My first product management job was an unconventional one. After college, I joined a small strategy consulting firm named Applied Predictive Technologies (“APT”). APT was disrupting strategy consulting with an analytics platform that automated a lot of repetitive data modeling. As a consultant, I was a power user of the software and was able to influence the direction of the product by giving feedback to the engineers. Eventually, I joined APT’s newly-minted Product Management function.

After leaving the firm, I never thought about the differences between Product Management at APT and other companies I would go on to work at. That is, until last year, when I joined Carta as a Product Director on their Valuations team.

I first encountered the term Technology-Enabled Services at Carta. Our CEO, Henry Ward, enters services businesses to create value, lower costs, and drive margins with software. Much of what I have learned about the topic comes straight from him.

Product Strategy for Technology Enabled Services

As the product manager for a technology-enabled service, your goal is two-fold:

1. Create differentiated value in order to capture market share

2. Create leverage for service providers to drive margin

Creating a differentiated offering

To win market share in a service business, you need to convince customers that your offering will be better because it’s backed by technology. For example, Redfin was one of the first real-estate agencies that allowed home buyers to look at properties online. Redfin’s home browse/search experience allows buyers to peruse home inventory and easily schedule tours. It lowers the barrier to starting a new home search and gets prospective customers through the doors. Traditional real estate agents rely on word of mouth and relationship-building, but Redfin acquires customers by making it easy for them to find their dream home through transparency and a great UX.

Creating leverage

In tech-enabled service businesses, product managers solve for two primary audiences, end users and service providers. Creating leverage means building tools for service providers. For vertically integrated companies, these service providers are employees of your company. They are your internal stakeholders. By observing their practice, you can systematically start to automate parts of their workflow. Automation can eliminate human error and take much of the drudgery out of the job. Service professionals can optimize their output, both in terms of volume and quality. For example, Pilot is an outsourced accounting service that turbo-charges their bookkeepers through software.

Making trade-offs between Growth and Leverage

Product managers need to focus on making trade-offs between the growth/customer experience features and leverage features targeted towards service providers. The healthy balance between these two investments correlates with the maturity of the product.

Zero to 1

In the beginning, you should focus on creating a differentiated experience. Why should customers move from a traditional service provider with an excellent reputation to your offering? You need to build something traditional service providers can’t offer.

Last year, when Carta entered the Fund Administration business, one of the first projects the team worked on was a real-time schedule of investments (SOI). The SOI allows VCs to track their investments in terms of cost, ownership, and value. It’s one of the most important outputs of the Fund Admin service. Traditional Fund Admin shops provide VCs updated versions of the SOI once a quarter. We wanted to show our customers why Carta can build a much more compelling offering. Brokerage accounts are real time, so VC portfolios should be too. This early win helped us tell a compelling story about Carta Fund Administration.

Product Market Fit

When your offering has traction with the early adopters, you need to think about scale while continuing to build out the customer facing experience. As a general rule of thumb, it is a bad idea to cut corners while building leverage features. When you are scaling the business, being short-sighted will come back to bite you. Steer clear from MVPs because you have already validated your product offering. You know what the process looks like without product, and so you can take a holistic data-driven approach to solve problems. These are long term investments so think about the ideal solution and work backward. What are the building blocks you need to create a solid foundation for the future of the product? You also want to revisit features built during the zero to one phase. Pay down your technical debt early and be thoughtful about how you scale.

For customer-facing features, ask your self what your product needs to cross the chasm between early adopters to the early majority. Your early adopters were willing to envision how the throne you’ve built would turn into the most fantastic castle. The early majority will need to see a structure with a roof. Think about how you deliver a complete product experience as you move into the mainstream market.

Scaling

Technology-enabled services can grow to be much bigger than traditional services businesses. Carta is now the biggest provider of 409A Valuations in the industry. As you get buy-in from the greater market, scaling becomes a more significant focus for product development. To build a strong business, you need to grow your margins and get more out of your service staff.

The good news is that you have data. Data will help you identify leverage opportunities in the tools you’ve built for your service providers. Data also allows you to develop AI to automate even the more nuanced parts of the service providers’ job.

Tomaz Tunguz, a General Partner at Redpoint Ventures, wrote about the concept of “AI agencies” on his blog.

