 Hi, thank you so much for listening in. In today's webinar, I will basically be covering what product managers do, the different types of roles that exist, and how you might leverage your existing background to grow into the field. This is something that is targeted not just at individuals looking to break into the field, but also existing product managers who might be looking to plan their own career strategy and how they can land into a role that truly excites them. So I'll first cover a bit about myself. I come from an engineering background. I worked at various startups during my college days itself. I was actually the first UX designer hired at a startup. And then I went on to do internships with several startups, worked with the Indian government on a nuclear reactor project. And I held various roles, which were in the capacity of not just an engineer, but also as a UX designer. I worked in marketing. I worked in public relations. And I was truly just exploring different options and different things that interested me at the time before I decided to move into engineering after graduating. So I joined Oracle as a full stack engineer. I was working on a B2B product called Primavera. So Primavera is basically project management software that's being used by several of the largest corporations in the world and international governments, companies in the construction and oil and gas sectors. And this was really exciting and really insightful for me because I got a chance to see how companies operate when they're working at such a large scale, what global products look like, and how things change really from the B2B space from any of the previous environments that I had seen. After a few years at Oracle, I realized that I wanted to learn more about business, about the industry that we're operating in and just really explore more on the business side. So I decided to go and get my master's degree. And I went to CMU where I got a master's in software management. And during that time, I was working with startups in the San Francisco Bay Area. I was working with Emirates Airlines. And I also worked on a startup idea of my own. So along with a bunch of my classmates, we worked on a travel startup idea. And that's when I realized that I truly, I enjoy that field, I enjoy the space. There are a lot of exciting problems in the travel industry. And that's what led me to then join Expedia Group. So Expedia Group, I was leading our customer contact platform. And what that basically means is when a traveler or a hotelier needs to interact with Expedia Group, maybe it's because they want to book travel. Maybe it's because they want to make changes to their trip. Or maybe it's a post-trip experience as well. So it really covered all sides of the traveler journey right from your discovery to your post-trip phases. And that was very exciting because I got to interact with users. I got to learn about what global products, again, what that means from a product management perspective. Because this was, again, a product which had more than 25 million customers. And it was affecting the bottom line of the company. It had a very significant role in the pandemic. And it really led to a lot of growth and a lot of learning in that phase. And I realized then that I love all the growth I'm having now, but I'd love to move into the space of startups and see what product management in the startup might be like and whether that's something that excites me. So I decided to pivot from, I moved from Silicon Valley back to India. And I essentially moved into Baidruz, which is a unicorn. And it is an edtech company which is focused on education, primarily in the K-12 segment, both in India as well as internationally. And that's been a very exciting move for me because, again, being a startup, I'm learning a tremendous amount. And I've been here over a year now. So there's a lot of different environments that I've basically been fortunate enough to witness, to experience. And based on that, I feel like I've had some takeaways. And I would say that product management really differs across the board. One thing I'd like to touch upon is what product management even is. We hear so many different definitions. We hear about things like, you know, product managers are the CEOs of the product or you see vent diagrams that you see probably lots of different definitions on what a product manager does. But the way that I like to define it is that product managers identify problems in your market, their response before choosing which problems have to be solved next. And you're also working across the organization to deliver those outcomes. And it's also important to note here that, you know, these outcomes are not just positive for the customers, but they're also they have to be sustainable and profitable to the company. So when you're looking at, you know, this, you realize quickly that there's so many different skill sets involved in this process, whether it is your market research or whether it is your working across functionally. I mean, there's so many different skill sets that are involved in a day-to-day process. And that's why product management becomes so unique in terms of how it is and how it varies across the board. So what does this, you know, typically mean? And I'll just touch upon some of the different aspects of a day-to-day for a product manager. But again, keep in mind, this may not apply to every single product role. It's just that I think these are aspects that apply to most roles. So the first is, of course, you know, knowing your market. I think that this is something that's often under, you know, it's undervalued or it's not really given its due importance, but truly being able to understand what the competition is, what the strategy is of a company and in relation to the business or the market that it operates in is something that's absolutely fundamental to the role. So even if you're not doing this on a day-to-day basis, without this foundation, you would not be able to have a very effective, you know, you won't have an effective strategy or you won't be able to create a winning product. Next is, you know, of course, empathizing with customers. So a product