How do I become a Product Manager, at a purpose-led organisation or startup?

Gone are the days when 'tech' and 'innovation' were words only associated with the corporate world. 

Tech is increasingly involved in ‘for good’ organisations, whether that means a food waste saving app, or a website that helps you calculate your carbon footprint. 

Product Owners or Product Managers typically lead developer and programmer teams to get the desired effect for the app, software or website in question. Skills you’ll need are empathy for the customer’s needs, prioritisation skills to not get lost in less important product tweaks, good collaboration aptitudes to get everyone working towards one goal across departments, and more.

But how do you get into this kind of career, let alone for a social, environmental or startup organisation? We’ve interviewed some professionals working in these roles and in the startup/purpose-led sector to get a feel for how they made it there, and what advice they would give to budding Product Managers or Owners that are ready to take the leap.

Gopika Mohanan is the Head of Product at TIER Mobility, Europe's leading shared micro-mobility provider. On a mission to change mobility for good through light, electric vehicles, they were also the first micro-mobility provider to become climate neutral in 2020. 

Mihan Borhani has been the Product Owner at Devex, the media platform for the international development community, with a user base of +1 million health, humanitarian, and sustainability professionals, and recently Product Manager at FreeNOW, a mobility super app for taxis, car sharing, e-scooters, e-bikes and e-mopeds.

Tadas Labudis is the Senior Director of Product Management at Playvox where he is leading AI/ML initiatives for the contact centre. He is also the founder of Prodsight, an AI text analytics startup. His specialty is 'zero to one' as he spent the last 13 years building and launching new products.

Thank you for joining us today! To start off, could you tell us your favourite, and least favourite, part of working in Product?

Mihan: My favourite aspect of it is the customer aspect: getting to understand our customer's behaviour, their needs, what motivates them. My least favourite aspect is how chaotic it can be, as you have to wear many hats and bring together many people in different roles to make things happen effectively and efficiently. 

Gopika: My favourite part of working as a product leader is the ability to enable my teams to bring new and innovative products to market that solve real problems for our customers and make a positive impact on the community. I particularly enjoy being part of the micro-mobility industry, which is relatively new and exciting and impactful, and the opportunity to shape the direction of the industry. On the other hand, my least favourite part is dealing with the trade-offs and constraints that come with bringing a product to market, especially during an economic crisis. Deciding which initiatives to incubate, costs to cut, and so on can be difficult and can affect both the direction of the product organisation and the team's motivation.

Tadas: I love the prototyping stage the most. Working with the team to imagine new concepts and seeing them evolve and come to life through rapid prototyping gives me a lot of satisfaction.

The least favourite is getting into the monotony of endless agile ceremonies.

Could you tell us a little bit about what your day-to-day tasks are like in your current job?

Gopika: As the Head of Product at TIER, a micro-mobility company, my day-to-day tasks are focused on leading our growth product organisation and managing the teams responsible for Activation, Engagement, Pricing, and Subscriptions. This includes guiding product managers to set the right OKRs for their products, helping to build the product strategy for each of these product streams, providing input on the roadmap that the product managers have put together, and ensuring that the product deliverables are directly contributing to the business goals. I also play a role in fostering a sense of community and collaboration within the product organisation and working to keep the team motivated, as well as unblocking any blockers related to capacity or resources that are preventing the product managers from performing their roles. Essentially, I work as a mentor, enabler, and advisor for the teams.

Mihan: My day-to-day was largely made of meetings with team members and internal stakeholders with the goals being to set and communicate high-level goals and objectives for our cross-functional team (on a quarterly basis, with accountability checks in between), as well as prioritise and plan the next steps for our product. In addition to strategy and planning, there was a lot of admin (meeting planning, communications, documentation) and coordination among different roles in the cross-functional team to align everyone and make sure the execution of our plans was going well.

Tadas: Most of my work broadly splits into two categories - discovery and delivery.

On the discovery side, my goal is to figure out what products or features would be most valuable to develop for our customers. On a day-to-day basis this might mean researching the market and developing a product strategy, participating in customer research interviews, working with designers and developers to explore product concepts.

On the delivery side, it’s all about enabling my team to deliver the products or features we have designed in the discovery phase as efficiently as possible. Like many agile teams, we have a lot of regular ceremonies such as daily scrums, sprint planning, backlog refinement and retrospectives to plan and execute on our plans.

Did you do any formal training/qualifications that are relevant to your job?

Mihan: No, I learned on the job and I think that as a product person, it's good to understand best practices and so on, but each organisation and role is so different that the really impactful training happens on the job.

Gopika: While my background is in arts and business innovation and entrepreneurship, I believe in continuous learning and have invested in elevating my product knowledge through short courses and blogs such as following the Reforge Blog and pursuing courses on Data Analytics. I also recommend taking an "intro to computer science course" to learn about how systems interact and how services are built. Additionally, I've attended several camps on interactive telecommunications to deepen my understanding of the possibilities of technology and the interactions between hardware and software. While it's not a necessary requirement, having a general curiosity in applying technology in innovative ways is essential for a product role.

Tadas: I graduated with a business degree from the University of Glasgow. Whilst it gave me a good academic understanding of how a business and an economy works, a lot of what I ended up using to break into product management actually came from doing and learning things on my own when building Eventhread. Whilst building the startup I had to learn to use design and prototyping software, coding, marketing and seeing first hand how various business concepts apply in practice.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to switch their already established career and get into a Product Manager/Owner role, particularly in a purpose-led organisation?

Mihan: People get into Product in all kinds of ways and from all kinds of backgrounds. Having experience in project management in fast-paced environments can be a good start. I also tend to advise that people enter companies through roles that they have more experience in (e.g. project management; data analysis; customer experience) and then transition into product laterally, within the same organisation. 

Gopika: For someone looking to transition into a product role, my advice would be to first look for opportunities within your current company. Even if you don't have the exact experience, building trust with your current employer can make it more likely for them to trust you with additional responsibilities. Additionally, joining a startup who is just building out their product can also be a great way to gain hands-on experience and add to your resume.

Another important step would be to reach out to Product Managers on LinkedIn who work at the organisations you are interested in and learn about the day-to-day of their roles. Building connections within the industry can also help you leverage your network and increase your chances of landing a role in the organisation that you're interested in.

Additionally, It would be a good idea to take short courses, read blogs, and gain knowledge and understanding of the specific social or environmental issues the organisation addresses and how your expertise can contribute to these issues.

Tadas: For people wanting to break into Product Management, my recommendation would be to try and build something. It can be an app, a website, an ebook or even a prototype on paper. There is nothing better than throwing yourself a challenge and working through it to completion.

Then, the biggest difference between corporate and startup jobs is the amount of resources and specialisation that is available. In startups, there are fewer people to delegate things to which means that you need to do most of it yourself. This means that practical experience. My recommendation would be to focus on practical achievements and skills that can be directly applied in the startup role.

Inspired by these Product Leaders and want to get in on the action yourself? Try setting up email alerts for Product-related jobs via our Job Board, or maybe join an Escape Route walk in your location to chat to other corporate escapees for advice. Happy job searching!