Changing it up a bit! New segment on this week's News-Press. -- Berkeley Product Press
Issue: #04
Hey Bears,
We decided to switch it up this week and add a new segment that provides you with quality advice about the field of Product Management!
🎓Seniors: Check out our Job Board as we have a couple of opportunities for you!
We are also in the works of creating some exciting features that will continue to grow the community, so come join us on our journey by reaching out! 📧
To any new readers: you can access Berkeley Product Press's archive through our Substack if you have missed any previous publications.
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Terms of the week: B2B, B2C, Target Market, Product Roadmap
New Segment: The Do's & Don'ts of Product Management!
Product Management is an exciting field that continues to grow with more experienced PM's improving their product decisions and creating better products with more efficiency. With creativity continuing to exceed expectations, more counsel & direction are added and with that expectations are raised to a new level. We @Berkpress decided to share a few Do's and Don'ts of Product Management that could help you get a better sense of the field and apply them to your work.
The Do's:
1. Keep educating yourself! It’s important to keep reading information related to your product – old specs, design documents, wiki pages, etc. As you find documentation that is missing or out of date, add to it. Especially if the domain of your product is new to you; read, talk, and listen to find out as much as you can about your product, its proposition, and its users. Spend some time to write up what you’ve learned as it helps with remembering the important points & works as a great reference checkup.
2. Talk to users! We cannot stress enough how important it is to talk to your users.A good way to learn about a product that you’re not fully familiar with is to talk to (target) users. Go out of your way and spend some time with the Customer Services team to take some calls and look into support issues. Whether you work in a B2B or B2C environment, it’s really important to quickly get a first sense of your target audience, their needs and how your product or service addresses those needs.
3. Cut off excess noise! As a Product Manager, you will have many people sharing their opinions and perspectives about the idea, the product, and the vision. The criticism, feedback, and advice you receive should be accepted, however not every information needs to be taken into account. As a PM, figure out who has valuable insight on the product and which opinion matters. Otherwise, the excess noise can eat you up and no progress will be made due to unnecessary panic. So if a stakeholder is unimpressed with the product then you must consider their feedback but if it’s a coworker from another department critiquing your product, there is no need to raise concern.
The Don'ts:
Don't jump in too quickly! When you are working on creating a product you can often get carried away and start working on deeper solutions without prioritizing and organizing your work. This is where Product Roadmaps come into play as they help guide you to your goal. Allow yourself some time to speak to people, key problems and their nuances and to build up a good picture of the business and its customers before working on the product itself and beautifying it through features.
Don't agree to something without asking questions! It is imperative to ask all sorts of questions (even those that might sound stupid) in order to get to the bottom of the proposal or request. Never leave a stakeholder/executive meeting without asking questions about the outline, description, and functions of the product. At the end of the day you will be held responsible for the outcome of the product, so it’s best to have a clear mindset when working on the project.
Don't think of yourself as the customer, you're not! Although you are in the business of building products for customers, you are not the end-user in the cycle. Stay away from personal plans like “this feature will be cool to have.” No matter how “cool”😎 it is, this doesn’t mean it will make your customers happy. Learn to adapt to your target market, and build for their satisfaction.
If you have a point in mind related to Product Management, tag us in your tweets and we'll retweet you!
Funding Alert
👑QUEENLY👑!!!! A startup founded in the 💘 of San Francisco just raised $6.3M in funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, bringing their total funding to date to $7.1M. The startup co-founded by Trisha Bantigue & Kathy Zhou, provides the industry a comprehensive search engine for the formalwear industry by combining a personalized, resale marketplace experience with small-business sales and data analytic tools. Other VCs also participated in the round, some of them being NextView Ventures, Interlace Ventures, MyAsiaVC, Y Combinator, Manik Gupta, Jason Wang, our very own--The House Fund, and more. The funding will be used to aggressively innovate and bring all categories of the formalwear inventory online. Previously the company raised $2.26M of venture funding in a deal led by Dragon Capital on April 22, 2021. To our readers, if any of you beautiful people are looking to buy a really nice dress for yourself, we recommend checking out QUEENLY!
Product Analyst @ TrueCar: TrueCar is changing the car buying experience with their game-changing automotive marketplace. At TrueCar the Product Analyst will be reporting to the Director and playing an integral part in improving their current product and guiding the focus of their future product development and marketing efforts. If this opportunity sounds interesting, click the link above to apply!
Associate Product Manager @ Uber: At Uber, the Associate Product Manager will be working closely with the next generation of product leaders. The Uber APM program fosters a learn-by-doing philosophy that drives innovation from a global perspective. Some of the responsibilities of the APM will be using data to influence product direction, in the form of rider/eater behavior - or other business metrics & challenging all team members to think passionately and creatively and funnel that energy into concrete products and execution plans. If this opportunity sounds interesting, click the link above to apply!
Corporate Marketing Intern @ Salesforce: Salesforce's corporate marketing team is looking to bring on a Futureforce intern this fall. As an intern on their collaborative team, you will gain valuable experience by owning key components of corporate marketing programs and helping to drive those initiatives forward. You will be expected to combine the power of storytelling, research, and writing to translate complex topics into concise messaging that resonate with CIOs and IT leaders. If this opportunity sounds interesting, click the link above to apply!
If you're interested in advertising a role, please reach out to us via email.
Omair Khan is the founder of Berkeley Product Press. Our team focuses on helping students learn and grow about Product domain. If you would like to become a writer for Berkeley Product Press please reach out to us!
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