or designers get feedback and then actually bring the changes life This is just an example of my own business on how I use canva and mock-ups Many changes if you you will introduce in the product won't lead to successful results It means that you really need to be okay to fail Will you actually impact the customer experience positive? As you can see with the number of experiments I ran over time Uh, roughly only one in ten is successful. I have learnings From over six years, which are outlined here and across 500 experiments with matter Canva and my own business and that ratio of one to ten is pretty much consistent As you get more experience you get better in making decisions as experiments and learnings from one area of the product We'll carry over across the product and other areas And you can test bigger changes But overall the takeaway is you must be really okay to fail because most changes won't lead to successful experiments I'm personally I'm not that good in that because of course I want all my experiments to succeed So that's something I need to improve myself Will you be able to scale yourself and teach others how to focus on growth? This will likely not happen in the very beginning of your career But there's a limit to how many changes you can do by yourself Therefore it is very critical that at some point teach every member of the team how to focus on growth themselves Set up experiments herself or himself Often it is the responsibility of the product growth manager To do that and ensure the team has the resources and culture in place to focus on growth Imagine if not only you by yourself, but also every engineer designer and other stakeholder can come up With exciting changes to make in the product and create ideas which will impact and grow significantly in the company How exciting and also how great for the business and customers because now not only you but everyone else can make the changes Are you okay to advocate for potential controversial changes? This is based on my personal experience only not all the changes that you will release that will have big impact Will be an agreement across the company with every stakeholder Even if the data is showing strong signals and positive results It is hard to move forward with something that is considered a non-designed user experience In particular for notifications and pop-ups often these changes drive big impact on the customer experience and the business as a growth product manager I feel my responsibility is to do the right thing for both the customer and the business And prove through looking at the data and looking at at the customer feedback that some of these changes might be beneficial Even though the user experience is not desired Why is that we often look At the customer experience when you manage a product day to day So the feedback that we get in the companies and the product is often buyers towards heavy users So we need to make really sure that when we releasing changes and we're looking at the data We're looking at it holistically not only through the lens of the employees and people using it heavily Yeah, this is not only something that a growth product manager needs to do But probably any product manager and you need to be prepared to negotiate those changes And potentially even say oh, maybe i'm wrong about this change Let's not move forward even though the results are great. So it can go either way So here is my personal rating. So I score only 75 percent Of being a great growth product managers. I think the point here is really that even for experience growth product managers like myself I always need to learn and improve myself. So if you score like below 50 percent, that's great and This is just like a Small reminder for you to keep be motivated and keep investing in learning and starting to help you set up To set you up for success and be successful growth product manager yourself So how to learn the actual craft? I I think it is very simple like it's either through study or practice, right? um If you go to product school.com you will study it and then you also need to practice it So you can study and practice if you study the product management craft you can use product school.com or platform or other platforms to learn and get better It is also important to practice your skills For example through Getting an internship changing the focus of your role to monitor the lines with product management activities in your current job That's for example, I did in the past apply for product management roles And start roles which you think can help you to bridge a role to eventually become a product manager That's also what I did. I did a combination of all the above I always read up information about product management I had time to practice through various roles and I always exposed myself to work with engineers designers and product managers So I could learn from them on their way of working Each team and company has a slightly different approach to how they manage the backlog of the product management craft And that's important to remember Last I want to share the importance of finding a great mentor A person who was very lucky with people who always believed in me and supported me on my journey and Whether there were managers product managers product marketing managers or engineers There were always people willing to help me in my career so I can become a growth product managers So how do you find a great mentor? If you're working you can find mentors in the company you are at the moment This worked very well for me in my journey to become a product manager and growth product manager You can always look outside your company as well For example through networking events, particularly if your company is not that big like The company I was at facebook in matter It helps to go like to networking event and events and get to know other people And last you can speak to professors or lecturers if you're student for advice Also mentorship comes in different form and shapes and it's not a consistent Experience I had several mentors over a long period of time and each of them teaching me different things and last And that's I think very critical once you are successful product manager become a mentor yourself and help others. So as I'm here today Sharing my learnings do the same when you are experienced to help others to grow Otherwise there won't be enough people to help us succeed become product managers in the future To sum up people can come from any profession to become product managers There are many ways to become a growth product manager or product manager like myself And it is not difficult to achieve that memory As a growth product manager, there's a strong focus on growth experimentation And data you will likely own part of the entire funnel I thought about seven questions that can help you determine Where you're standing as a growth product manager answer these questions to help you see your gaps and how to become a great growth product manager To both study and apply your learnings In practice if you can this will be a catalyst to help you set the up for success and finally Really find also a mentor who can help you move into product management or growth product management And last big thank you for the product management school for allowing me to be here today and all of you for listening Please ask any questions. I'm happy to answer and have a great rest of the day. Bye. Bye