I attended a meetup with Gib Biddle and was inspired in many ways about his thoughtful and very obvious way (very approachable) to make decisions and calibrate his product career. He made his super powers seem very non-super power (learned not innate). I thought I'd take the time to calibrate on what I believe to be my current strengths to help me determine the types of organizations I could complement. First, here are the things he looks for:
- Product - technical capabilities, pragmatic operator, creative, business value, marketing, design, consumer insight
- Leadership - story telling, organizational operator, strategy (consumer delight x margin enhancing), results oriented, cultural tendencies (and building), business maturity (decision making philosophy), domain experience
Here is where I feel like I add leverage:
- Product
- Technical - I am no coder, but I love "digging in the dirt" on new tech to determine it's "scalability" to solve real customer problems. I love analyzing systems to build hypothesis on the "hard to copy thing".
- Customer insight - I would rather have test outputs orient the decision making process. In the event there is not enough data, knowing what data you need and how to get it is equally important (transitional decisions / inputs). Don't let customers tell you HOW, only the WHAT. Be hyper aware of "biased confirmation".
- Creativity - Ideas come from everywhere, I love creating environments for ideation and listening for clues to build my own hypothesis at the intersection of everyone else's good ideas. Once an idea flickers, I am also obsessed with the early part of learning more about it.
- Management - Vision is nothing without focused execution and operational discipline (details matter). Think big, start small, and gain momentum.
- Leadership
- Result oriented - I skew towards action especially when stakes are low. Frame the stakes (high / low), timeline, and process (RAPID). Reflect on pain and failure in order to learn.
- Strategy - I tend to be a realists so I skew towards no quite often, but when in doubt dig deep and debate distinctive competency to determine the balance between customer value vs. margin enhancing.
Career hypothesis:
- Series B or C startup; < $75M Revenue (stay close to unfiltered truth)
- Head of product vs. GM
- Product leader:
- Builder of net new or early (known runway)
- Enterprise B2B
- Sales / marketing vs. good for the world??
- Infra / platforms / data (meta) vs. point apps (UX)
- Partnerships, relationships, channel
- Small teams (< 20)
- Corp dev, VC, advisor
Actions:
- Map my career on 3 dimensions: income, job satisfaction, meaningful purpose
- Build profiles and pipeline for "my personal board of directors"