The AI Agency aims to leverage technology to break free from the linear relationship between revenue and people. Starting an AI Agency has two important benefits for machine learning companies.

First, they create a data advantage. As they operate, AI agencies create high quality data for training machine learning models. In its early days, an AI agency operates identically to its less sophisticated cousin. But as it scales and as it grows, the AI agency replaces human hands with software. They accelerate workflows, and eventually automates some fraction of them.

AI-powered automation will help widen your competitive advantage and give you the option to pass on the cost savings to your customers.

At Carta, on the 409A valuations product, we’ve leveraged machine learning to alleviate burdensome tasks. For example, we created a tool that recommends comparable public market companies, a key input to valuing a private business.

Investment in customer-facing features continues to be important in this phase. The market traction should allow you to justify all overall increased investment in R&D. Think about usability as your product becomes bloated with features. If you don’t, incumbents will have the opportunity to steal market share with superior user experience.

While you are scaling, you also need to think about where your product could go next. The greater market share gives you the power to change the game. I’ll cover some of the strategic frameworks to employ for this next phase of innovation in my third post of this series.

Are you building a technology-enabled service? What have been your biggest learnings? I’d love to hear from you.

Take a minute

When chaos strikes, find your calm. A mental health day or a long walk can help you collect your thoughts so you can return more composed.

Putting things in perspective will go a long way. During one such chaotic episodes I experienced, a coworker was dealing with the death of a dear friend. Most of us do not deal with life and death situations at work. Calibrating your emotions to the severity of the chaos will help you take a more mindful, measured approach towards your next step.

Be the duck

Naomi Gleit, VP of Product at Facebook, keeps a duck figurine at her desk to remind her to stay calm on the surface even when she is pedaling furiously underneath. Your team will take their cue from you in times of turbulence. If you remain calm, your team will as well, and this can help maintain collective focus and productivity.

Make a List

Chaos can paralyze you. To return to action, ask yourself, “what is step one?” What should continue to happen and what needs revision? The list of unknowns can produce a list of questions, and thinking through how to answer those questions can generate your list of next steps.

Extend that umbrella

Your job is to extend the umbrella and shield your team from distractions. Turn that umbrella into a full “shit-repelling” globe. Use your judgment to keep your team in the know as needed. Anticipating the source of unnecessary clamor early and preventing it from reaching your team will prevent projects from going off the rails.

Label the shit

When times are tough, nobody wants to hear from Dr. Pangloss. Instead, people want you to acknowledge their pain. In Never Split the Difference, hostage negotiator, Chris Voss, suggests the concept of “labeling” as an effective way to disarm and manage emotions. Labeling is to acknowledge someone’s emotions by verbalizing them. Labeling statements generally start with “It seems like…,” “It sounds like…” or “It looks like…” For example, you might say “It sounds like you are distraught that your coworker was let go because you will miss her and are concerned about her future.” Helping your team process the pain will help them navigate past the chaos and onto a healthier working environment.

Get Back to Business

Moving on from a period of upheaval means getting back to the basics. As product managers, we work with cross-functional teams to ship products that drive value to end users and grow the business. Do that. Talk to users. Plan a sprint. Ship some product. Measure results. Rinse and Repeat.

I hope you found this helpful. I wrote this post to not only share what I have learned with others but also to embrace this advice myself.

The Product Manager Onboarding Playbook

We’ve all seen the Venn diagrams illustrating the role of product managers. Product managers interact with cross-functional teams to ship products that drive value for users.

Setting up your newly hired product manager for success means giving her the right set of context and tools, and helping her build the right relationships early on.

I start with this framework to help set expectations for the first six months of a PM’s tenure:

First 30 Days — People, Product, Process

The initial 30 days are about breadth. Your new PM needs to build relationships, understand the product, and the ways of the organization. Put together a 30 Day Checklist for new PMs broken down into the categories of People, Product, and Process. At Carta, we are big fans of Asana, so we use that for our onboarding checklists. Any task management tool will do. Be sure to do it in a way you can easily create a copy for each new hire.