manager is the advocate of the customer within an organization. And really what that means is, you know, you are speaking on behalf of your customers, of your users in every interaction that you have on a day-to-day basis. So really being able to understand what their needs are, you need to really know your customers very well. And this doesn't necessarily mean that you are your target segment or you are exactly like your target customer. But it does mean having empathy and having compassion that you can then bring into those conversations with your customers and really being able to understand what they're asking for. And once you know you've identified the market, you've identified what would be the ideal experience for your users, you then be defining your product vision. Now, this is also something that I think a key difference between, you know, a product manager and something like an entrepreneur, which is often a comparison that is made, is that your product vision has to align with the larger goals of an organization. You know, your product is not operating in a vacuum. So you are working with a team of product managers or you're working with a department. You often need to make sure that all of your products are working towards the same common goal. And there's sometimes our concerns like, you know, you might come up with a very good idea, but it might actually cannibalize revenue from your company just because you're essentially taking in an area which is currently being dominated by another product in your own company. So there's so many different situations that you deal with when it comes to not just defining your vision, but also aligning it with the larger goal. Now that you've done that, you know, you would be responsible for creating a roadmap and that would involve saying no to things. It involves prioritizing what needs to be done for that quarter, for that, you know, maybe it's six months, maybe it's one year. But what's important here is that there's so many different things that can be done and there's so many different ideas. There's so many different asks that come in from customers, from stakeholders, but really being able to say, you know, what's the most important and keeping your team and your product very focused. I believe that that is a responsibility that does lie on a product manager because of, you know, the vision you create and the roadmap that you define. In addition to creating that roadmap, there's also this process of getting buy-in from your leadership, getting whether that means, you know, you're working with other stakeholders to create that roadmap or if it means, you know, you identify something as a critical business need, but you really need to convince leadership on why it should be done. So all of that is, you know, the first piece of product management where you're getting that vision and you're setting your strategy. But now that that's done, you actually have to implement it. You have to work across the company to get this roadmap, you know, accomplished. And I think this can vary a lot, again, across different companies. But fundamentally, what I've seen is that design and engineering does stay common across the board. So you're typically working with UX design, you're working with engineering on how you should be accomplishing your roadmap and then actually executing that. The other the next piece is once you have actually built out what your product is, and that can mean different things in the software space that would be, you know, a software release. But again, this cycle might be a little bit different for somebody who's working in a different industry. But by and large, you know, you'd accomplish this process and then you would be shipping or launching your product in the market. And that does come in with things like marketing your product and marketing your product, you know, it brings in skill sets like you need to understand personas, you need to understand user segmentation. How would you, you know, how you plan to take this product to users and what pieces you can highlight is really important in making it a success. And sometimes that also involves defining things like your pricing strategy or working with sales. This may not apply to every role, but by and large, I think a lot of these items on this list are applicable. And lastly is measuring results. So this can mean monitoring data on a day to day basis. You're seeing how your product is performing. You're seeing the impact of the product or the feature on your customers, on your users, on the business. And in addition to that, you're also talking to customers here. You're also working on, you know, getting more feedback. So it's not just quantitative data. You're looking at actual, you know, talking to users, just really seeing, you know, how they interact with this and then making decisions based on those results, based on that feedback. It doesn't end at this point. It's basically an iterative process where you're again taking the feedback and looking at how you can improve things, what could be done differently. There's this lot of learning involved in this process. And you're working, as you can see, you know, you're working across the board. You're working with different teams. There's multiple skills that you bring to the table as you do this whole process. So let's say that now you've decided you'd like to be a product manager and, you know, maybe you'd like to take the next step towards that. Or it's also possible that you already are a product manager and your day to day does involve these steps. But sometimes it's a little bit more than that, right? Like you might be looking for a role that makes you feel fulfilled because I think really aligning with the right background, the right role, your strengths, as well as your interest is very important in this process. So if you'd like to make that move, I think the first step is really being able to understand the market and identifying what an ideal role would look like for you. So I think if you look at B2B companies versus B2C companies, and that basically means whether your end customer is another corporation or if it's, you know, a consumer. There are some