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I'm really surprised that he didn't just recommend that they do away with Product Managers altogether. This is probably the best Product Management approach I'

by yonasb 14y ago

I'm really surprised that he didn't just recommend that they do away with Product Managers altogether. This is probably the best Product Management approach I've heard of for early startups: http://www.quora.com/Stripe-company/Does-Stripe-have-product-managers-or-do-engineers-manage-the-products-themselves/answer/Patrick-Collison/quote/201417 http://www.quora.com/Stripe-company/Does-Stripe-have-product...

ebf 14y ago
I wouldn't recommend that approach for every startup, but if you are a small team, it's a huge plus if your engineers have great product sense (and and some design sense too). It all depends on on this: >The engineers who build our products enjoy, and are good at, figuring out what the product should do—not just how the implementation should work.
pinaceae 14y ago
all fine and dandy until you move into areas developers simply have no clue about - compliance heavy, enterprise, etc. you mention "early", this is key. PMless agile is super simple until you have live, paying customers (as in corporations, not people). breaking existing stuff is simply not possible anymore, SLAs are in play, validation efforts, etc. throwing shit at the wall and see what sticks works in hardcore startup mode before you have a customer base. then it becomes suicidal. even in consumer space, see the various failed relaunches and redesigns.
prostoalex 14y ago
I also like GitHub's approach http://warpspire.com/posts/product-design/ http://warpspire.com/posts/product-design/ (they refer to the role as product designer) but I wonder how long it's going to work for them.
- S4M 14y ago
  Github is a very special company in that respect as the developers are building a product they are using for themselves. Github's model couldn't be replicated in a field where this wouldn't be the case.
sologoub 14y ago
This is a dangerous approach to take lightly. Product design is a discipline in and of itself. There are very few people out there who are both excellent engineers and amazing product visionaries. For most startups the PM role is fulfilled by the founder's vision. However, as the company begins to grow and the initial vision is achieved, it becomes harder to go without someone focusing on the product aspect. The reason someone like Stripe can do just fine without PMs is for two main reasons: 1)Incredible market pull - they just need to be methodical about following the requests and prioritizing them in accordance with revenue/implementation sequencing/risks. 2)Stripe's engineers are the target market - Stripe is built by developers for developers to make payments easy. Much like Jobs embodied his own target market, whenever you are building something for yourself, market research becomes a bit less important... more implicit. If the above conditions are true for your startup, then absolutely, you can follow the example. However, if you are missing either, you should really consider dedicating someone to this research and visioning.
goronbjorn 14y ago
Stripe's approach to staffing is not something that's easily imitated. Most of their employees have either previously been founders or have managed products before as a higher level employee. It's not fair to assume that every startup/company will have that caliber of employee top to bottom. It also seems like Ries was trying to direct this post at all kinds of companies, not just early startups. Patrick himself said that Stripe's approach to staffing is an example of "doing unscalable things while you can". Not everyone is a small startup and the approach of letting everyone manage themselves doesn't work at 100+, 500+, 1000+, 10,000+ person companies.

by yonasb 14y ago

ebf 14y ago

I wouldn't recommend that approach for every startup, but if you are a small team, it's a huge plus if your engineers have great product sense (and and some design sense too). It all depends on on this: >The engineers who build our products enjoy, and are good at, figuring out what the product should do—not just how the implementation should work.

pinaceae 14y ago

all fine and dandy until you move into areas developers simply have no clue about - compliance heavy, enterprise, etc. you mention "early", this is key. PMless agile is super simple until you have live, paying customers (as in corporations, not people). breaking existing stuff is simply not possible anymore, SLAs are in play, validation efforts, etc. throwing shit at the wall and see what sticks works in hardcore startup mode before you have a customer base. then it becomes suicidal. even in consumer space, see the various failed relaunches and redesigns.

prostoalex 14y ago

I also like GitHub's approach http://warpspire.com/posts/product-design/ http://warpspire.com/posts/product-design/ (they refer to the role as product designer) but I wonder how long it's going to work for them.

S4M 14y ago
Github is a very special company in that respect as the developers are building a product they are using for themselves. Github's model couldn't be replicated in a field where this wouldn't be the case.

sologoub 14y ago

This is a dangerous approach to take lightly. Product design is a discipline in and of itself. There are very few people out there who are both excellent engineers and amazing product visionaries. For most startups the PM role is fulfilled by the founder's vision. However, as the company begins to grow and the initial vision is achieved, it becomes harder to go without someone focusing on the product aspect. The reason someone like Stripe can do just fine without PMs is for two main reasons: 1)Incredible market pull - they just need to be methodical about following the requests and prioritizing them in accordance with revenue/implementation sequencing/risks. 2)Stripe's engineers are the target market - Stripe is built by developers for developers to make payments easy. Much like Jobs embodied his own target market, whenever you are building something for yourself, market research becomes a bit less important... more implicit. If the above conditions are true for your startup, then absolutely, you can follow the example. However, if you are missing either, you should really consider dedicating someone to this research and visioning.

goronbjorn 14y ago

Stripe's approach to staffing is not something that's easily imitated. Most of their employees have either previously been founders or have managed products before as a higher level employee. It's not fair to assume that every startup/company will have that caliber of employee top to bottom. It also seems like Ries was trying to direct this post at all kinds of companies, not just early startups. Patrick himself said that Stripe's approach to staffing is an example of "doing unscalable things while you can". Not everyone is a small startup and the approach of letting everyone manage themselves doesn't work at 100+, 500+, 1000+, 10,000+ person companies.