People: PMs needs to navigate complex environments and work with cross-functional teams. Help your PM put her right foot forward by gathering a list of the people she should set-up 1–1s within her first 30 days. This list should include peers, people on her team (i.e., engineers, designers, QA), leads of other teams she might interact with, stakeholders, managers, execs, etc. You are going to have a better sense of who she should be talking to early on, so it’s worth providing some context in the 30-day checklist about who the person is and his/her role. Be sure to encourage your PM to get to know people. These peace-time relationships will pay dividends in the long-run.

Product: Understanding the product starts with understanding the vision. Equip your PM with relevant materials that describe the company’s vision. If no such documents exist, a conversation may suffice. I highly recommend working with company leadership to put something together. The goal is to make sure your PM has a higher level understanding of where the company is heading so she can understand how she fits in. At Carta, we have a recording of our CEO addressing the company at a recent all-hands, painting the vision of Carta and where we are going next. Every new hire watches this video during onboarding. People love it, and it’s been a great way to get them pumped on day one.

Once she has a handle on vision and strategy, walk your PM through the different user groups your products serves. Who are they? How do your products fit into their lives? What are their “Jobs to Be Done” and which do your products solve? Share any relevant user testing videos, synthesized user research, or user persona write-ups.

While your PM will need to go deep on the product line she will own, make sure she gets exposure to all of other products and experiences (if possible). I like to put together a series of user-centric tasks and see if my PM can figure out how to get them done with our product. Be sure to document any testing guidelines like pre-production testing URLs, log-in credentials, test credit card numbers, etc.

At Carta, we work on highly technical products and domain knowledge is important. We have a collection of internal help documents that break down these technical concepts. We also maintain a list of books that are helpful to read. Put these resources on the checklist so your PM can systematically make her way through this material.

Process: Every organization has a general set of guidelines for how to operate. Set your PM up with the basics of how to navigate your organization and get her job done. What are the tools you use as a company? How does she get access to these tools? Are there specific permissions she needs to be set-up with? What groups does she need to get added to on Slack or email? What are the recurring meetings your PM should be added to? Hopefully, your team can take care of much of this set-up work prior to the PM joining, but putting these items on the check-list is a good way to verify the set-up is complete. It also is a good opportunity to talk about how to use tools or provide context for meetings.

Then there are the technical how-tos of the job. How do you kick-off a project? What are the expectations around writing requirements? Is there a formal approval process for design sign-off? The understanding of expectations around green-lighting projects and execution is critical in enabling your PM to ship product.

Lastly, make a list of the cultural norms and practices within your team and your org that your PM needs to know about. As an example, at Carta, we have a “Show & Tell” all hands meetings every Wednesday morning where anyone at the company can present something they are working on. We also have an internal set of values that guide our actions, lead firstmost by “Always be helpful.”

30 Day Reflection

I ask all new PMs to keep a running list of observations, questions, pain points, and ideas. This is excellent fodder for early 1–1s and generally a source of insightful feedback for your processes, product, and business. At the end of the 30 days, I ask my PM to share this list with a broader group — generally the product management team.

First 3 months — Execution

Having early wins as a new hire is essential. For product managers, that likely means shipping product to actual customers. As a manager, you need to partner with your PM to find these early wins and also give her exposure through experience. If the PM is on a large, high priority initiative, I try to find a smaller project she can take from concept to launch in the first three months.

The key is to expose your PM to the critical touch points of your product development process. Sometimes it might mean giving her a combination of small projects in different phases. Early wins will also help bolster her credibility at the company which can set her up for success as a product manager.

First 6 months — Vision and Strategy

Product Managers, byways of their role have a unique position at the company due to their breadth of exposure. They understand their product better than anyone in the organization because they get input from both internal and external stakeholders. It is essential for PMs to go beyond execution and develop a point of view on the product and business. As a manager, you need to empower PMs to feel ownership over the company and represent their point of view to key decision makers in the organization. How do you do that? Ask her questions. Instead of letting your PM look to you for strategy, defer to her and provide feedback. You will not only empower her but also scale yourself!

TL;DR

1. Product Management onboarding can be thought of in three phases — first 30 days, first three months, first 6 months
2. The first 30 days are about breadth. Put together a 30-day checklist broken up by people, product, and process to help your PM gain context and develop peace-time relationships.
3. The first 3 months are about perfecting execution. Give your PM projects she can actually launch within the 3-month window to help her establish early wins as well as learn your product development process.
4. At the end of the first 6 months, your PM should have a point of view on the direction of her product. Set this expectation early and empower her to own product strategy and vision.

