Product management is the closest to “owning” anything in a tech company. As a product manager you are responsible for the overall product feature set, development, design as well as the business metrics—competitive landscape, customer acquisition, how to market and sell the product.
It also touches all parts of the organization. Product managers work with engineering, design, sales, marketing and executive management. The product management role as a result is a great career path towards a CEO role—especially with a startup.
It is a highly sought after skill set and hard to find people with the right experience.
I had the great opportunity to interview Larry Cornett a very accomplished product executive. He was most recently VP of consumer products for Yahoo, and has worked with the biggest and best consumer and internet companies such as eBay, Apple and IBM. He is currently the CEO of Brilliant Forge focused on Product and Design advisory services for Fortune 500 companies and startups.
He has hired some of the best product talent and he says most product managers come into this line of work with an MBA. An MBA comes in handy for all the business things that are required with the job (mentioned above). A technology understanding is not necessary but can be very helpful. If you don’t have that technical degree, you will need to “learn enough to be dangerous”.
Here below is my interview with Larry, he address so of the key question such as what are the entry points for product management, skills required, challenges and growth potential.
Want to find out more about this career—Larry recommends:
• How To Create Products Customers Love
• TED
• TechCrunch
• Techmeme