The “CEO” and The “Product Manager

I’ve had the privilege to have worked in both capacity and if there’s anything I’ve learned playing both roles at small startups or mildly funded product development, is how similar the roles become.

As a founder of a product based small or medium business, you are faced with the challenges of gathering engineers, laying the ideas, creating the KPIs, planning the development strategy, managing stand up sessions, staying up to date with reviews, working hand in hand with your tech lead (who in many case is more or less your CTO) to get the product built and out. In these cases, you can almost say the product manager is more or less the CEO without the title.

But they are as far from each other as it gets! Yes!
You see, as the founder, you often are the visionary, you often carry the idea, you often have to sell the dream to not only your engineers, but your investors, and for many small businesses, your customers also.

Often times, the most blind person to the pitfalls of an idea is the man with the idea. Especially when he or she or they believe that idea with everything they have. And this is the lot of a founder. It’s their place to believe it no matter what, making them the most blind at the same time.

As a product manager however, you also need to buy the idea, you also need to believe the idea, but not the founder’s version of it, but the version collected from:

1. Customers Feedback/Survey
2. Business Evaluation
3. Engineering Possibilities
4. Seasons and Times.

While the founder may start off as a dreamer, at some point, they become collectors. Their demands would go from what they dreamt of, to what investors who gave them money to start with are asking for, to what they think would bring money to keep the company going.

But as a product manager, you are taking notes of what your users are saying, understanding their needs, understanding their willingness to pay to have that need met, what they’ll pay for your solution and you also understand your teams’ ability to resolve that need in the time and season it is demanded for.

You are not bound to please investors or make the company money to stay afloat, but your decisions from your exact place as a product manager is what would save and keep the company running.

As a young co founder, at some point in my life, I had a dream like Sir Martin. But when I got the money to push the dream, I also had to get the money back, I kept shifting my product to the fastest money making system to please my investors and by so doing, messed the dream itself.

The role may be similar is many cases, but the mind at work can never and should never be the same. The need to shift personalities across these two is what can build a start up. Knowing that it’s the founders place to often dream and share that dream. But, it is the product managers place to build to reality, what was once a dream and ensure to stay wide awake, doing it.