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LWOW 2016 Product management – what makes or breaks a startup Anna Ronkainen 2016-01-17 Chief Scientist*, TrademarkNow @ronkaine * + co-founder, former head of product
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What is product management?
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Product management = figuring out... - what the product is and what it is for - who the product is for - the competitive landscape - what goes and doesn’t go into the product - evaluating the product to make sure it does
what it is supposed to (and users love it) - what to do and when (“product roadmap”) - how to build it (with development/mfg) - how to sell it (with marketing and sales)
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90% of product management work can be automated...
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Our latest product management hire can handle all this: “Can we get feature x?” “But y would buy our product if we had feature x!” “Our competitor z has feature x!”
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...but it’s the 10% (that you actually decide to do) that makes or breaks a company
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So, how to do it ?
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1. Be your own customer: build products for yourself
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For aspiring legal entrepreneurs, it can make a lot of sense to first get a “normal” legal job to figure out where the pain points are...
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2. Become your own customer: listen, learn, empathize
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Listen to your customers, but remember that they don’t have (all) the answers!
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” – commonly attributed to Henry Ford (possibly apocryphal)
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Remember what your actual product is
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Start small: Minimum viable cake
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Final words of advice - find a specific problem worth addressing - figure out who your customer is (maybe
even sketch a user persona or two?) - get out of the building! - validate your assumptions! - believe in your product... - ...but don’t be afraid to change course if it
turns out you’re on the wrong path
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Thank you!