AMA: Upwork VP Product and GM, Talent Marketplace, Apurva Garware on Consumer Product Management

Early in your career, focus on absorbing and learning as much as you can -- what product management is, what plays naturally to your strengths and interests. Explore, be hungry, be curious. Tap into what really excites you and you’ll discover what you really enjoy. Lean into opportunities to gather different skills and gain exposure to different industries and domains. By the time you hit mid-career and know you want to do consumer product management, you’ll also get a sense for what you enjoy and what you don’t. For e.g:, As a Senior PM, I knew that I enjoyed building marketplace B2C products. I also knew that I wanted to experience product management in both -- established companies and in startups. Then I moved into people management, because coaching and giving back to the community felt like a natural way to transition my knowledge and scale up my responsibilities. I could have also chosen to be an IC and then become a senior IC as well. Typically if you’re in a leadership role, you could move to a VP Product or CPO role. You could also grow into these roles without people management responsibilities (it depends on the company) but it's less common. In senior leadership roles, you are moving from the driver’s seat into laying the railroads for your teams to execute well, so you can focus on vision, strategy and hiring. In some cases, you may also assume P&L responsibilities. I’ve seen people with product backgrounds grow in product, become founders in companies, move into Venture Capital, move into COO or other C-suite roles, and really what it comes down to is understanding where your strengths and interests lie, and architecting your product career to help you grow into your dream role.

B2B and B2C PM’s bring very different strong suits. It’s not to say one is better than the other, but they come with different competencies. I’ve observed that B2B PMs are systems thinkers. They think end to end and consider what it takes to build a robust business at scale. This runs the full spectrum from security to payments to tools for administration and operations. This is a great skill set in a world where many businesses are moving online and there’s a high impetus for trusted and safe environments. What I think B2B PM’s don’t have the opportunity to necessarily experience are the end users pain-points and journeys. Enterprise products, by design, are purchased/licensed to run a business. Consumer products are sought out by and paid for by individual users to fill an unmet need. So if you are a B2B PM looking to transition to B2C, I encourage you to find a product that meets an unmet need for you, and teardown the product to understand what approach you’ll take if you were building it from scratch. Or better still, work on a new product idea for a problem you yourself run into. The other area is A/B testing. B2B products don’t always led themselves to A/B testing and iteration. So for PMs looking to transition, I’d say learn as much as you can about A/B testing -- when does it make sense (or not), how do you build hypotheses, how do you set up test cells and when do you decide to call (launch) a test.

Obviously this looks different at varying levels of tenure and experience, but key themes are: * Customer focus * Business impact * People / relationships Customer focus speaks to if this person is able to put themselves in the shoes of the customer, whether b2b or b2c, and experience the product the way our end users do. Can they empathize with the user we are building for and their unmet needs? But this needs to tie back to results and impact. Is this person able to understand what success looks like for the business, take a data-driven approach to making decisions, and does this show in the results? Lastly, the “how” is as important as the what. Have they done so while bringing the team along the way? Can they earn trust and provide context, so even the most junior person on the team knows what they are doing and why. And can they create a culture that lives the values of the organization? How do you know you’re on track? You need to really push for clarity with your leadership on what success looks like for your role. This is also steeped in good communication skills. Ask for feedback, really listen, and bring that feedback back to your day-to-day life. This is relevant to a promotion because if you worked for me, I may say, “You’re really doing good in this area, but I want to see you improve in that other area.” If you get that feedback, and work on it, it’s what will really help you know you’re on track towards the promotion you’re working towards. At a high level, keep those communication channels open with your manager, peers, and even direct reports. Build strong opinions loosely held, and be willing to work on feedback.

This ends up being a function of what company you work for and what industry/domain your company is in. As a general principle, your organizational chart should always reflect the vision and strategy that your company is working on, not the other way around. Otherwise, you risk shipping your org chart. I’d recommend that you don’t figure out resourcing and organization until you know what you are solving and why. Once you have that, then you can determine what structure sets your teams up for success. And then you can align your organization on goals and problems to build a culture of collaboration and healthy debate. How I’ve seen it work: I”ve worked in B2C 2-sided marketplaces that are post-product market fit and in these organizations I’ve typically seen product pillars around: Growth: Focused on growing the top of funnel - acquisition, activation, SEO / SEM, etc. * Demand-side Core products: focused on end-user engagement and retention on the demand side * Supply Side Core products: focused on a high quality and scalable supply pipeline * Platforms: focused on capabilities that users need as table-stakes: payments, search, identity, marketing channels, etc This is gross oversimplification, but these are broad areas that teams need coverage around. And depending on the company and teams, these could break down into sub-teams. You could also have other verticals and focus areas.

1. Ability to communicate well - Someone told me early in my career: The single most important PM skill he looks for when hiring a PM is communication. Communication is really a proxy for building trust, driving alignment, having healthy debates when there’s conflict and committing to a path forward. That’s all under the hood of good communication, and is instrumental in driving product teams forward. 2. Data driven mindset - relevant to qual as much as to quant. Ask yourself and teams the right questions. Become familiar with qualitative research tools, understand what your dashboards need to look like, and get your dashboards in place. Be empowered to make data-driven decisions. 3. Ruthlessly prioritize - every day you have more you want to do than you will have time to do it. That’s just the reality. Every human has 24 hours, and one can’t change that. Make sure you prioritize your team and the team's time and resources.