Product career driven by entrepreneurship and founder passion

Product career driven by entrepreneurship and founders' passion

Some thoughts I had to get out of my mind after a good conversation I had last week with a good friend who challenged a little bit my career path, so: David, why startups and scale-ups and not a less chaotic big corporation?

I kind of had 3 possible answers in my head:

1)Well, because it is what I have been doing for almost 15 years, so why change now?

2)Because it is just now, after all these years, that I start getting to understand what I do well, so let's keep going.

3)Because I am hooked on the adrenaline that working with founders and startups gives you.

The reality is a mix of the three answers above, but the main reason is working so closely with founders has given me a career path and growth driven by pure PASSION. A Founder is so invested on many levels in his project that he indirectly sells it to you every day through his actions, and for me, that is key to recharging and keep solving problems and pushing myself with high levels of energy and involvement. It gives you purpose, so everything else that comes next, the basic product responsibilities (user interviews, road mapping, stakeholder management, sprint management…), becomes much easier.

To explain better where I am coming from because I have experienced this to varying degrees. My career path in Product Management has always been tied up to founders and entrepreneurship/startups but in different scenarios. I will exclude here the two attempts at startups I co-founded that I had to close before reaching 2 years. (Yep, I know, the third startup will be the good one; I just haven't found a problem big enough to solve yet. But I am slowly getting into Sustainability and Social Impact.)

Let's start and explain the four phases of my product career path.

The trajectory

1st. Technova Incubator - ideation + business planning + fundraising

My professional career started with an internship in a tech incubator where I spent 5 years, and I ended up managing the Entrepreneurship department. Imagine chatting with entrepreneurs every single day... founders coming to you full of passion, energy, and enthusiasm about problems and their solutions/products. Some of the problems you never heard of before, problems you didn't know existed, and you end up fully committed to them. If you have the same levels of empathy that I do, then you connect quite fast with them, which also implies the challenge of not falling in love with the product/idea and being very business-oriented. Key learning: At that point, I understood that working with founders comes with such a level of passion (ups and downs) that it keeps me motivated enough to not give up.

2nd LucyFund - Idea + Tech Development

Having the founders/startups side clear, I wanted to dive deeper into the product itself instead of covering the entire spectrum of support for entrepreneurs, which I did in the incubator. So, I moved to Dublin, where I experienced the same joy as above but with an extra level of commitment. I landed a job as a Product Manager where we invested in entrepreneurs and built the MVPs in-house, so I had to work hand in hand with the founders to design an MVP to validate market fit and then manage development teams to bring it into reality and hand it over to the founder. Here, you are managing development teams as if the products were yours; you are so invested that you feel like the founder itself. Then, showing progress to the founders regularly and seeing their concerns and reactions is an experience difficult to describe because you really take it personally and feel literally like an extension of the founder. But in the end, it was their baby, and they knew more about the vision and the industry, so you better listen carefully to what the founder envisions. Key learning: I loved it; building stuff and then trying to prove market fit was cool. But then I realized, okay, let's go even deeper. Building MVPs is not enough; I need to follow up and evolve the product to a v2, apply learnings, and make the product better. The problem is, we rarely invested in v2, so I was hooked but couldn't get my hands dirty anymore.

3rd Clavis -> Edge by Ascential - Pure Product for demanding enterprises and scale it.

So still in Dublin and trying to gain some focus and a more long-term relationship with just one product, I ended up in a B2B startup that was just setting up the product team. I spent 5 incredible years there. The experience went from building a solid SaaS to then helping to scale a startup that was acquired and then merged with 3 more competitors. Amazing experience. The magic here was working with a serial entrepreneur who was very well-invested and accessible, a founder who would get involved often. Here, I am well aware that some people will see it as a pain to have the Founder coming into demos or asking for changes, but I saw it as an opportunity to understand how business, vision, and strategic inputs shape the product and the decisions I have to make. Key learning: A Founder changes and evolves while the startup scales, so your approach as a Product Manager also needs to constantly adapt so that your skills keep aligned with the startup needs and the founders vision.. Sometimes it's not clear at the time, but founders tend to make decisions thinking way ahead of where we are.

4th Loyal Guru - Product + people

And here we go, one more time, building and scaling a product with direct access to the founders, which again, some people will criticize the extreme involvement founders can have in their products. But think about it, having to say NO or trying to change the mind of somebody's "baby" startup is a challenge that makes you stronger in many ways. And again, any interaction comes with a lot of energy and passion, so you leave a meeting feeling the same urgency and commitment to accomplish that goal as if the company was yours. The challenge I have as a leader is making sure that passion and commitment get into all levels of a product organization. It's easy to forget why we are doing what we do when we are all so focused on the short-term routines of product management. We forget why the startup or product started in the first place and where it should be in 2 years; this is what founders don't forget. Key learning: It is not enough to get this adrenaline from the founder; it is important to pass it on and enjoy the process of scaling a product together. Founders ideally will hire you to tell them where the product should go, but there is a high chance that what they really need is somebody to materialize the vision and make it happen. Understanding what kind of founder you are dealing with will also determine your career path and skill sets. There are many flavours of product management; I think they are all right as long as you enjoy them and bring the product to the next level.

Conclusion

This is just my personal experience and opinion. This worked for me and might not work for you. The important thing is to find that key formula that keeps you evolving and brings out the best in you in a product management role. In my case, a lack of passion or motivation doesn't help me do a good job. I don’t work just to get paid.

To be clear, some product managers find their passion or career path depending on specific industries or because they want to solve specific customer problems. Some are very industry agnostic and they just enjoy the day-to-day of product management. In my case, it has been trying to materialize the vision of founders into products that solve real problems and, during this process, support any people in the organization to achieve that. We are all part of the product.

Anyway, that's me, and that's how I found a pattern to drive my career path, which helps me to clearly identify my next moves. Knowing this makes me confident I give 100% of my energy to shape products. I just hope that when my time to be a founder comes again, I can inspire with the same level of passion I had in the last few years.

Thanks for reading. I'm up for debate and discussion. Just drop me a line on LinkedIn. This is a summary of many years, so some details may not be fully understood.

Barcelona, Catalonia