differences that exist in terms of what these companies are looking for, as well as in terms of what your day-to-day would look like. So to answer, like maybe if you look at the differences in hiring or patterns that at least I've seen in my own experience is that with B2B, you're often an expert in a specific field. So for example, you know, you might be an expert in the cloud space. And then in that case, your target audience, you know, your target market or companies you look at would be things like, you know, Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud. So you'd look at those specific products or those specific roles if you know, you have that expertise. The thing with B2B because you're dealing with. Very large revenue from one single customer. The expectation is really high in terms of the specialized knowledge you're bringing in. So often you see, you know, you see more people come in with a very strong technical background in that space. If not technical, you'd still have some industry experience in that space, and at least for the larger or more established companies, that's typically what I've seen. With B2C, it's more of a generalized skill set. You're often, you know, I think you can probably have a lot of transferable skills as you move from one B2C company to another. Again, it depends on the size of the company and what their, you know, organization structure looks like. But by and large, that's what I've seen when it comes to actually hiding for those roles. Now, the difference in your day to day would be that, you know, with B2B, you see that there is also a fair amount of stakeholder management and project management involved. And that's typically because your end, you know, your customers are often very clear about what they want. It's just more, it's more about how you executed that's given more importance when it comes to the B2C space. However, you're also really focused on identifying what problems to solve. So you spend a significant amount of time on really understanding those users and trying to find out what their needs are. Because in the B2C space, it's not very easy to hone in on, you know, user problems because your customers are not directly telling you that this is what they want you to build. The other thing is, in a B2B space, you're typically looking at fewer customers. And sometimes it can happen that one customer or a group of customers, you know, operates a significant part of your revenue or your work. And sometimes in those instances, your requirements or the way that your product, the direction your product would take would really depend on the opinions of those customers. In the B2C space, however, you're typically looking at several customers. It's millions, in some of the companies, it's even billions of users. So it's not like, there's not a lot of weightage for one specific customer. You're just looking at a very large scale and you'd like to segment those users or you have a segmentation strategy typically in place as you interact with those users as well. The next step is in, you know, startups versus more established organizations. I think with startups, the environment tends to be very dynamic. So you're not really building a roadmap for anything beyond the quarter, essentially. It's something where, you know, your strategy would change a lot. Your business, the business you're operating in is changing a lot. And for that reason, you are very, very focused on execution as well as there's a very high level of, you know, change management that goes on within startups every day can be very different. And for that reason, I think a skill said that, you know, you probably need to bring in when you're working at startups is having a very good sense of execution. With more established companies, I find that the focus is more on processes and you can bring in, you know, it's less about the getting things done but also about defining the right processes because typically these companies are looking at years and years ahead. So they're looking at five years ahead. They're looking at two years ahead. And when that happens, you know, for it to be sustainable over such a long period of time, setting the right processes is very critical. Another thing that to note is if you look at startups in general, you'd see that team sizes vary a lot. So your startups, you would probably have more ownership over a larger company where you might have larger teams and more people just looking at a specific product. But that being said with a public company, you're also typically looking at, and I won't generalize here because I think there are some startups which would be an exception to this, but it is seen that in a lot of the established companies, we're looking at more users, you're looking at more revenue. And these companies have already established their product market fit. So there's more focus on things like AB testing or really just looking to improve that space and dive deeper into the areas that they're already in. Whereas in startups, you're looking at, you know, just identifying what really works in the market. And you're fairly early on, so you're looking at very early stage products. If you were to look at, you know, the product lifecycle, you're looking at entry, you know, products that maybe even, you know, just starting from zero to one, taking it from zero to one is something that's very common when you're working in startups. And I think both of them have their own merits. So it really depends on what's important to you, what you're looking for next, and based on your experience, what you think might be a better fit for you. The next one is about, you know, internal versus external products. And I think both of them, again, have by and large the same common skill set, like you're looking at everything, right from your users to your execution to actually launching those products. But I think a key difference is post launch. In external products, you would have a lot of marketing and there's a stronger focus on the business fundamentals related to your products. So you're looking at finance, you're looking at revenue very closely when it comes to external products. In internal