AMA: Matterport VP of Product, Preethy Vaidyanathan on Building a Product Management Team

Show-and-Tell: Start with a small, well-defined project where a PM can work closely with an engineer or two to demonstrate the value of the role and achieve some early wins. Share the impact of these wins with the wider team. For example, a feature improvement or a customer problem resolution can demonstrate a win for both the team and the business. Demonstrate Value to Engineering: Beyond showcasing the overall value a PM brings, clearly demonstrate and communicate the specific benefits to the engineering team. This helps engineers understand the PM role within their context. For example, illustrate how the PM acts as a liaison to other teams (sales, marketing, support), streamlining communication and reducing conflicting requests, ultimately minimizing friction for engineers. Iterative Approach: Build the PM-engineering partnership iteratively, similar to a product launch. Test, learn, gather feedback, and refine the collaboration process continuously.

Three areas to focus in your first product management role: Learn and Connect: Your initial priority is learning, and make sure that includes understanding the business. Seek to understand how engineering works, how customers use your product, go-to-market strategies, company strategy, and goals. Ask many questions, listen attentively, and document everything. This documentation will be invaluable as you onboard future PMs. Communicate: Keep stakeholders informed about your progress and decisions. Identifying challenges is also important, but approach them with a solution-oriented mindset. Identify the challenge and find solutions for improvement. You can even start small, focus on one area, implement changes, document the impact, and communicate the results. Regular communication builds trust and alignment. Execute: Last but definitely not least is effective execution. Develop strong execution skills, including planning, prioritization, and problem-solving. Finally, to continue growing, find a mentor, perhaps someone external to your company, who can provide guidance and support.

It's better to have a small team of highly skilled and motivated PMs who align with company values and help meet company goals. Especially in an early-stage company, where ambiguity is high and agility across customer targeting, sales processes, product development, support, and more is key, ensure that your hires are comfortable with ambiguity yet capable of executing and making decisions based on available information. Plan your hiring needs based on projected company growth. Think holistically about product development when hiring, considering roles like product manager, product designer, data scientist, product analyst, and user researcher. Create a hiring plan that aligns with your roadmap and identifies the necessary roles. Create a lightweight onboarding process. Hiring requires significant effort, not just during recruitment, but also in onboarding new team members to ramp them up quickly. As the first PM, you set the example. Cultivate a user-centric, high-velocity mindset within your team as it grows.

There's no single right answer; the best approach depends on the urgency of the need and how quickly you can hire. One approach is to start with some foundational, lightweight processes and then build a small but mighty team that can scale those processes as a collective group. This involves prioritizing the following: * Early Impact: Demonstrate some immediate impact. Examples include sharing a well-defined roadmap, creating a forum to receive customer feedback, or establishing a simple prioritization framework. Keeping the process and plan lightweight allows for adaptation in the future. * Build the Team: This gives you the time needed to build the right structure and make the right hires for the team. Empower the Team: Work together to refine processes and remain agile. This also fosters a sense of shared ownership and accountability within the team.

Product manager to engineer ratio can range from 1 PM to 5 or 6 engineers all the way to 1 PM to 10 to 12 engineers. It all depends on the seniority of the product manager as well as the company and product stage. Few areas to consider as you scale: * Make sure there is sufficient product management and engineering capacity to get feedback from customers and improve existing functionality as well as have the capacity to prototype and build new features to grow the customer base. * Periodically evaluate your ratio, atleast once or twice a year and adjust as needed. * It's important to both consider the current state of product complexity, customer base and org structure as well as planning for what's going to come next. * At the same time, dont stress too much about the exact number as the main goal is clear communication, collaboration and a product-development org that continues to scale as the business grows.

Establish a Framework: * Establish a framework that works for the product and company stage. Simplicity is key. Organize requirements using a straightforward framework like MoSCoW (Must have, Should have, Could have, Won't have) or a Value vs. Effort matrix. Then, create a prioritized list by ordering requirements based on customer value, business value, or team voting. Prioritization Goals: * Deliver Value/Early Wins: Focus on demonstrating the value of product management. Prioritize and execute on small wins to build momentum. * Document and Communicate: While prioritization helps product development, it's equally important to share the decision-making framework with all stakeholders. * Be Flexible and Iterate: Be prepared to adapt your framework as the company and product evolve. By following this template, you can effectively prioritize needs and deliverables, even in the ambiguous environment of a newly established product function.