{"id":5655,"date":"2013-11-02T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-02T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wework.com\/creator\/?p=3205"},"modified":"2020-04-03T18:01:28","modified_gmt":"2020-04-03T22:01:28","slug":"founders-hire-product-manager","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wework.com\/ideas\/professional-development\/founders-hire-product-manager","title":{"rendered":"Why founders should not hire a product manager"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the past years I\u2019ve met many founders before they raised money to help them around product, marketing and generally understand what\u2019s important and when. One phenomena I keep seeing is one of the founders will ask \u201cwhere can we find a good product manager?\u201d<\/p>\n

My answer is almost always \u201cYou don\u2019t need a product manager. The product is the most important thing you\u2019ve got to deal with right now, so one of you should do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

This may seem a shallow point of view, so I\u2019ll elaborate on the insights behind it.<\/p>\n

When you found a startup, there are important things and unimportant things. On another dimension, there are things that require lots of actual work (like coding), and things that do not require lots of actual work (like defining your marketing strategy). Surprisingly enough, in most cases at the very early stages of a startup, what\u2019s important is what actually requires lots of work.<\/p>\n

For most startups in that position, there\u2019s nothing more important than product. You need to code it, true, but what \u201cproduct\u201d means is \u201cwhat do we code?\u201d<\/p>\n

I often encounter two archetypes of founders who will ask me about hiring a product manager:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Coders who can write great code, but don\u2019t know what they should do, so they are looking for someone who will tell them what to do.<\/li>\n
  2. People with business background who have no idea how to build products, and are looking for someone they will explain \u201cthe vision\u201d to, and he will make it happen.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    To the first group (coders) I say<\/strong>: if all you know is code, you\u2019re not good enough founders. You need to think about your users, imagine their pains and needs, build it for them. Become the product managers. Or, add another co-founder who can bring that skill to the founding team. The first product manager in a startup must be one of the founders.<\/p>\n

    To the second group (suits) I say<\/strong>: if you can\u2019t build anything, you have no justification to be calling yourselves founders. a key skill for the founding team is to know how to build the damn thing, and if you cannot, it means the investors\u2019 money will be spent on your salaries while you contribute nothing but big words (in reality I use much harsher words in those situations, but I don\u2019t want to make this post NSFW). Don\u2019t get me wrong, the business side is critical to the success of startups, but 1) mostly at later stages and; 2) Too often I see a group of 3-4 founders who have no idea how to build stuff, expecting they can outsource everything including the product side. Granted, sometimes those people succeed, but then it\u2019s not interesting.<\/p>\n

    So if you\u2019re building a startup, ask yourself which of the founders can be a great product manager. Build your thing, raise some money, and when that product-founder simply cannot do enough product work because he spends 13 hours a day doing something else that\u2019s more important, then hire a product manager.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    In the past years I\u2019ve met many founders before they raised money to help them around product, marketing and generally understand what\u2019s important and when. One phenomena I keep seeing is one of the founders will ask \u201cwhere can we find a good product manager?\u201d My answer is almost always \u201cYou don\u2019t need a product […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":968,"featured_media":33835,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43902],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-professional-development"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhy founders should not hire a Product Manager<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In the past years I\u2019ve met many founders before they raised money to help them around product, marketing and generally understand what\u2019s important and\u2026\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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