A basic market problem always presents itself to aspiring Product managers. Almost all companies require previous PM experience, why is that? Here is an economist’s view of things. A picture speaks a thousand words! Continue reading “An aspiring PM and an economist walk into a bar”
Category: product management
Compete or Die – LiveNation Part Deux
Business success contains the seeds of its own destruction. The more Successful you are, the more people want a chunk of your business and then another chunk and then another until there is nothing ― Andrew S. Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive
So who should LiveNation be paranoid about? Who are its competitors?
As we saw the last post, LiveNation can be thought of a vertically integrated full-service live entertainment company. A comparable public competitor is the Madison Square Garden Company (MSG). They also describe themselves as the premier live entertainment company. Via their 10k Continue reading “Compete or Die – LiveNation Part Deux”
Specialists vs Generalists – it’s nuanced and why you should read 10-k’s in your spare time
The topic of generalists vs specialists always comes up in PM hiring and strategy conversations. I see PM hiring managers and PM’s themselves struggle with this a lot. What got me thinking about this topic is David Epstein’s new book Range. The core thesis in the book is, and I quote, “Range explains how to maintain the benefits of breadth, diverse experience, interdisciplinary thinking, and delayed concentration in a world that increasingly incentivizes, even demands, hyperspecialization.” So how should you think about this topic? What are the nuances?
Cross-sell is dead
Every companies’ strategy mentions owning the full customer relationship as a key goal. The thinking goes somewhat like this.
- We have identified a customer need in a super specific niche area inside a large industry vertical.
- Once we acquire this customer for this super specific need, we want to continue serving them and building a relationship with them
- This same customer has varied needs that exist in the large industry vertical, a vertical that is unnecessary complex and filled with incumbents offering poor products.
- We will build products that address all their needs. We will cross them into all these products
- The customer is happy as there is only one place to go for all his needs
- We will own the customer for everything they need in that industry vertical – we build high LTV
Anti Pattern – The Head Of problem.
The anti-pattern I’d like to explore today is what I affectionally call the head of
It starts off quite innocently. Let’s assume you are the CEO at the early stages of a company and you have identified a problem to solve, say in the general area of customer support. Customer support as a function doesn’t exist yet. You ask around your peer group, you look at successful companies and then you make the common mistake – you get afflicted by senior’
Anti Pattern – The Ponzi Roadmap
The anti-pattern I’d like to explore today is the Ponzi roadmap. It usually starts with the best of intentions but has extremely harmful effects as a company scales.
When a company is in the initial stages and has a small engineering and product team the planning model that emerges is what I call the pooled model. Engineering is considered a pool of resources and usually composed of full-stack engineers. The product is typically small and mostly a monolith, every engineer can work on anything and there are just a few PM’s (maybe just one). Since we are all agile, every quarter the PM comes up with a list of priorities and outcomes, engineering staffs the priority from its pool of engineers and delivers outcomes. The next quarter rolls around and we do this all over again. Engineers move on to working on different things every quarter. This makes perfect sense in a small company – but goes horribly wrong as you start scaling up.
Robots will solve everything | Don’t believe the RPA hype
RPA, if you haven’t heard about it yet, you will pretty soon. So what is it? Here is a video from IBM
Continue reading “Robots will solve everything | Don’t believe the RPA hype”
Some advice for aspiring PM’s
Product management is the new hotness. I regularly get asked advice on how to become a product manager. What follows are some tips!
Continue reading “Some advice for aspiring PM’s”
Nostalgia kills | Practical tips for leaders
Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory – Franklin Pierce Adams
We’ve all read about how culture eats strategy for lunch. The internet is jam-packed with a million blog posts on the superficialities of culture. Its time for some inside baseball with some actual actionable things to watch out for and prevent.
It is absolutely true that the culture of the company dictates how it can adapt to change and eventually succeed. Culture is hugely important, however along the journey from a small company to a midsize company to a large public company, the culture will change. At all these stages, different parts of the company will have different cultures and norms. In fact sometimes within the same team, you will have differences based on where the teams are located and their size.
Continue reading “Nostalgia kills | Practical tips for leaders”
Its been 10 long years | Lessons from the GFC
It’s been 10 years since the 2008 financial crisis. Astute observers will correct me and point out that the crisis actually started in early 2007 when the Bear Stearns High-Grade Structured Credit collapsed. This was the first collapse of a hedge fund that was loaded up to the gills with subprime CDO’s. If you were following FT Alphaville in late 2006/ early 2007, you’d be ahead of the game. The signs were there! Some great coverage to relive and re-read
So how does this relate to you, young product manager? Some obvious and simple lessons articulated below. Continue reading “Its been 10 long years | Lessons from the GFC”