Should You Be a Startup Product Manager?
How do you decide if you’re ready to take up a Product Manager role at a startup?
A close friend asked me this question today.
When it comes to reviewing your own Product Management career graph, many of us have found ourselves working at startups of various sizes. But there’s also a smaller (relatively) niche of PMs out there who have ended up always staying in mid- to large-size firms — and are now eager to get some startup experience. This could be a need to try something new, shake things up a bit, not wanting to miss out on startup experience etc.
However, to many, this change seems daunting.
I’ve often heard doubts like ‘Why should I leave my comfortable, well-paying job for a startup gig?’ or ‘Is it worth going to a startup if the work is so much more hectic?’ etc.
While I cannot answer for all kinds of roles, I can certainly answer this for Product Managers out there, given that I’ve worked for 5 (out of 8) years in startups. Read on..
I was initially going to list this as an upsides vs downsides kind of article, but then I realised literally each item could be appealing or boring to different readers, so I’m just going to instead list the most relevant factors here. You’ll be the best person to judge how this makes you feel ! My goal is rather to call out the most impactful things to keep in mind. Also, compensation is one of the easier, more objective points of comparison, so I’m gonna skip that here.
You’re in a fast-paced rocketship
Speed is key here. One of the first things you’ll notice is that everything is moving fast — you want to come up with new ideas fast, you want to validate fast, you want to ship fast and learn fast. Would you love being in that kind of pace? In a year, you could launch 3 or 4 different major product lines, you could see a 5x growth in user acquisition or 200% jump in transactions — especially in the case of online products where you can continuously ship new releases and your customer always sees the latest & greatest version of the product.
Do you thrive in that kind of constant motion? Do you enjoy the speed and the variety of new ideas to pursue? Would you be bored if a single feature takes 3 months to ship out to your customers? Then startup ✅
You’re so much more than a PM
Scrappy, lean teams are quite common — if there’s a dedicated full-time person for every different aspect of the job, your company has likely already outgrown the startup phase (which is a positive sign, haha). But more often than not, everyone’s double-hatting it, including PMs. In my first startup, I was mainly hired as an Associate PM, but I spent about 20% of my week in Sales demos or on Customer support calls. In my next startup, I was a PM now, but again spent ~20% of my week in sharing QA load, working with Finance Operations or coming up with design mockups as there was no in-house UX designer. And you don’t even need to wait for someone to hand it to you, you just go in and grab new opportunities as they arise.
Do you enjoy having your hands full with that kind of variety? Do you like trying out new roles & learning different aspects of the business? Would you love experimenting beyond your core skillset? Then startup ✅
Tribal knowledge rules
Startups are always full of colorful stories about major successes or major learning points — which will be passed on to new joinees, but you will never find neatly documented and shared easily. Because who has the time to document stuff? Same goes for most discussions — finding written records of something that happened a year ago, good luck hunting for it. One of my startups once had a massive campaign planned, but missed adding anti-gaming rules on the promocode redemption. Eventually this cost them a lot, and resulted in an ops-heavy rollout, and all team members shuddered to even think about it later. How’d I find out about it? Chatting with the Marketing buddy while working on the next promo campaign — definitely not reading about it on Confluence. :)
Do you enjoy speaking to the old-timers over coffee & finding out the stories of the past? Do you love trying out your own product and creating your own documentation? Would you never look for your product FAQs? Then startup ✅
But before you take that plunge —
Here are some handy pointers to additionally keep an eye on.
- Constantly changing directions
Startups haven’t gotten it all figured out — which means everyone’s trying & experimenting. The fast pace is a double-edged sword: If new projects & ideas can come up quickly, they can be shelved and disbanded just as quickly. Mid-quarter pivots, org-wide restructures, CEO-led initiatives — are all everyday news. Just get in the boat and row. You can’t expect a full debate & due process to be followed for each of these, because where is the time? I’ve not yet met a PM who hasn’t been flustered by this at some point or the other. It’s a certainty, so expect it.
- Perks and benefits — where, what, huh ?
Most startups are cash-strapped, as they should be. It’s hard to get in good talent, and they will focus on bringing them in with minimal cost to company. So say goodbye to those free coffees & snacks, fitness membership benefits and company phone reimbursements — no fancy team outings, no sprawling swanky offices — these are likely to show up only once a couple of rounds of funding are in. Your focus then should be on the more basic compensation package, as that’s where the line pretty much ends. Negotiate as well as you can here, because why not.
- Work-life balance definitely takes a hit
Everyone will have the pressure to meet their goals & OKRs, everyone is on that mad race. And every ounce of time / effort you can squeeze out, will be put towards this. I’m not scaring you, I’m calling it like it is, because the company literally needs to prove it’s worth. So if you’re a 9-to-5 kinda person (how did you become a PM?), then be prepared to make a few exceptions on these, because there’s always an urgent release around the corner.
So after all is said and done, your motivation needs to be really, really strong to be in a startup. It’s not for the faint-hearted. :)
Maybe it’s because you are keen to break into that hot FinTech space. Maybe you got offered the Head of Product role & you’d love to run your own team! Maybe you’re tired of super slow processes in MNCs and you want to shake things up. Keep that motivation clear. Because there will come a few days now and then, where the pace, the chaos & lack of direction will trip you up. You will surely miss the quieter days, you’ll question why are you really here? And at that moment, your motivation better be clear!