I hope this guide is useful. If there are things you’ve done in PM onboarding that has been particularly effective, leave a comment! I would love to continue to refine my playbook.

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#nonewclothes2019

I love clothing as a form of self-expression. I have never been the type to be on trend with the latest fashions, but I have an affinity towards color, prints, and textures. In recent years, I have become more conscious of the fashion industry’s effect on the environment. With the proliferation of fast fashion, clothes prematurely end up in landfills. Newsweek reported in 2016 that Americans are generating 14M tons of clothing waste a year. To exasperate the problem, much of the clothing today is made out of synthetic fabrics that are not biodegradable. Even clothes made from natural fibers go through chemical processes and are harmful to the environment when they end up in landfills. We can change this trend, save money, and preserve our planet. In 2019, I will buy no new clothes, and I am asking you to join me.

The New Clothes Cleanse Gameplan

To survive this year, I am employing a collection of strategies as well as a new mindset.

1. Better utilize my current wardrobe: In a recent series on my favorite podcast, 99% Invisible, Avery Trufelman profiles six fashion related “Articles of Interest.” In a follow-up episode, she reflects on her main takeaways from doing the series. She traveled for the series with only a pair of overalls and a shirt. After returning home to her wardrobe, she describes a feeling of newness she felt, like when buying new clothes — only shopping out of her closet. There are so many clothes in my closet I don’t wear because I grab the most accessible items in my morning hurry. I plan on categorizing my wardrobes so I can put away 75% of clothes, and circle in sets throughout the year. If you are not in San Francisco, you can use seasons to guide this categorization process. For me, it will be a more arbitrary exercise with a little bit of everything in each set — dresses, sweaters, tops, bottoms, and outerwear.
2. Find a tailor: A non-trivial portion of my closet filled with things that do not fit. I can’t bring myself to part with these clothes, because with a few minor alterations I could wear them. This year, I plan to \ find a tailor to finish these projects. Some of my favorite items among this group are my mom’s old silk dresses that she brought in the 80s when boxy, oversized clothing was all the rage. The fabric is beautiful, and with a little TLC, these will be standout items.
3. Leverage my community: I am lucky to have a fantastic group of fashionable girlfriends. In those times when I need a particular piece to complete an outfit — e.g., a gold sequin shrug (looking at you, Jenny Ng), I will borrow items from friends. In return, of course, I will open up my closet to friends.
4. Better clothing care: One of the biggest reasons I end up throwing clothes away is because I have somehow managed to ruin them in the laundry or byways of their precarious placement in my closet. This year, I want to do a better job of actually reading and following care instructions of clothes I own and love. By creating more space in my closet via #1, I can also reduce the likelihood of tears, dye-transfers, etc.

Can’t go cold turkey? Here are some alternatives

I know that fashion addiction is a hard habit to kick. The pleasure of a new piece that perfectly rounds out your wardrobe is unmatched. For those of you, who cannot go all-in, there are some alternative options.

1. Buy fewer, better pieces: When it comes to the environment, fast fashion is poison. When you pay pennies for cheaply made clothing, you will think of it as disposable. Prioritize quality over quantity. Develop your heritage wardrobe of high-quality, timeless pieces that you can pass down to your grandkids.
2. Buy second-hand: If shopping from your wardrobe or your friends’ is not enough, expand the pool. There are a plethora of second-hand clothing retailers, both brick-and-mortar and online (thredUP, The Real Real, Tradesy). Both virtual and physical stores make it easy to find high-quality pieces in your size. Think of it as a treasure hunt!
3. Shop eco-fashion: On my last trip to New York, I bought a coat from the Anita Dongre showroom made from a 100% recycled fabrics. Seek out designers who have eco-friendly lines. You have an opportunity to vote with your dollar and encourage more designers to do the same.

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I am still at the beginning of my journey to make better environmental choices about how I dress. Make no mistake, dressing up is something I take tremendous pleasure in. Fashion designers are artists, and I want to support their art form. I think there’s a path to be walked between leading an environmentally friendly lifestyle and supporting designers. During my one year cleanse, I plan on discovering that path.

Join the movement, or at least stay tuned!

❤