Across Big Tech, we hear about the very competitive “Product Manager” role. But what are Product Managers? Should you be a Product Manager?
And why are Product Managers (PMs) necessary for startups?
While Engineers decide how to build the product & Marketers decide how to sell the product, Product Managers decide what product to build?
For example, if you are an eCommerce company looking to build a new feature, the role of the Product Manager is to figure out what this new product should be.
Should it be a review & rating system? Or a new digital payment system? Or a feature for the sellers? There are hundreds of options & a product manager’s job is one thing: Prioritize, Prioritize, Prioritize.
But why do startups need Product Managers/ or generally “Product people”?
Because more than any other firm, startups need to prioritize. If startups don’t prioritize, they die.
With constrained resources, developing a new feature is expensive. Startups often don’t think about what they should build & end up spending their technical costs on building the wrong product.
Then, when people don’t use their products, they think: The engineers must have done a terrible job, or the market sucks. Sometimes this might be right (only the first one), but most of the time, you just didn’t prioritize well enough.