products, you're looking more at time and execution, because sometimes your product may be directly impacting a key initiative in another part of the company. And for that reason, it's really important to have the right speed to market, for example. Now, again, the generalist versus specialist role. We touched a little bit about this in the startup versus public organization's role, piece of it. But I think as you tend to move higher in the, in the levels of a product management career ladder, you'd see that your role would be more generalized, more of a generalist, and typically individual contributors are more of specialists. Again, I find that sometimes in larger companies, there are more specialist roles as well, because you might be looking at one very specific area. So for example, if you're in an e-commerce space, you'd be the product manager for checkout. And that would essentially be your area of expertise. And you'd really dive deeper into the problems, the technical challenges, all kinds of things in that space. Whereas in a startup, you would not really be able to focus on one specific area that well, because you'd be overseeing multiple aspects of that same product. I believe that, you know, there's so many different backgrounds that you can have to get new product management. And in today's day and age, I really don't think that there's, you know, I think that there's a product role for everybody, if they were to leverage their background and look for the right roles. There can be some differences, again, in geographies or cultures, in some countries, product management roles can typically be more for, you know, higher level of years of experience. Whereas I've seen that in the US at least, there are lots of different levels in product management. So you have entry level product roles as well, like your ATM program, as well as very senior levels as well. So it really depends. I think some of this can also be a cultural aspect, but maybe again, it is changing a lot and these things are always changing. So it's important to really make sure that you're connecting with individuals in your area of interest and just finding out what's the best way to identify these. So now that you've identified what your dream role might be, you've probably identified, you know, things that differ across the board in different product management roles. I think a very important question is really thinking about the impact you'd like to make. I find that because product managers are so close to the end user or so close to the customer, it is absolutely critical that they believe in the problems they're solving or are really just really dedicated to that cause. So for me personally, whenever I was making my most recent shift, I personally feel really strongly about the education sector and that really made the process very, it made the decision very easy for me. And I think that, you know, having that alignment with the broader goal of the company and it aligning with your own personal values just really makes all of the difference in making your day-to-day just so much more enjoyable. So now that you've identified what point you'd like to get at, how do you actually get there? And I think the first step, you know, is really just identifying what your current background is, what strengths and weaknesses you have in your existing, you know, background in your skill set, and then thinking about a realistic next step. So for some people that might mean directly applying to their dream job, it might mean they landed in the first instance, but sometimes that's not the case and, you know, product management is not a linear career path. But I have often seen that, you know, finding a stepping stone or finding something that really leverages where you're at currently helps. So that might mean moving into a role in the same company. That might mean staying in, you know, the same team or the same department. That might also mean, you know, you shift out and you apply to a completely different organization, but there is something common between you, whether that is the industry you're operating in or whether that's key challenges that you're facing. So if you can identify that, I think that is something that can really work to your advantage. In addition to, you know, constantly learning and up-leveling your skill set, I think another very critical aspect to this is positioning your skills for the market. So just as you would position a product in the market, you know, for a target user segment, you should basically be applying the same fundamental thought process in your own career search. And that can be many things, right? That can mean you focus on a few roles instead of applying to many because in that case, you have the ability to really identify the market, identify the key problems that that company is solving and tailor your, you know, your own resume or tailor your portfolio really highlight that you do have the skills that they're looking for. I personally decided to not apply to more than 20 or 25 roles when I was first trying to break into the field. And that really helped me because, you know, with that limited skill set, with that limited set of companies, I was able to actually really tailor my resume for each of those roles. And then it just made a lot more sense. And it also made sure that I was applying new roles that I was truly interested in. So suppose you've done all of this and, you know, you've probably somewhere along the process, if you are looking to make a shift. So it is important to measure success and to be very honest about what that means, being very honest about the skills that you have, the weaknesses that might exist. But also just being, you know, in addition to just being realistic about it, it's also important to be mindful that this is a work in progress. This is something that takes time. So do not be afraid of the failures or the ambiguity in the process. That's absolutely natural. And I encourage you to, you know, stay on the course and I wish you all the best as you are probably making this shift in your careers. Thank you so much for listening in. And I look forward to answering questions if there are any in the comments.