What are /r/ProductMgmt's favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Hi SpaceTaco - happy to be here!

There are a lot of resources out there but I think fundamentally you should understand what a product manager is and what a product manager isn't. I have interviewed quite a bit for junior product manager roles and whether it is a role for someone straight out of university or someone with a year or two of product management experience, I like to see intellectually curious individuals who can work well together in a team environment (i.e., communicate effectively), are empathetic to the end customer, and can start to think about how to invest time and resources.

Tactically for interviews, two resources I found pretty helpful when I was doing PM interviews was Cracking the PM Interview and Inspired but there are plenty of other online resources out there that can help! If more is needed i am happy to link to some online resources I found useful.

I recommend the book Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon. That will give you a good picture of the overall process, along with some fun anecdotes! Let me know if I've misunderstood your question.

Most common hurdle that companies face in this scenario is meeting the customization and configuration needs of individual customers. B2B companies customize the software for each customer to the extent that it becomes difficult to manage and impossible to scale. The first step in this direction is to come up with a lean solution with the most critical business case that your product is solving and extract that out to a platform. Modular architecture with lean approach is the way to start. And as I mentioned in my earlier comment, this transition journey needs a cultural shift it is not just architectural or product transformation.

Last chapter of my book Effective Platform Product Management covers the transition from product to platform. I have covered the B2B (SaaS solution) case study in that chapter. It is based on my learnings while consulting in B2B space.

Demonstrating platform capabilities is similar to any other product capabilities. Teams that are responsible for the demo or showcasing the capabilities should be well versed with the platform concept and capabilities that exists in their platforms and then translate it to external stakeholders or customers.
In B2B space, sales or customer acquisition team should work in co-ordination with product teams to demo platform capabilities. One thing that platforms facilitates and eases in B2B space is the customer onboarding pains. In traditional B2B products usually it takes two to three months to onboard a customer after the contract is signed. But if we build the solution as a platform, this onboarding process can be managed by each customers and can be done in hours.
About managing the platform, it is not just technological transformation but also a cultural shift. When building platforms, entire organization should adopt platform first approach. Teams should be structured with the platform approach and governance model should be designed to suit the platform structure.
I have covered this topic in great detail in one of the chapters (Creating Platform Operating Model) in my book Effective Platform Product Management.

Demonstrating platform capabilities is similar to any other product capabilities. Teams that are responsible for the demo or showcasing the capabilities should be well versed with the platform concept and capabilities that exists in their platforms and then translate it to external stakeholders or customers.

In B2B space, sales or customer acquisition team should work in co-ordination with product teams to demo platform capabilities. One thing that platforms facilitates and eases in B2B space is the customer onboarding pains. In traditional B2B products usually it takes two to three months to onboard a customer after the contract is signed. But if we build the solution as a platform, this onboarding process can be managed by each customers and can be done in hours.

About managing the platform, it is not just technological transformation but also a cultural shift. When building platforms, entire organization should adopt platform first approach. Teams should be structured with the platform approach and governance model should be designed to suit the platform structure.

I have covered this topic in great detail in one of the chapters (Creating Platform Operating Model) in my book Effective Platform Product Management.

Thanks for your question. I quite like Craft these days. It's a notetaking and productivity app. I've been following them from the beginning from the beginning and they just won the app of the year for being the best mac app.

For email I've been using Spark in the past year and it helps me lot in reaching near mailbox 0.

How about you?

>Product Hunt - https://www.producthunt.com/ - I got a lot of my early consulting opportunities by actively engaging in the community and just directly contacting CEOs, founders, etc. and saying hey, here are some ideas on how to improve your product based on what I know about it - are you willing to chat about how I could possibly help you get to your next goal (whether that's new users, improved engagement, etc)
>
>Remote roles - Sites like remoteok.io - This opens up opportunities not just local to you, but also remote. I've found that smaller stage startups are also on remote sites more often. I would recommend looking for some entry level roles in tech OR some PM internships (again, if available) to get your foot in the door!

Here is my answer from above about freelancing / consulting roles, so will paste for ease of visibility.

Regarding must-have certifications - I don't have any great recommendations! I don't have any, but I'd say a good filter would be to do an assessment on your own skills first (maybe just using your own confidence level per competency as a start) and see what you want to improve upon. For example, I really wanted to level up my communications/presentation skills, so while I didn't take any PM certifications, I definitely took some writing and public speaking classes :)

The best way to prep is a mock interview with an experienced PM. I had the opportunity to do us through the career center at my business school, and it was super helpful.

To prepare for that, I'd recommend:

1) books such as Decode and Conquer and Cracking the PM Interview to help you understand how to break down product problems

2) YouTube videos of mock interviews. There is a lot of great content out there, especially on the product design/sense and execution case interviews.

Hi! Good luck on your APM interviews. First - we don't really ask coding questions anymore, but here are some good technical resources: - Cracking the Coding Interview: https://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming-Questions/dp/0984782850 - Not as technical, but good primer on talking about technology (Swipe to Unlock): https://www.amazon.com/Swipe-Unlock-Technology-Business-Strategy-ebook/dp/B0756MTX6K

Hope that helps!