Not programming but systems engineering (telco), though Ive programmed since a kid. I ended up in a product by chance, I was working for a telco vendor and at t

Not programming but systems engineering (telco), though Ive programmed since a kid. I ended up in a product by chance, I was working for a telco vendor and at the time no-one was specifically focussing on product so I ended up doing it. It was about 10 years ago and ive been mainly focussed on product since, through to building and managing teams, both consumer & B2B products. Id argue that the best resources for a product manager are the same as the best resources for founders, ignoring the fundraising part. So: - Relevant YC How to start a startup lectures & other resources mentioned here - Understanding of terms like Retention, CPA, CLV - Have at least an introductory understanding of what UI / UX, marketing teams do (from their perspective) As you will likely be working on a product that has already launched you will have to catch up and become a domain expert. The non-obvious things you should understand really well are: - Which users contribute the most to your product (by revenue or some other key metric) - Why the users use your product, sometimes all is not what it seems! - What the sales process or acquisition funnel is like, from end to end - What the long term strategic goals are / "Why are we here" I would take the time to generate a complete view of how your existing product is used and continually update this. Tools like mix-panel, google analytics or plain DB queries can work. Note the best views are the most descriptive but the least complex. Don't measure everything, you'll just get lost. In terms of day-to-day work, the nice thing about product is that it straddles multiple traditional departments. Take on board advice from marketing, design, engineering & management and don't pretend your an expert there. Leave them to it. But use your data to cull any crazy behaviour and keep things on track. And finally, one thing that few people realise is that the best product managers aren't "visionaries". Learn from your users, other teams, the data and the answer to what you should be building will be screaming at you.