Hiring for Product Management - A primer for founders
For a founder of a startup, there are usually three areas to focus on - hiring, building and selling products, and fundraising.
Hiring for product management can accelerate progress for the company and help in building the right product, attracting the right talent and lastly, the impact on KPIs can directly affect fundraising. The needs for hiring for product management vary for early stage startups and growth stage startups.
In this article, I will address hiring for both the 0–1 (early stage startups) and 1–100 (growth stage startups).
I am a founder of an early stage startup, I am thinking of bringing my first product hire. What should I look for?
All founders, irrespective of the stage of the company adopt the de facto role of Chief Product Officers of their companies. Meaning, they start their company with an understanding of their customer, market, tailwinds, headwinds, and have answered all the basic questions — the who, what, why, where of the product before they have even made their first hire. They slowly build an engineering team and are now, at the point where they are overwhelmed with the responsibilities of being the CEO of the company - focused on building the product, finding their first sales, making hiring decisions and fundraising. At this time, depending on the founders’ understanding and expertise in product management (visioning, requirements writing, documentation, prioritization, and communication), they may take the plunge to make their first product hire.
When making a hire for a 0-1 startup, the burden of visioning and finding product-market fit is on the founders. At this time, they need more of a tactical product manager, who can support them in their journey of building by bringing due product management processes and reducing communication risks.
Here are five characteristics of your first product hire:
Passion for the problem and domain - This characteristic is easy enough to test, but is needed. As things go awry in your startup and there are pivots to your current thought process, you need someone who has an overall passion for the domain. Figuring out what product to build that will help your company grow will require some openness and flexibility of thought and grit.
Demonstrated experience writing documents - I can't emphasize this enough. Putting some structure in communication, having and recording documents for posterity and regular review and having a centralized repository where the entire company can view these assets will go a long way in creating a trusted and expedited culture. The only job of the PM is to get things done quickly without expending $$$ and huge amounts of effort.
Communication ability - Communicating and escalating, when things are slipping up, clarifying requirements, creating even handwritten wire frames, all go in creating a product that's a shared vision. This requires someone who has superior communication and documentation skills.
Resourcefulness - In a startup, 90% of the time, the PM is doing everything from being a sales person, to writing up press releases, to testing the product, and finally doing customer support. Being resourceful and figuring out how to leverage your resources is a critical quality.
Entrepreneurial ability - Lastly, taking initiative, finding where the large problems are and thinking about building solutions goes a long way in becoming a great first product hire.
Suggestions for hiring:
Hire a senior PM - Someone who can be your trusted soldier, who understands how to gather customer needs, write requirement documents, works with engineering as a partner to deliver on your MVP and is able to respond and maintain a backlog of a product. Your (Founder) role at this time is to still act as a Chief Product officer — you are in charge of visioning, helping facilitate customer feedback loops, approving wireframes, and lastly, ratifying the product requirements and line up your beta customers.
Hire a VP of Product or get a product co-founder - Someone who can be your partner, and you have an established rapport with. You need someone with operational experience, or both of you will continue to just build ideas, but not get to execution. Alternatively, you can partner with a product leader, and budget in a senior PM so you can have that person receive guidance from your product partner.
Tips to hiring great product hires - Here’s another article on how you can hire amazing senior product hires .
I am a founder of a growth stage company, I have raised Series B and later, I am thinking of bringing my first product hire. What should I look for?
At this time of the company, you are in a hyper-growth stage. You have what is popularly called Product-Market Fit, and you are focused on growing the company. Your needs are different from a founder of an early stage company. You need to hire a product leader.
Here are some characteristics of a good product leader (VP, CPO):
Visionary — Product insights in the domain your product is in, is deeply important to carry the product from 1–100. What are the opportunities of growth? What needs to be built now? What are the market indicators? Do they have the ability to think outside the box? If it is a consumer company, do they have high aesthetics and if it's an enterprise product, do they have experience working on a similar challenge before.
Trusted Partner - The founder and VP of Product/CPO are comrades in arms. They are in the trenches together, and if you find yourself a trusted compadre, you can rely on them to communicate to you regularly, build roadmaps keeping company goals in mind, and deliver on results.
Leader with a voice - You do not need a yes-man in this role. You need someone fearless enough to be able to see your vision, execute it, but also come to the table with their ideas and be able to push back when necessary.
Ability to attract a pool of talent - Hiring is one of the toughest challenges when it comes to product. Good product leaders are usually able to hire really good talent quickly and if they already have their trusted soldiers, then their army becomes your secret arsenal.
GSD attitude (Get Shit done!) — As with any high growth company, the company may be growing faster than when you can hire someone. A good product leader is able to roll up the sleeves and get into the muck and do everything a PM is able to do. Being egoless and becoming one of the soldiers from being a lieutenant can happen quickly and you need leaders with the get stuff done attitude.
Suggestions for hiring:
Get your VC to help you — VCs are great resources for hiring. A great VC should be able to connect you to the right type of product people. Get them to introduce you, or help you interview the right candidates.
Hire an executive recruiting agency — Be very careful with how you communicate your requirements to them and calibrate regularly.
Look for candidates with non-traditional backgrounds — Do not fall into the trap of hiring only from brand name schools or companies. Instead look for the characteristics I mentioned above and test for those.
Do not make long hiring decisions — You are hiring for the top of the crop. Chances are that they have plenty of opportunities available to them already. Hire fast. If you do not have experience hiring a key person for this role, get help at every stage — from sourcing the candidate to interviewing them. Create a trustworthy and respectful experience from the beginning.
Every interview cycle is at least (40–60 hours) of your and your leadership team’s times. Factor that in before you continue to introduce new workshops, new hurdles and barriers into your interview process.
Every hiring decision is critical to your company and should be reflective of your values and the culture you want to set. Be a good hirer, and good things will follow.