Our experience building product teams for tech startups and scaleups has shown us that there is no single path into a product management career. Successful product management leaders and individual contributors enter the profession through any number of earlier careers, whether engineering, marketing, sales, or as a subject matter expert from the industry. The same…
Looking to scale product ops? We sat down with May Wong, Co-author of The Product Operations Manifesto, Organizer of ProductTO, and all-around product operations expert, to share her advice with Product Management leaders looking to build out or scale their product ops team. Pull back the curtain to help us understand the value a…
Is it just me, or is everyone talking about product operations lately? One contributing factor is a recent Lenny podcast with guests Melissa Perri and Dennis Tilles, where they talked about their latest book ‘Product Operations: How Successful Companies Build Better Products at Scale.’ In Lenny’s podcast interview, he pointed out that approximately half of…
When interviewing for product operations roles, it’s essential to cut through the fluff and focus on the core skills that matter. While this is in no way an exhaustive list, this article offers a set of questions that get to the heart of a candidate’s skills and experience, helping hiring managers better determine whether the…
We asked 6 Product Leaders across the US and Canada: What do you want first time Founder or CEO to understand about experienced product leaders to ensure they make the right CPO or VP Product hire? Here is what they said: If you’ve managed to get to the point where you need a CPO you’ve likely done a whole lot right!…
Building a customer-obsessed product team transcends robust user and product metrics – it fundamentally involves engaging in dialogue with customers! Achieving the right balance between these two elements is vital. Here’s how: 1. Define Your Customer During my tenure as a Senior PM at Amazon, where I supported external vendors in the supply chain technology…
The more senior and experienced a Founder/CEO is, the more they realize that teams are not solely built by leveraging a personal network, offering referral bonuses to staff, or posting a job on a website. Often, companies are built through the work done by search firms. Martyn Bassett Associates provides engaged search services to startups and scale-ups…
One of the most daunting yet exciting initiatives a business can undertake is a digital transformation leveraging product management principles. We’ve had the pleasure of being engaged by several organizations to recruit product talent to lead digital transformation initiatives. Recruiting on behalf of a client for such a hire requires a consultative approach across the stakeholders and…
Congratulations – the ink is dry on your last raise, and it’s finally time to build out the ELT you’ve dreamed of; starting with a VP of Product Management. As a recruiting partner to startups and scale-ups across North America, the decision to hire a VP Product is a defining time in a Founder’s journey. This is the moment when…
We’ve been building product teams for tech startups since 2006. Shortly after the launch of our Product Practice in 2016, we began engaging with leaders across the adtech category. Through these searches, we quickly learned that hiring adtech Product Managers was a friction-filled hiring journey for most product leaders. Here are the three common friction points that…
We are back continuing our product management hiring series focused on the challenges many DTC brands face. This article explores the second top reason why it’s hard to hire DTC product management talent and what you can do to overcome this roadblock and get to a “hell yes” hire quickly. Today we talk about money or the…
Today is part two of our series focused on diagnosing why it’s so hard to hire DTC product talent and what you can do to overcome the roadblocks to get to a “hell yes” hire. And the #1 reason is… many DTC brands are not “real” tech companies! Before everyone gets too excited, we know this…
As product management Recruiters, there isn’t a product category we haven’t invested countless hours researching and recruiting. The “DTC” category of products is the most fun to recruit for – it’s also one of the most difficult. What is DTC? A DTC (Direct-to-Consumer) business is a business model where a company sells its products or…
We are no strangers to building product management teams. Our first product management search was completed in 2006, and in response to the increasing global demand for product talent, we launched our product practice in 2016. Over the years we’ve recruited CPO and VP Product Management level hires from all product tech categories, including law and legaltech. Differences in Recruiting…
Your Step-by-step Guide and Downloadable Checklist How do you hire a Product Manager? It may seem like a simple question, but many Founders only realize how challenging and nuanced it can be once it’s too late. We have met many leaders who have applied traditional techniques and approaches to hiring a Product Manager and quickly realized…